He Bore Our Sins

“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” (1 Peter 2:24)

Did Christ in bearing our sins become a sinner Himself? God forbid! He died “THE JUST for the unjust” (1 Peter 3:18) 2 Corinthians 5:21 declares: “He was made sin...” it does not say He was made a sinner or sinful and that is evident by the qualification: “WHO KNEW NO SIN” He never EVER became personally acquainted with it nor tainted by it.

What a glorious mystery this is, that although He was made sin (not practically but by imputation) yet “HE KNEW NO SIN.” (1 Peter 2:22) declares Him as that One: “Who did no sin.” 1 John 3:5 says, “And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins AND IN HIM IS NO SIN.”

Some would point to 1 Peter 2:24 as supposed proof that Christ did more than bare our sins, transposing the Inspired Word to mean that in some sense our sin was put IN Christ rather than on Him. However, the first part of the verse says that He BORE our sins. The word is used of bringing the sacrifice to the altar, Isaiah 53:12. “In His body” refers to the fact that He did it as a Man, in His body which God had prepared for Him [Hebrews 10:5] but in no way means that He became tainted with or that our sin was somehow put IN Him.

To say that Christ became a sinner, or sinful, even through the sins of His people, is to make Him what He was not nor ever could be. To say that His flesh was contaminated by our sin and so to become sinful to justify God in punishing Him, is to deny Him as the Perfect Lamb of God, WITHOUT blemish and without spot. What? Christ at enmity with His Father, He Whose will was ALWAYS in perfect harmony with His Father’s will, Luke 22:42. God forbid! The LORD Jesus took the sin of His people, He did not take their depravity.

Our LORD was made sin by imputation, God the Father laying ON Him the charge of sin that His people deserved. In so doing, He never became a sinner, nor was polluted by it nor even guilty of it, although claiming it as His own. On the contrary, it was because He was perfectly just, the sinless LAMB [1 Peter 1:19] that He was capable of suffering FOR the unjust.

Even as no suffering was due to HIM, so the merit of what He suffered (full justification, pardon and reconciliation of His people to God) was justly imputed to them at His death, not by merit but by GRACE!