基督為我們受了咒詛Jesus Became a Curse for Us
作者: R.C. Sproul 譯者: Maria
Marta
今天，贖罪的場景圖像、贖罪的面貌幾乎已在黑暗中淡出。我們已經意識到，今天有人試圖宣揚一種更溫和、更寬容的福音。在努力傳揚更親善的基督的工作時，我們避免提及上帝施加在祂兒子身上的詛咒。我們對先知以賽亞的話(第五十三章) 驚恐得要退縮，因為以賽亞描述受苦的以色列仆人的事工時告訴我們，耶和華喜悅把祂壓傷，你能接受嗎? 不知怎的，當聖父把那可怕的憤怒的杯放在聖子面前時，祂竟喜悅把祂兒子壓傷。聖父怎能因壓傷祂兒子而喜樂，難道不是因為祂永恒的目的，借著那傷痕使我們得以恢復，成為祂的孩子嗎?
但是詛咒的主題對我們來說完全陌生，尤其是在這個歷史時期。今天我們談到詛咒時，我們想到什麽? 我們可能會想到一個伏都教巫醫，他在針紮一個玩偶，這個玩具是他的敵人的複製版。我們也可能想到神秘學者，他參與巫術，給人施咒語和魔法。在我們的文化中，詛咒一詞本身就暗示著某種迷信，但在聖經的類別裡，詛咒一點也不迷信。
希伯來人的祝福
如果你真的想了解詛咒對猶太人來說意味著什麽，我認為最簡單的方法就是查看舊約著名的希伯來人的祝福，牧師經常將它用作崇拜結束的祝福:
願耶和華賜福給你，保護你！
願耶和華使他的臉光照你，賜恩給你！
願耶和華向你仰臉，賜你平安！
(民六24–26)
這段著名祝福的結構遵循一種常見的希伯來詩形式----平行體（parallelism）。在希伯來文學中有多種類型的平行體。其中有：1.反義平行（ antithetic parallelism ），也就是兩個句子所表達的思想是相反的。2. 綜合平行（ synthetic parallelism ），也就是第二句是在發展或綜合第一句的思想。3. 同義平行（ synonymous parallelism ），也是最常見的平行體。如名稱所提示, 兩個句子用不同的詞語來重述某事。 在聖經中，沒有比民數記第六章的祝福更清晰的同義平行的例子了，完全同一件事，用了三種不同的方式來表達。如果你不明白其中的一行，那麽看下一行，也許它會告訴你它的意思。
在這段祝福詩中，我們看到三句詩節，每句詩節都有兩個元素: 「賜福」和「保護」; 「光照」和「賜恩」; 「向你仰臉」和「賜你平安」。對猶太人來說，蒙上帝賜福就是沐浴在祂臉上發出的璀璨榮光之中。「耶和華賜福給你」的意思是「耶和華使他的臉光照你」。這不是摩西請求見上帝時在山上所懇求的事嗎? 然而，上帝告訴他，沒有人看見了祂還能活著。所以上帝使磐石裂開, 把摩西放在磐石隙中, 允許摩西看見祂的背後，卻不能看見祂的臉。摩西短暫看了上帝的背面後，他的面皮發光持續了很長一段時間。但猶太人所渴望的是看到上帝的臉，僅此一次。
猶太人的終極盼望，和新約給我們的盼望是一樣的，那就是最終得見主聖面的末世盼望：「親愛的弟兄啊，我們現在是神的兒女，將來如何，還未顯明。但我們知道，主若顯現，我們必要像他，因為必得見他的真體。」（約壹三2）你盼望見主面嗎？身為基督徒最難的事就是事奉一個你從未見過的神，這就是為何猶太人懇求這樣做的原因了。
最高的詛咒
但我在這裏的目的不是解釋上帝的祝福，而是它的相反極點，它的對立面，再一次可以看到與祝福的鮮明對比。最高詛咒可以解讀為:
「願耶和華咒詛你、離棄你。願耶和華把你留在黑暗裏，只給你沒有恩典的審判。願耶和華轉臉不看你、永遠除去祂的平安。」
在十字架上，聖子的贖罪之工不但滿足了聖父的公義，而且也承擔了我們的罪，東離西有多遠，上帝的羔羊使我們的過犯離我們也有多遠。祂通過承受詛咒來完成這些工作。「基督既為我們受了咒詛，就贖出我們脫離律法的咒詛，因為經上記著：『凡掛在木頭上都是被咒詛的』」 (加三13)。聖子, 是上帝榮耀的道成肉身，卻成了上帝咒詛的道成肉身。
Excerpt taken from “The Curse Motif of the Cross” by R.C. Sproul in
Proclaiming a Cross Centered Theology. Used by permission of Crossway, a
publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187.
