PSALM SIXTY-NINE

5. O God, Thou knowest My foolishness. He is saying this because when the Jews had crucified Christ, they thought that all had now been convinced that He was the worst kind of person and cursed by God and in every way ungodly and a deceiver. For the Law says, “Cursed by the Lord is he who hangs on a tree” (Deut. 21:23; Gal. 3:13). Therefore they rushed to this kind of death, so that they might show Him to be hateful to God and might now conclude by authority of the Law that He could not have perished by means of such a death unless He were unrighteous before God. Therefore they said: “He trusted in God. Let Him deliver Him, if He wants to” (Matt. 27:43), as if to say: “It does not look as if He wanted Him or had any desire for Him. For ‘cursed by the Lord is he who hangs on a tree.’” Behold, then, the people who do not know how He was cursed. And it is indeed true that He was cursed by the Lord, for the Father made Him a curse for us, and He truly died because of sins. Yet they did not know that these were their own sins, but God knew. For that reason He says: They do not know My offenses, but You know them. That is, they do not understand how they are Mine, for I have made the sins of others Mine. Nor did they understand that that curse could not swallow up the whole person, but since God was not able to bring Him under any curse, only His flesh was swallowed up. Therefore He is at the same time cursed and blessed, at the same time alive and dead, at the same time grieving and rejoicing, so that He might absorb all evils in Himself and bestow all blessings from Himself. Blessed be our Lord, Amen! –Martin Luther