MANY CHRISTIANS LIVE AS THOUGH they were under God’s curse. They feel like constant failures. They wear condemnation like a cloak. They compare themselves to others, getting more and more depressed. They struggle to believe that God loves them. This should not be a Believer’s experience.
Nothing in life is more important than living in the daily experience of God’s blessing. On the other hand, nothing is more horrible than feeling like you are under God’s curse when you are not.
God loves to bless. The Bible opens with a sinless creation under God’s manifold blessing.
“And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Gensis 1:28
However Adam sin turned God’s blessing into a curse. God cursed the Serpent, and he cursed the ground, but remarkably, he didn’t curse Adam and Eve. Instead, speaking to the Serpent, he promised future blessing to the undeserving—
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
Genesis 3:15
Nothing in life is more important than living in the daily experience of God’s blessing.
In Genesis 12 God called Abraham to his service, then promised to reverse the curse, blessing the earth through his Seed. Notice the five uses of “blessing” in this passage.
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
Gensis 12:1-3
How was God able to make this promise to Abraham? How was God able to bless rather than curse sinners, and still be just? The answer is simple: God is love. God demonstrated his love by sending his Son to the cross to bear the curse we deserve. That is how God could simulataneously be just and not curse Abraham. Here is how Paul expresses it—
For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them”… Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
Galatians 3:10,13-14
We will never experience God’s cursing because Christ exhausted God’s curse in our place. This is why Revelations closes the Bible with seven blessings for those all believe the gospel. The number seven tells us that blessing is the essence of our relationship with him, not on the basis of our works, but on the basis of Christ’s.
Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.
Revelation 1:3
And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!
14:13
Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed!
16:15
“Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
19:9
Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power.
20:6
Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.
22:7
Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.
22:14
These seven blessings sum up the quality and experience of our relationship with God through Christ. It is all about blessing, at Christ’s infinite expense. Are you enjoying the reality of this, or are you living as though you are under his curse? If you believe the gospel and respond with repentance, you cannot be under God’s curse. Why? Christ took that curse for you on the cross. He exhausted it. So rejoice and live in the reality of the blessing Christ has purchased for all who believe and repent.
On the other hand, if you are not a Christian, something akin to the curse Christ experienced at the cross is your future. So please repent and believe the Gospel!
