Christ Bore Our Curse for Us
We are continuing to meditate on Jesus on trial before the high priest and elders of Israel. The high priest looked for Jesus to incriminate Himself by speaking blasphemy. He said, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” 62“I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”These words by Jesus was enough for the high priest, and he ripped open his outer shirt. The tearing of the clothes of the high priest was a graphic way of stating that something blasphemous had just happened. In this case, the Jewish leadership clearly understood that Jesus was making the statement that He was (and is) God in the flesh. After they reached the verdict, they continued the beating and humiliation. Luke described the beating with these words:
63The men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him. 64They blindfolded him and demanded, “Prophesy! Who hit you?” 65And they said many other insulting things to him (Luke 22:63-65).
It is possible that Peter witnessed this game of blind man’s bluff with a difference, at least for a time. If he did see it, he wrote later that the Lord did not retaliate. He suffered nobly in silence. Peter wrote: “When he was reviled, He did not revile in return; when he suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously” (1 Peter 2:23).It must have been hard for Peter to watch what they were doing to Christ, especially after he had just denied even knowing Him. Matthew tells us that they took turns beating him with their fists and spitting on Him: 67Then they spit in his face and struck him with their fists. Others slapped him 68and said, “Prophesy to us, Messiah. Who hit you?” (Matthew 26:67-68). If Peter was there, he did not have the courage or the will to try to intervene. It was probably at that point that he left. We don’t know how long the beating went on. By this point in time, Jesus would have been already weakened by having no sleep and also by the struggle in the garden of Gethsemane.
Having convicted Christ of blasphemy, the Jewish elders now began to think of how to kill Him. To the Jewish elite, it was not enough to stone Him, the standard method of execution of a condemned criminal in Israel, they had to diminish His authority in some way so that no one would ever place their trust in Him. In the book of Acts, we read of Stephen being stoned by the Jews (Acts 7:54-60), and the woman caught in the act of adultery was to be stoned to death (John 8:4-7). If stoning was a common way of dealing with those pronounced guilty, why was Jesus crucified instead of being stoned?
The ruling elite plotted how they might curse Jesus by having Him lifted above the earth to die on a tree. In their minds, a man cursed by hanging on a tree would dispel any notion that Jesus was the Messiah. They may have referred to the Scripture in Deuteronomy: “You must not leave the body hanging on the pole overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who ishung on a pole is under God's curse” (Deuteronomy 21:23). Jesus allowed Himself to be cursed, for He would take the curse that we deserve. Later, He was crowned with thorns, the symbol of the curse (Genesis 3:18).
It is a wonderful truth to know that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written: Everyone who is hung on a tree is cursed. Because of our sin, the law put a curse on us, but Christ took away that curse. He changed places with us and put himself under that curse. The plan of God was to bear the curse that was mine. How wonderful a God He is! Keith
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