The Tree Where the Curse Hung
Post #32 in the queue

Hear the herald's claim in full. The law gave Israel a burial regulation, and the regulation named the place where the curse of the law would one day be exhausted. A body hung on a tree was not to remain there overnight. It was to be buried the same day. The reason the law gives is terrible in its plainness: the man on the tree is accursed of God. The tree was where a curse was displayed. And the tree is where the curse ended, because the One who hung there was the curse-bearer, and He took the curse down with Him into the grave and left it there.

Begin where Paul begins, in the middle of a regulation that looks too small to carry the gospel. Moses commands: "If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and you hang him on a tree; his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him the same day; for he who is hanged is accursed of God; that you don't defile your land which Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance" (Deut 21:22-23).

Mark the second command, the one that governs the display. The body shall not remain all night on the tree. It shall be buried the same day. The reason is not pity for the dead man. The reason is the land. A cursed corpse left hanging defiles the land Yahweh gave for an inheritance. The curse is not a private condition. It spreads. Left on display, it stains the ground it hangs over. So the law sets a limit even on the display of judgment: one day, and then the earth covers it.

Here is the first connector, and it runs through the whole history of Israel. When Joshua took Ai, he hanged its king on a tree until evening, and then, as the sun went down, the body was taken down and thrown at the gate of the city (Josh 8:29). When Joshua took the five kings of the Amorites, he hanged them on five trees until evening, and then had them taken down and thrown into the cave where they had hidden (Josh 10:26-27). The pattern holds in both cases: hang, and take down before night. No victory was complete while a cursed body still hung over the land at nightfall. The land had to be cleared of the curse before the day closed.

Now hear Paul take this burial regulation and lay it across the cross, and hear what his sentence does. Paul has just said that all who are of the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who doesn't continue in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them" (Gal 3:10). The word is all. The law does not curse the man who breaks one great commandment and keeps the rest. It curses the man who does not continue in all things. The standard is everything, always, and no man meets it, for the heart is deceitful above all things (Jer 17:9). There is no partial credit in the curse. There is only the curse, whole, and the man under it.

Then Paul speaks the reversal, and the reversal is a Person: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree'" (Gal 3:13). Mark the grammar, for the grammar is the gospel. Christ did not merely bear the curse as a weight carried on His back while He Himself stood apart from it. He became a curse for us. The curse was laid on Him, and He became what the law said the man on the tree is: accursed of God. The Judge pronounced upon His own Son the sentence the law pronounces upon the covenant-breaker, and the Son received it, not as a criminal receiving his due, but as the Redeemer receiving what was never His own.

Do not soften this with the language of mere sympathy. The curse Christ became is God's curse, not man's opinion. The law had already declared, centuries before, what any man hung on a tree is: accursed of God. When the soldiers lifted Him up, they were not inventing a verdict. They were walking into a verdict written long before, and the verdict fell on the only Man who had kept the law entire. That is the scandal, and it must not be explained away. The innocent One was declared accursed, and the declaration was God's own word, executed by God's own hand, for the redemption of those who were accursed in fact.

Hear Peter name the same tree, and hear how he fills it with the sins it carried: "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live to righteousness. You were healed by his wounds" (1 Pet 2:24). The tree is not an emblem. It is a place, and it held a body, and the body held the sins. The bearing was bodily: the sins were carried, in flesh, to wood, and the wood held them until the flesh died. The tree where the curse hung is the tree where the sins hung, because the curse and the sins are one burden, and the one Body carried both.

Now follow the burial regulation to the evening of the crucifixion, and see how precisely it was kept. The Jews asked Pilate that the bodies not remain on the crosses over the Sabbath, for that Sabbath was a high day (John 19:31). When the soldiers came to Jesus, they found Him already dead, and they did not break His legs. Joseph of Arimathea took the body and laid it in a new tomb before the day closed. The body of the accursed One did not remain all night on the tree. The regulation written for a criminal's corpse was kept over the corpse of the Son of God.

But see how the keeping of the regulation reverses its meaning. In the law, the body is buried the same day so that the curse does not defile the land. At the cross, the body is buried the same day, and the burial does not merely contain the curse. The burial ends it. The curse hung on the tree, and the tree was emptied, and the tomb was sealed, and the curse was left in the grave like a garment taken off. For the curse had done all it could do. It had killed the curse-bearer. It had spent itself upon Him. And a curse that has killed its bearer has nothing left to kill, unless the bearer stays dead. He did not stay dead. He rose without the curse, because the curse belonged to the tree and to the tomb, and He left both behind.

Here is the joint, and it is the whole post. A burial regulation for a cursed corpse names the place where the curse of the law itself was exhausted. The law said: hang the cursed one on a tree, and do not leave him there overnight, lest the land be defiled. Paul says: the cursed One was hung on a tree, and the curse was exhausted on that tree, so that the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations through Him. The tree held the curse for one day. The tomb held the curse-bearer for three. And the curse never came back out, because the One who carried it came out without it.

This is why the gospel leaves no room for a man to climb down from his own tree. The curse is not a debt a man can work off while he hangs there. The man on the tree is dead, and the dead do not climb. Redemption comes from outside the tree, from the One who took the tree in the man's place. The law curses the man who does not continue in all things. The gospel announces the Man who continued in all things and then became the curse for those who did not. The exchange is total, because the curse is total. Nothing is left for the redeemed man to finish, because the tree finished it.

So the question is not whether you can bear your own curse well enough. You cannot. The question is not whether you can keep the law closely enough to escape the tree. The law has already spoken: all things, or cursed. The question is whether the curse has already fallen where it was meant to fall, on the tree where the Son of God hung in your place, and whether you will believe that the tree is empty now. The tree held Him for a day. The tomb held Him for three. The curse held Him for neither, because the curse is not a master but a sentence, and the sentence was served in full on the wood. The land is not defiled. The body is not there. The tree stands empty, and the empty tree is the gospel: the curse hung there once, and it hangs there no longer, because Christ became the curse, and Christ gives the increase.