Redemption Secured

I want to thank Tony Reinke over at the Shepherds Scrapbook for recommending the book The Apostles’ Doctrine of the Atonement by George Smeaton. I have found it to be a very easy read and a very in depth exposition of Scripture. I just wanted to share a quote I came across in chapter 2, section VII titled Epistle To The Galatians where Mr. Smeaton explains Galatians 3:13-14a "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ;" saying quote:

The price or ransom paid for us was nothing else but the personal Redeemer, the Son of God condescending to be made a CURSE for us; a thought so vast and unfathomable, that though our minds grow familiar with the phraseology, we are for ever incapable of comprehending or fully surveying it. The ransom which liberated us was not His divine doctrine, nor His bright example of holiness left us to follow; for that would but throw humanity back upon its own resources, and could never be disjoined from dependence on works, or inner holiness. The apostle thinks of the ransom in a far other way: he identifies it with the Lord's abasement and ignominious death as a vicarious satisfaction. He affirms that the price by which He discharged us from temporal and eternal penalty was His being made a curse for us by entering into our position before God. That is the meaning of the participial clause (compare 2 Cor. v. 19): He was made the accumulated curse of His people, as if it were embodied in Him. God treated the sin-bearer as if He had been the sinner: that is, what the law awarded to us was visited upon Him; and by that substitution our redemption was secured.

Excerpt taken from The Apostles’ Doctrine of the Atonement by George Smeaton (1870; reprint, Banner of Truth, 1991) p.246