Readings for today: Deuteronomy 20-23
Today‘s are especially harsh to 21st century ears. Once again, we are confronted with the cultural distance between us and the world of the ancient near east. Holy war. Dead bodies. Rebellious children. Rape. And a host of odd rules regarding planting, plowing, and the mixing of fabrics. The overarching purpose of all these commands has to do with ritual purity. Something God is deeply concerned about. He wants to make sure His people are not polluted by the impurities that surround them lest they find themselves coming under the curse. This is why the punishment He doles out is so brutal and unyielding.
Buried in all the discussion today about who gets stoned for what and when is a key passage that’s easy to miss. Deuteronomy 21:22-23, “When a man has committed a capital crime, been given the death sentence, executed and hung from a tree, don’t leave his dead body hanging overnight from the tree. Give him a decent burial that same day so that you don’t desecrate your God-given land—a hanged man is an insult to God.” (Deuteronomy 21:22-23 MSG) Blessings and curses are a huge theme in Deuteronomy. If you do well, you will be blessed. If you rebel against the commands of God, you are cursed. And not just you but your family, your land, your friends and neighbors because every action we take has communal consequences. This is why God is constantly telling His people to expel those who break His law lest they defile the land.
Enter the Apostle Paul. He picks up on this theme of “blessings and curses” in the Book of Galatians. He is writing to a group of largely Gentile believers who are doing their best to keep the Law of Moses. The entire book is a forceful critique that draws a sharp contrast between life under the Law and life under the Spirit. “Anyone who tries to live by his own effort, independent of God, is doomed to failure. Scripture backs this up: Utterly cursed is every person who fails to carry out every detail written in the Book of the law.…Rule-keeping does not naturally evolve into living by faith, but only perpetuates itself in more and more rule-keeping…and Christ redeemed us from that self-defeating, cursed life by absorbing it completely into himself. Do you remember the Scripture that says, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree…” That is what happened when Jesus was nailed to the cross: He became a curse, and at the same time dissolved the curse. And now, because of that, the air is cleared and we can see that Abraham’s blessing is present and available for non-Jews, too. We are all able to receive God’s life, his Spirit, in and with us by believing—just the way Abraham received it.” (Galatians 3:9-14 MSG) Basically, Paul argues that when we seek to justify ourselves by keeping the Law, we become cursed because no one can actually achieve what the Law demands. Furthermore, he tags Abraham and reminds God’s people that it is not the Law that justifies in the first place but faith! So what then happens to the Law? What happens to all the curses that have piled up over the centuries through the failure of God’s people to keep it? Christ literally becomes the curse for us! He takes our place and perfectly satisfies the Law’s just demands and the sign of this great salvific event is the cross. Golgotha is the place where Jesus literally hangs on a tree, becoming cursed on our behalf. As we know, He doesn’t hang there all night but is buried that same day in accordance with the instructions given in Deuteronomy so even in His death, He fulfills the Law. This is incredible news but Paul’s not done! Not only did Christ remove the curse through His saving death, He also unleashed all the blessings! All the promises God made to His people from Abraham forward are now ours in Christ Jesus! All the blessings of obedience are given to us because of Christ’s great faithfulness!
It is so easy to make the mistake of reading Deuteronomy and get crushed by the weight of expectations. We read about the blessings and curses and think immediately of our own lives and how often we fall short. We start to wonder and question our faith in God. We immediately recognize the gap that exists between who we are and who we should be. An honest person knows they’ve sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. An honest person knows they’ve done things that bring them under the curse. An honest person looks at the sin of their life and experiences deep grief over what they have done. All that is good because it drives us to Christ! It brings us to the end of ourselves. The end of our pride. The end of our self-sufficiency. And there Christ meets us with open arms. Hands and feet bearing the scars from where He hung on the tree. He embraces us. He lets us know all has been accomplished. The work of salvation has been finished. We are set free.
Readings for tomorrow: Deuteronomy 24-27