CAN A CHRISTIAN BE CURSED?

Most people tend to refer to "discipline" rather than "curse" when
God sends bad things into the lives of believers as a result of their
sin. Richard chose different vocabulary in those lessons because
he wanted to stress the covenantal aspect of these types of
consequences. In covenantal terms, positive consequences are
"blessings" and negative consequences are "curses."
It may feel unfamiliar to use the word "curse" to refer to a negative
consequence without regard to God's ultimate justice, since we
don't tend to do that in church or theological studies. But the Bible
does it on a regular basis. We might think of the word "curse" as a
broad category that includes all negative consequences. Within
that broad category are the subcategories of
"discipline" (temporary punishments motivated by love and
intended to sanctify) and "condemnation" (including both
temporary and eternal punishments motivated by wrath and
intended to fulfill justice).
God never sends wrathful condemnation against believers, since
Jesus has propitiated God's wrath and borne our condemnation.
But he does discipline us. And the outward manifestations of both
these types of curses are often identical. They differ mainly in
God's motivation, and in the result he intends the consequence to
create in our lives. For example, when Paul said that Jesus bore
the curse for us in Galatians 3, he was referring only to
condemnation, not to discipline. Galatians 3 describes a legal
exchange, in which Jesus justifies us (i.e., secures our legal
acquittal) by means of suffering the judicial penalty (i.e., wrathful
condemnation) due to us because of our sin. Other portions of the
Bible (e.g., Heb. 12) indicate that all believers are subject to God's
discipline.
Both types of curses (discipline and condemnation) can affect
individuals or groups. Sometimes they fall on an individual
because of what that individual has done; sometimes they fall on a
group because of what that group has done; sometimes they fall
on a group because of what an individual has done; sometimes
they fall on an individual because of what a group has done; and
so on. For example, in the Old Testament, David's child died in 2
Samuel 12 because of David's sin. This curse fell on David and his
family because of what David had done even though David was
saved.
Curses often affect groups that contain believers and unbelievers.
When that happens, the same manifestation of the curse may
affect everyone. But the function of the curse is different for
believers than for unbelievers. For believers, the curse functions as
discipline. For unbelievers, it functions as condemnation.