He Bore The Covenant’s Curse

He Bore the Covenant’s Curse

Prompted by God’s promise of the land of Canaan as his possession, Abram asked a reasonable question about such a difficult-to-imagine pledge: “O Sovereign LORD, how can I be sure that I will actually possess it?” (Genesis 15:8). Abram’s humble request for assurance was followed in the next verse by a divine order: “Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”

Abram understood exactly what God was ordering him to do. This was a common custom in Abram’s homeland, in which two parties solemnized a promise or covenant by killing an animal and dividing it in two so that the two covenanting parties could walk between the sundered body of the animal. The ceremony dramatized a self-imposed curse, should either of them break their pledge. In essence, as they walked between the carcasses, they were saying, “May this be done to me if I do not live up to my part of the covenant.”

So Abram slaughtered and arranged the animals and heard God telling him what was ahead for his people. Then he saw God appear as a smoking firepot and a flaming torch passing between the halves of the carcasses. But Abram was not invited or allowed to walk between the pieces of the animals. God alone traversed the bloody path, making this unconditional, unilateral covenant. God alone made the promise and submitted himself to the Curse. God assumed the full responsibility for seeing that every promise of the covenant would be realized. He committed to submit himself to the Curse for our failure to live up to our obligation. He committed himself to die.

The day came when God, in the person of Jesus Christ, did indeed walk the bloody path, marked not with the blood of halved animals, but with his own blood. Paul wrote, “When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. . . . Through Christ Jesus, God has blessed the Gentiles with the same blessing he promised to Abraham” (Galatians 3:13-14). By bearing the full consequences of the covenantal pledge to death, Christ delivered us from the curse of our inability to live up to the covenant so that we might become heirs of its blessings.

You who bore the covenant’s curse, I look to the Cross and see your sundered body, broken in my place because of my inability to live up to your standard. There you took on the curse so that I might enjoy the blessings of God’s covenant love.