Perhaps it seemed incidental at the time. It was apparently just a procedural notation concerning the execution of a criminal guilty of a capital offense. Given that stoning was the appointed method of execution among the Hebrews these words from Moses may have been taken as little more than a footnote when first spoken. For those of us who have the Gospel as well as the Law the words are hardly marginal. The New Testament insures the words are not dusty museum relics but words burning with saving significance. The words in question?
“If anyone is found guilty of an offense deserving the death penalty and is executed, and you hang his body on a tree, you are not to leave his corpse on the tree overnight but are to bury him that day, for anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse. You must not defile the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance” (21: 22 – 23).
No sanctified speculation is required to interpret the significance of these words for the believer. Galatians 3: 13 interprets them for us: Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written: Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. We learn from Galatians that the Law carries a curse for those who fail to uphold it (Gal. 3: 10). This is a restatement of Deuteronomy 27: 26. Since none but Christ has proven equal to the just demand of the Law, all abide under the razor edge of its judgment.
Our Lord remedied our curse at Calvary. The One born of a woman, born under the law [came] to redeem those under the law (Gal. 4: 4 – 5). At the Cross, the Blessed One of heaven became the curse in our behalf. We deserved death even the ugly death of the cross but not Christ. Yet He died not simply absorbing our curse but actually becoming it in our place. That is love that defies description and redemption that defies rejection.
Why would anyone run from such love and redemption? Why would anyone who has run to such love and redemption not compulsively drop to his or her knees in perpetual praise?