1 Peter 2:24

ἀνήνεγκεν is the word used in Isaiah 53:12, “He bare the sins of many,” and the numerous reminiscences of that chapter in this section make it almost certain that St Peter is borrowing the word from it, coupling with it the word ξύλον probably from Deuteronomy 21:23. The same phrase from Isaiah is also borrowed in Hebrews 9:28, ὁ Χριστὸς ἅπαξ προσενεχθεὶς εἰς τὸ πολλῶν�. In that passage ἀναφέρειν seems certainly to retain something of its ordinary sacrificial meaning of “offer up” (cf. 1 Peter 2:5; James 2:21 ἐπὶ τὸ θυσιαστήριον, Hebrews 7:27; Hebrews 13:15). (In the Gospels ἀναφέρειν merely means to “take up” (Matthew 17:1; Mark 9:2; Luke 24:51).) So Chrysostom explains the words in Hebrews 9:28 as meaning that, just as when we offer up an offering we present our sins for pardon that God may take them away, so Christ offered up our sins to the Father not for judgment but for removal. Westcott considers that the sacrificial idea is present in the phrase, but explains that Christ carried to the cross the burden of sins (not, primarily or separately from the sins, the punishment of sins) and there did away with sin and sins. So here St Peter may regard our sins laid upon Christ as being included in the sacrificial victim, the Body of Christ “offered up” upon the Altar of the Cross.

Deissmann (Bible Studies, p. 88), while admitting that the word ἀναφέρειν was perhaps suggested to St Peter by the reminiscences of Isaiah 53 which pervade this section, argues that we have no right to assume that St Peter must have used it in the same sense as the LXX. translators of Isaiah 53:12, who may have meant “suffered the punishment of” as representing the Hebrew נשׂא. In that case, says Deissmann, St Peter would have added ἐπὶ τῷ ξύλῳ, whereas ἐπί with the accusative would mean “carry up to.”

(In answer to this it may be argued that in Isaiah 53:11 ἀνοίσει τὰς ἁμαρτίας is the LXX. translation of an entirely different verb סבל (used also in the second clause of Isaiah 53:4, where it is translated ὀδυνᾶται), and this word does mean to “load oneself with a burden,” and that burden might be described as “carried up to the Cross.”)

Deissmann disputes the sacrificial meaning of ἀναφέρειν in this passage on the ground that the sins could hardly be described as offered up. He would explain the words as meaning that, when Christ “bears up to” the cross the sins of men, then men have them no more; the “bearing up” is a “taking away,” without any special idea of substitution or sacrifice. He also quotes a contract, Pap. Flind. Petr. 1. xvi. 12, περὶ δὲ ὧν� […] ὀφειλημάτων κριθήσομαι ἐπʼ Ἀσκληπιάδου. The editor supplies the missing portion … ων εἰς ἐμὲ and the sense may be that certain debts of another person have been imposed upon the writer (cf. Aesch. 3. 215; Isoc. 5. 32). If such a forensic meaning was intended by St Peter, the meaning would be that the sins of men are laid upon the Cross, as in a court of law a debt in money is removed from one and laid upon another. We might compare the forensic metaphor in Colossians 2:14 where the χειρόγραθον drawn up against mankind is taken away by being nailed to the Cross.

ἐν τῷ σώματι αὐτοῦ. The body of Christ is the organism through which His life is fulfilled. His earthly body was the instrument of His perfect obedience and self-sacrifice, “A body hast thou prepared Me,” Hebrews 10:5. “By the offering of that body (alike in the perfect service of His life and the voluntary endurance of death) we have been sanctified,” Hebrews 10:10. St Paul in Romans 7:4 says, “Ye were made dead to the law through the body of Christ.” So here it is the sin-bearing victim. But elsewhere in St Paul the body of Christ means the organism by which His life and work are still carried on, viz. the Church in which Jews and Gentiles are made one. Of that body He is still the Head and the source of its life and growth. Into it Christians are incorporated by Baptism, and are sustained by partaking of His life. Each has to contribute in building it up. On its behalf St Paul rejoices in sharing the sufferings of Christ.

In view of St Peter’s apparent use of Romans and Ephesians in so many passages, it is certainly surprising that he shews no trace of this striking Pauline conception of the body of Christ.

ξύλον is used for a gallows tree in Deuteronomy 21:23, “Cursed is every one that hangeth upon a tree,” quoted in Galatians 3:13. But the only other passages where it is used for the Cross are in St Peter’s speeches, Acts 5:30; Acts 10:39, and by St Paul, Acts 13:29. In Revelation 22:2 etc. it is used for “the tree of life” and in Luke 23:31 of “the green tree.” In Acts 16:24 it means “the stocks,” and in the plural Matthew 26:47, “staves.”

ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις�, breaking off all connexion with sins, being dead to them. The verb occurs nowhere else in the LXX. or N.T. For the dative after compounds of ἀπό, cf. ἀποθνήσκειν τῷ νόμῳ, Galatians 2:19, τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ, Romans 6:2.

The purpose of Christ’s sacrifice, as stated here and generally in the N.T., is not to save man from the punishment of sin so much as from its power, to put an end to the regime of sin. The same idea is suggested in 1 Peter 4:1, ὁ παθὼν σαρκὶ πέπαυται ἁμαρτίαις, Christians are to welcome sufferings as the process by which the ideal “death unto sin,” symbolized by their baptism into Christ’s death, is made real in the persons of His members. The same thought of being dead to sin as living members of the crucified and risen Lord is expressed more fully in Romans 6:1-11; cf. Galatians 5:24; Colossians 2:12; Colossians 3:2.

μώλωψ is the scar or wheal caused by a blow. The phrase is quoted from Isaiah 53:5. The slaves to whom St Peter was writing might find help to be brave and patient, when their bodies were perhaps bruised and bleeding from some cruel blow, by the thought that they were sharing in suffering like that by which their Saviour had won life and healing for them.