1 Peter 2:22–24
Good Friday joins together two staggering truths: “He committed no sin” and “By his wounds you have been healed.”
No Sin
Sin is so common its absence is stunning. We are a people acclimated to depravity, others’ and especially our own. As soon as self-awareness dawned on us, we began a running relationship with sin. Of course, sin is not natural. Sin did not exist when God made our first parents. Adam and Eve brought sin into the world with all its power to unmake the goodness God made. Therefore, sin perverts the natural or original order of things. Sin has been so long with us that, though unnatural, it feels common. We might rightly ask ourselves, How will we ever escape it?
But Jesus “committed no sin.” Jesus is as uncommon as sin is common. Not only did the Lord not sin; he didn’t even use his words to deceive. That’s the Serpent’s way. With forked tongue, the Devil trades in half-truths and outright lies. He is the Father of Lies, and we have been his children. So observant human beings are stunned when one enters history who committed no sin and never deceived. If we can, we ought to imagine purity from heart to lips, from behavior to speech. Not even reviling and suffering could make him break God’s holy law. Jesus was like us in every way, except without sin (Heb. 4:15).
Sin Bearer
Even more stunning than Jesus’ perfection—if something could be more stunning—is that “he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” The one without sin became the one sin bearer.
Ineffable.
Peter makes certain to remind us “he himself bore our sins.” In other words, the Lord Jesus did not delegate sin bearing to another. He chose no subordinate to run his holy errand. Angels are ministering spirits sent out for the sake of our salvation (Heb. 1:14). Christ commands legions of angels. Yet Jesus, he himself, personally shouldered the great burden of our sin. The work of redemption belonged uniquely and solely to him. He himself.
Moreover, the Lord “bore our sins in his body.” The carrying of sin was not a fantasy, an intellectual abstraction, or merely a spiritual principle. Rather, sin bearing had physical consequence. As the writer of Hebrews teaches us:
For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
Consequently, when Christ came into the world,
he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me;
in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. (10:4–6, ESV)
The Father prepared a body for the Son because other sacrifices and offerings were not desirable. The Father took no pleasure in them. The temple sacrifices and offerings were but pointers to another body, a human body, specifically prepared to bear sin. In this body, broken for us, the Father found pleasure and delight. In that body a new possibility was opened for us—“that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.”
But how?
Wounded Healer
“By his wounds you have been healed.” The sinless one became the sin bearer for our healing.
Those physical wounds on a rugged cross by God’s grace became the healing agent in our salvation. On the cross, Jesus Christ became heaven’s apothecary, dispensing the one medicine our souls desperately needed—his blood.
Flesh torn to ribbons by a Roman whip. Head punctured with the crown of thorns. Metal nails pounded through wrists and feet. Side lanced with spear. What wounds are these? Wounds that healed not themselves but others. Wounds that healed you. How could Jesus be stricken and we be strengthened? How could Jesus be tortured but we be treated? How could Jesus be harmed so grotesquely but we be healed so completely?
Thabiti Anyabwile serves as a pastor at Anacostia River Church in Washington, DC, and is the president of The Crete Collective. The author of several books, he’s happily married to Kristie and is the pleased father of three adult children.
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