“Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed” (I Peter 2:24).
When Christ suffered on the cross for our sins, His entire body suffered. A vicious crown of thorns was pressed into his brow and then “they smote Him on the head” and “spit upon Him” (Mark 15:17,19). He already was weak and battered from Pilate’s dreaded scourging with the infamous Roman cat-o’-nine-tails (John 19:1).
Cruel spikes were driven into His hands and nails into His feet, suspending His pain-racked body from the cross (Psalm 22:16). The word “stripes” in our text actually appears in the singular. Christ on the cross was one big stripe, or wound. Finally, “one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and forthwith came there out blood and water” (John 19:34), and then He died.
Indeed, He was bearing our sins in every last part of His body on the tree! The enormity of the necessary payment provides a partial measure of the enormity of our sins, in the sight of a holy God. “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment” (Isaiah 1:5,6). “Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: . . . Their feet are swift to shed blood: . . . There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:13,15,18).
But He bore all the sins of our body, and therefore we, in God’s sight, are dead to sins and alive to righteousness. “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!” (Romans 11:33). HMM
