The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

by Fleming Rutledge

Reducing Paul’s argument to its simplest components, we learn that: Everyone is living under the power of God’s curse, because the Law (or Torah) pronounces a curse upon all who do not fulfill its demands (Deut. 27:26).68 Rectification (dikaiosis, traditionally translated “justification”)69 — meaning “to set right” — by the Law is impossible because the Law does not originate in faith. Faith, unlike the Law, is able to give life (Lev. 18:5; Hab. 2:4). God must therefore do the rectifying himself. He has done so through Jesus Christ, who actually took the full force of the curse of the Law into himself on the cross (Deut. 21:23). Our identity is now derived not from observance of the Law but from the gift of the Spirit through faith in Christ. The important thing for our discussion here is Paul’s announcement (kerygma) that God, in the person of his sinless Son, put himself voluntarily and deliberately into the condition of greatest accursedness — on our behalf and in our place. This mind-crunching paradox lies at the heart of the Christian message.