Responsive Reading Galatians 3:13

[gortkenn]

Could anybody offer any help with understanding “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.”
I have tried researching on the internet but found nothing that really helps me
Thank You.

[JPalmer]

Thank you for this question: It prompted me to look closer at this verse.

In the midst of the BibleHub commentary (https://biblehub.com/commentaries/galatians/3-13.htm) on this, the following verses are mentioned:

Deuteronomy 21:22-23
22 And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree:
23 His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.

Taking this, and applying what I have learned of Christian Science here in Plainfield, it seems that we need to recognize that error (the “sin worthy of death”), expose it (“hang him on a tree”), and then move forward with God (“bury him that day”). As Mrs. Eddy wrote on page 355 of Miscellaneous Writings:

First, self-knowledge. … Error found out is two-thirds destroyed, and the last third pierces itself, for the remainder only stimulates and gives scope to higher demonstration.

And then going back to Galatians 3:13:

13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:

I feel that since “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law” we don’t need to live in shame from the error, or condemn ourselves for it. Each overcoming should be seen as a victory. Each obstacle an opportunity “that the works of God should be made manifest in [us].” (John 9:3)

A final word on this point, from Mrs. Eddy in the lesson:

13. 91
…the sooner error is reduced to its native nothingness, the sooner man’s great reality will appear and his genuine being will be understood.

I am very grateful that being a member of this church has given me the resources to find meaning in the Bible. What a blessing Plainfield is! Thank you!

[Michael Pupko]

Acts 5:30-32 King James Version (KJV)
30 The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree.

31 Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.

32 And we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him.

Deut.28:25,26 Paraphrasing: essentially one is cursed if not buried, left above ground.

Crucifixion was used as a weapon of terror by the Romans to control the people they had conquered and definitely for any threat, real or perceived, to their rule. Not only was it too bring an end to ‘material’opposition but also to prevent the possibility of an ‘afterlife’ so those crucified were to suffer eternal damnation.

Jesus not only proved the reality of eternal Life but also that Life overcomes the most degrading forms of treatment; even more so because not only was he innocent of any crime, but also his life was the highest example of pure Love and good. Small wonder even his disciples were shocked by the proof Jesus gave of eternal Life with his resurrection; even after his examples of raising the deceased. He proved that even the most powerful human government (animal magnetism represented by Rome) can’t overrule God’s Government.

[parthens]

Check out the excellent article, “IF I BE LIFTED UP” by Grace Roberta Wasson, from the July 1921 CS Journal: good explanation of how Christ reversed the curse.

Here is an excerpt:

“The Jewish patriarch came near confusing the Adam definition of serpent with the Christ definition, when God bade him cast his rod upon the ground and he saw it become a serpent. Moses fled from what he saw, but that which he saw was an hallucination. God bade him return and pick up the serpent. Moses’ obedience opened his eyes, gave him spiritual vision, which contradicted sense testimony, and he then knew that he had been subscribing to general belief which was absolutely false, regarding an expression of Deity. He learned that serpent, instead of being a dangerous, loathsome, writhing reptile, which he refers to in his Edenic allegory as “cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field,” was exactly the reverse of what he had supposed. This vision was to become enlarged, for in the twenty-first chapter of Numbers we read how, when the Hebrew pilgrims turned from God and cried out against the Almighty, the “fiery serpents” appeared among the people, “and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.” Then, returning penitent, they besought Moses to ask God to forgive them for their sins, and God advised Moses accordingly and ‘Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.’

“The serpent, as Satan’s tool, is a symbol of sin adjudged (or death, for the wages of sin is death), but when elevated or lifted up, as Moses did in two instances, it becomes the type of Christ. Brass speaks of judgment, as in the brazen altar of God’s judgment, and in the laver of self-judgment (Exodus 27). The brazen serpent is a type of Christ who was made ‘to be sin for us, who knew no sin,’ in bearing our judgment, for we are told in John’s gospel, that ‘as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.'” [emphasis added]

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