Christ has redeemed me from the curse of the law. What did Jesus Christ redeem us from? We see that Jesus took our sins and transgressions.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone that is hung on a pole." - Galatians 3:13
The curse of the law was Christ demand for perfection, God's demand is still perfection. God never changes is mind. God is a perfect, just God and he demands absolute and total perfection, nothing less. God's standard of perfection is complete righteousness. Complete righteousness means right standing with God. So when you look at this you have to understand God's righteousness means perfection. Now anything less then perfection is sin in the sight of God and God has to judge sin and he judges it by the standard that he sets. So when you look at total righteousness the 10 commandments reveal God's righteous standard. So anytime we sin, we come against God or disagree with God, or rebel against God, He looks at that as sin. Sin is rebellion and rejecting God's authority for your life. Sin is a declaration of independence, it's a declaration that I'm not serving you, and I'm not submitting to you. God is at war with sin. He will never agree with it, He will never sub come to it, His kingdom will be a kingdom of truth and righteousness which will prevail throughout eternity. Anything that is sinful will be cast into the lake of fire. It is God's will that none be lost. The bible says He that knew no sin became sin that I might be in the righteousness of God. Jesus is our answer for sin. He was our atonement, our sacrifice, the Lamb of God that would take away the sins of the world. Whoever comes to Christ, accepts Christ, submits to Christ, and confesses their sins and turns their life over will be forgiven. We are under grace not under law.
The curse is a broken relationship with God, it's disobedience, it's being cast out of God's presence. God demands a standard that is perfect but all of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God. How do we appease and get along with God when He is so righteous and holy? None of us can it's impossible. That's why God sent Jesus and He came to completely obey the law, He was sinless and paid the price to redeem man at the cross. At the cross is where God demanded complete judgment for all of man's sin. Christ blood paid the price for the broken commandments and the broken law and the wages of sin. Now you understand Christ being God Himself his blood was holy, precious, undefiled. The bible says that we are going to be judged by the blood of Christ because we refuse to accept that blood as a sacrifice of sin and because we will be judged by thinking it's unholy, not worthy, and trampling on the grace of God and the blood of Jesus as something profane. I'm bringing you to a point when we say I've been redeemed by the curse of the law, I've been redeemed by judgment. I've been redeemed from sin. I've been redeemed from the curses. I've broken every commandment. I used the Lord's name in vain, I didn't worship God I worshipped myself. I've sinned, you sinned, we've all sinned, as a result of that we will be judged unless we repent. One day I came to Jesus, recognized that He was my Lord, recognized that He died on the cross for me, I accepted His atonement and His blood for my forgiveness. I repented, confessed my sins, and turned my life over to Jesus as my both Lord and Savior. It's not enough to make Jesus Savior of your life, He must be Lord of your life. The bible rules your life, God rules your life, the word rules your life, you don't rule yourself.
A lot of people get into trouble with God because they serve God but then they get independent, they walk away from God and they start doing their own thing. The reality is that we have to do God's thing. I've been redeemed to serve Him, to submit and surrender. He is the Lord of my life. He is the master of my life. Can you say Jesus is the master over your life?
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. - 2 Corinthians 5:21
As a result of accepting Christ sacrifice for my sins on the cross God then puts onto me His righteousness. He doesn't look at the broken commandments and the broken law that I did but He looks at what Christ has done. What has Christ done? He redeemed me from the broken law and I thank God that I have been redeemed. I thank God that I am no longer under the judgment of God but I am blessed as a result of God's goodness and His love and His favor. As I look at this we've been redeemed from the curse of the law because Christ has been a curse for us.
I want to show you something in the bible that will make you aware of what a great price Jesus paid for you and I at the cross and I don't want you to ever take it for granted and forget about it. Sometimes we as believers just take what God has done for us we don't realize it or understand it in the context that we need to and as a result of that we need to go back sometimes and take a look at it.