Jesus Became a Curse for Us
FROM
R.C. Sproul
One
image, one aspect, of the atonement has receded in our day almost into
obscurity. We have been made aware of present-day attempts to preach a more
gentle and kind gospel. In our effort to communicate the work of Christ more
kindly we flee from any mention of a curse inflicted by God upon his Son. We
shrink in horror from the words of the prophet Isaiah (chap. 53) that describe
the ministry of the suffering servant of Israel and tells us that it pleased
the Lord to bruise him. Can you take that in? Somehow the Father took pleasure
in bruising the Son when he set before him that awful cup of divine wrath. How
could the Father be pleased by bruising his Son were it not for his eternal
purpose through that bruising to restore us as his children?
But
there is the curse motif that seems utterly foreign to us, particularly in this
time in history. When we speak today of the idea of curse, what do we think of?
We think perhaps of a voodoo witch doctor that places pins in a doll made to
replicate his enemy. We think of an occultist who is involved in witchcraft,
putting spells and hexes upon people. The very word curse in our culture
suggests some kind of superstition, but in biblical categories there is nothing
superstitious about it.
The
Hebrew Benediction
If
you really want to understand what it meant to a Jew to be cursed, I think the
simplest way is to look at the famous Hebrew benediction in the Old Testament,
one which clergy often use as the concluding benediction in a church service:
The
Lord bless you and keep you;
the
Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the
Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
(Num.
6:24–26)
The
structure of that famous benediction follows a common Hebrew poetic form known
as parallelism. There are various types of parallelism in Hebrew literature.
There’s antithetical parallelism in which ideas are set in contrast one to
another. There is synthetic parallelism, which contains a building crescendo of
ideas. But one of the most common forms of parallelism is synonymous parallelism,
and, as the words suggest, this type restates something with different words.
There is no clearer example of synonymous parallelism anywhere in Scripture
than in the benediction in Numbers 6, where exactly the same thing is said in
three different ways. If you don’t understand one line of it, then look to the
next one, and maybe it will reveal to you the meaning.
We
see in the benediction three stanzas with two elements in each one: “bless” and
“keep”; “face shine” and “be gracious”; and “lift up the light of his
countenance” and “give you peace.” For the Jew, to be blessed by God was to be
bathed in the refulgent glory that emanates from his face. “The Lord bless you”
means “the Lord make his face to shine upon you.” Is this not what Moses begged
for on the mountain when he asked to see God? Yet God told him that no man can
see him and live. So God carved out a niche in the rock and placed Moses in the
cleft of it, and God allowed Moses to see a glimpse of his backward parts but
not of his face. After Moses had gotten that brief glance of the back side of
God, his face shone for an extended period of time. But what the Jew longed for
was to see God’s face, just once.
The
Jews’ ultimate hope was the same hope that is given to us in the New Testament,
the final eschatological hope of the beatific vision: “Beloved, we are God’s
children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when
he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John
3:2). Don’t you want to see him? The hardest thing about being a Christian is
serving a God you have never seen, which is why the Jew asked for that.
The
Supreme Malediction
But
my purpose here is not to explain the blessing of God but its polar opposite,
its antithesis, which again can be seen in vivid contrast to the benediction.
The supreme malediction would read something like this:
“May
the Lord curse you and abandon you. May the Lord keep you in darkness and give
you only judgment without grace. May the Lord turn his back upon you and remove
his peace from you forever.”
When
on the cross, not only was the Father’s justice satisfied by the atoning work
of the Son, but in bearing our sins the Lamb of God removed our sins from us as
far as the east is from the west. He did it by being cursed. “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’” (Gal. 3:13). He who is the
incarnation of the glory of God became the very incarnation of the divine
curse.