Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Peter 2:24

"who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed." — 1 Peter 2:24 (ASV)

Who Himself.—This verse, like the “for you” in 1 Peter 2:21, is intended to make the readers feel the claims of gratitude, not to present another point in which Christ was to be imitated. But at the same time, it serves to enforce even more strongly the two points already mentioned—i.e., sinlessness and suffering. Christ was so far from “doing sins” that He actually Himself bore ours. In doing so, He endured the extremity of anguish “in His own body,” so that He could sympathize with the physical punishments of these poor servants, and “on the tree,” too—the death of a wicked slave.

Bare our sins . . . on the tree.—This brings us face to face with a great mystery. To add to the difficulty of interpretation, almost every word can be understood in several different ways. Most modern scholars agree to reject “on the tree” in favor of the marginal reading “to.” The proper meaning of the Greek preposition, when connected (as here) with the accusative, is what is expressed in colloquial English by the useful compound “onto the tree.” However, it is not obligatory to see motion consciously intended in this preposition and accusative everywhere. For instance, it is used in Mark 4:38 of sleeping on the pillow; in 2 Corinthians 3:15, of the veil resting upon their hearts; and in Revelation 4:4, of the elders sitting upon their thrones. This word, then, will give us little help in discovering the meaning of the word translated “bare.”

1. That verb literally means “to carry or take up.” It is used this way in Matthew 17:1 and Mark 9:2, of taking the disciples up the Mount of Transfiguration, and in Luke 24:51, of Jesus being carried up into heaven. Therefore, Hammond, Grimm, and others would understand it here to mean, “He carried our sins up with Him onto the tree,” there to expiate them by His death.
2. A much more common meaning of the word is that which it has in 1 Peter 2:5, “to offer up” (Hebrews 13:15; James 2:21). The noun formed from it (Anaphora) is still the liturgical term for the sacrificial section of the Eucharistic service. This interpretation is somewhat tempting because the same preposition used here, with the very same case, appears in James 2:21 and frequently in the Old Testament, together with our present verb, meaning “to offer up upon the altar.” In this way, it would mean, “He offered up our sins in His own body on the altar of the cross.” Luther and others interpret it this way.

   This interpretation would be perfect, if it were not for the strangeness of regarding the sins themselves as a sacrifice to be offered on the altar. The only way to make sense of it in that case would be to join “our sins in His own body” very closely—i.e., as contained and gathered up in His own sinless body. This might come to nearly the same thing as saying that He “offered up His own body laden with our sins” upon that altar.

3. Both these renderings, however, overlook the fact that Saint Peter is referring to Isaiah 53. In the English version of that chapter, the terms “has borne,” “shall bear,” and “bare” appear in Isaiah 53:4, Isaiah 53:11, and Isaiah 53:12 somewhat interchangeably. However, the Hebrew is not the same in each case. For example, in Isaiah 53:11, the word for “shall bear” is identical to that rightly rendered “carry” in Isaiah 53:4, and it does not have the same meaning as the word that appears as “to bear” in Isaiah 53:4 and Isaiah 53:12.

   The difference between these two Hebrew roots seems to be that the verb sabal in Isaiah 53:11 means “to carry,” as a porter carries a load, or as our Lord carried His cross. In contrast, the verb nasa’, used in Isaiah 53:4 and Isaiah 53:12, means rather “to lift or raise,” which might, of course, be the action preparatory to that of “carrying.” Now, the Greek word we have here undoubtedly better represents nasa’ than sabal. However, the question is complicated by the fact that the Septuagint (LXX) uses it to express both alike in Isaiah 53:11-12, while observing the distinction between “iniquities” and “sin.” In Isaiah 53:4 (where the LXX again reads “our sins” instead of “our griefs”), it adopts a simpler verb. Saint Peter’s language here seems to be affected by all three passages from Isaiah. The expression “our sins” (which appears so strangely with the use of “you” all around it) seems a reminiscence of Isaiah 53:4 (LXX).

   The order in which the words occur is precisely the order of Isaiah 53:11, and the tense points to Isaiah 53:12. This is also supported by the parallel use in Hebrews 9:28, where the presence of the words “of many” proves that the writer was thinking of Isaiah 53:12. We cannot say for certain, then, whether Saint Peter meant to represent nasa’ or sabal. However, we have some clue to how the Greek word was used from its appearance in Numbers 14:33, where the “whoredoms” of the fathers are said to be “borne” by their children (the Hebrew there being nasa’). Many instances in classical Greek lead to the conclusion that in such cases, it implies something being laid or inflicted from outside upon the person who “bears” it.

Thus, in Numbers 14:33, it would mean, “your children will have to bear your whoredoms,” or, “will have laid upon them your whoredoms.”

In Hebrews 9:28, it would be, “Christ was once for all presented (at the altar), to have the sins of many laid upon Him.”

Here, in 1 Peter 2:24, it would be, “Who Himself had our sins laid upon His body on the tree.”

Then a further question arises. Those who hold the substitutionary theory of the Atonement assert that “our sins” here stands for “the punishment of our sins.”

This, however, is to do violence to the words. We might with as good reason translate 1 Peter 2:22 as, “Who did, or performed, no punishment for sin.”

Saint Peter asserts that Christ, in His boundless sympathy with fallen humanity, in His union with all mankind through the Incarnation by which He became the second Adam, actually took our sins as His own, as well as everything else belonging to us.

He was so identified with us that in the great Psalm of the Messianic sacrifice, He calls them “My sins” (Psalms 40:12), sinless though He was. (See Saint Matthew’s interpretation of the same thought in Matthew 8:17).

That we, being dead.—Just as the former part of this verse is an expansion of “Christ suffered for us,” so the latter part is an expansion of “that you should follow His steps.”

The “we,” however, is too emphatically placed in the English translation.

To Saint Peter, the thought of our union with Christ is so natural that he moves past it easily, proceeding to the particular point of union he has in view.

He means, “He bore our sins on the tree, in order that, having thus become ‘lost’ to those sins, we might live to righteousness.”

The words present, perhaps, a closer parallel to Colossians 1:22 than to any other passage; but compare also Romans 6:2, Romans 6:8, Romans 6:11, and 2 Corinthians 5:14, and the Notes on these passages.

Saint Peter’s word for “dying” in this place is not found elsewhere in the New Testament and is originally a euphemism for death. It literally means to be missing—i.e., when sin comes to seek its old servants, it finds them gone.

With whose stripes you were healed.—Observe how quickly Saint Peter reverts to the second person, even though he has to change the text he is quoting.

Another mark of his style may well be noticed here: namely, his fondness for a number of coordinate relative sentences (see 1 Peter 1:8, 1 Peter 1:12; 2 Peter 2:1–3; and his speeches in Acts 3:13, Acts 3:15; Acts 4:10; Acts 10:38–39).

He is especially fond of finishing a long sentence with a short relative clause, as he does here.

Compare, for instance, 1 Peter 2:8; 2 Peter 2:17; and also Acts 4:12, where it would be more correct to translate: “Neither is salvation in any other, for indeed, there is no second name under heaven which is the appointed name among men, in whom we must be saved”—i.e., if we are to be saved at all.

The purpose of this short clause seems once more to be to make the good and ill-treated servants feel, when the welts were smarting on their backs, that the Righteous Servant of Jehovah had borne the same suffering. They knew to their everlasting gratitude that it had served a beneficial purpose.

Of course, the “stripes” (in the original, this word is singular and literally means weal) do not refer merely to the scourging.

The words form a paradox.