Before I came to Christ I wanted to live to please myself. I wanted to be independent from God and I wanted to please myself therefore I was my own. You know we have a lot of things that go on in our life that replace God in our life. In fact some of us have hidden idols even today, right now that you may not be dealing with, that you may not be repenting of, that you may not be confessing. So what we do then is live in compromise with these idols. Idol of independence. Idol of self-righteousness. Idol of disobedience. Idol of rebellion. Idol of worldliness. Idol of compromise. Idol of men pleasing rather than God pleasing. The list goes on and on in our life and we wonder why we can't get a prayer answered from God. Something is wrong with our relationship with God. Something is coming between God and ourselves, and we need to find out what that is. There is no fence standing with God your either for Him or against Him.
Read Luke 16:19-31
So here is a man who had his own desire to be his own thing. Lazareth died, he was taken by angels into heaven. When you die your spirit leaves your body and you go to heaven or you descend to hell. There's no in between. There's no soul sleep. Trust me you go to your eternal destiny. Whoever you serve is where you go. If you serve Satan you descend into the lower part of the earth, fumes of torment, fear, horrible pain and suffering, and you are isolated from all others in your own darkness of hell.
Now the rich man had a sense of consciousness, you have feelings. He felt in torment, he had a memory of what he did and how he lived and what he didn't do. His memories became his torment so he could see, he could hear, he could feel, he could be touched, he knew exactly what was going on. So when he looked up he saw a gulf between them. Jesus redeemed you from that torment. Jesus redeemed you from hell. You don't ever have to experience that separation from God, that loneliness, that place of torment, that place without dream, without hope, you will never experience peace, you will never experience happiness. There will be no gold, there will be no vision, there will be no tomorrow. Nothing will ever change. There will be no good news, all you will ever have is torment and hopelessness, grief, sorrow, pain, anxiety, fear, wailing, rejection, and what you could have done and what you should have done, but I was stubborn and I was rebellious and I didn't want to break those habits that were in my life and I didn't want to break allegiance with the devil, and I didn't want to break those idols, and I didn't want to break personal sin, and I didn't want to change my life and do the right thing. I didn't want to give God all He wanted, I wanted to hold on to my own life and my own thing and my own way, and I served God with conditions and I limited how much God could use me. I wouldn't pay tithes, I wouldn't give God first place. I worshipped money, I worshipped my own life, I worshipped my own pleasure. I made excuses for my disobedience and I found myself separated from God.
Do you realize how many people are in hell now that were in church? Do you realize how many people in prison today that came out of church? There are all kinds of people that are in hell who made excuses for their life and their disobedience, and their rebellion. As a result of that we miss out on God because God wants to be number one. He wants to be above all and before all. He doesn't want to come in second place. We say we love you Lord, yes we love the Lord in our own way, but that doesn't mean we really love God. We love God when it's convenient, but when things go wrong God's trying to get our attention to change, we won't change anything and we still make excuses and often we get to the point when God will no longer listen to us and our sins and our rebellion separate us from God. We don't recognize that we are being lost each and everyday, that we have less passion and less commitment, and less love. We feel ourselves getting cold and indifferent in the house of God.
We are in trouble and we don't even know it. We've got to get to the point where we realize things are wrong with us. We've got to get to the point where we realize that Jesus redeemed me from the curse. We've got to recognize that He took hell for me so that I wouldn't have to go to hell.
He delivered you out of the spirit of darkness and brought you into the kingdom of God. (Matthew 12:29) The devil is defeated, don't you try to defeat him, he's already defeated. You need to recognize he's already defeated. He'll try and show up, he'll try to scare you, but when you look at him realize that he doesn't have any power over you. God has delivered you, He's the strongman. He's the one that is victorious over him. Jesus lived a perfect life that you couldn't live. Jesus walked in complete victory over the devil. Jesus overcame the devil in body, soul, and spirit. He became your substitute at the cross. He conquered him as the author of sin, because he conquered sin, you can conquer sin. He conquered sickness, you can conquer sickness. He conquered the devil in death through the resurrection. He conquered the ruler of darkness, you can conquer the ruler of darkness through the Lord Jesus Christ. He gave you authority. He gave you power. He gave you dominion. He gave you His name. He gave you His word. He gave you His promise and He sent you the Holy Spirit.
- Pastor Russell Duley
