Humility,
Grace Orientation, and Submission
1 Peter 2:21–25
As we have seen, going into 1 Peter 2, starting in
verse 13, he talks about submission to government. Then he talks to slaves
about submission to masters. Then, in 1 Peter 3, he’ll talk to wives about submission
to husbands. He will also talk to husbands about how they should relate to
their wives.
Then he goes on from there, and talks in a more
general sense about suffering—suffering when you’re doing right, suffering when
you’re doing wrong. And what undergirds all of this is his understanding of
what happens with Christ in His person and His work at the Cross. So in some
sense, he seems repetitive.
He keeps going back to this to make sure that we
understand this. I think that’s a wonderful thing to do, because it constantly
reminds us that, methodologically, one of the things we should do as we think
through anything is to go back to the Trinity, go back to the essence box, go
back to the hypostatic union, go back to the person and work of Jesus Christ. When
we do that and we think that through in terms of our own problems and
adversity, then it really helps us to understand things.
What I am doing as we go through this is looking at
these various doctrines. They are all tied together as we go through this:
humility, grace orientation, and submission. The passage that we are going to
be looking at tonight is 1 Peter 2:21–25, but then I want to look at
Philippians 2:5–10 because that’s just such a foundational passage from Paul to
understand what’s going on here.
Now, just to remind you, we saw in 1 Peter 2:18 the
command to slaves to “be submissive to your masters with all fear” [with all respect or reverence] is the
idea in “fear” there. The word there is HUPOTASSO, which is the word for
“submit”, and all through here and in other passages it is the idea that we are
to volitionally bring ourselves under control. It’s an imperatival type of
participle, and that’s the key. We are to submit. Why?
Verse 19 explains: “For this is grace”. The New King James
translated that “commendable,” but it’s the Greek word CHARIS, which just should be translated, “This is grace.”
It’s grace to submit to those who are in authority over you. Therefore a
person’s submission in whatever area, whether it’s in the family, or at work,
or business, or military, or school, that is a barometer of your grace
orientation.
“This is grace, if because of conscience towards God [following the
norms and standards in your soul where you are doing that which is right toward
God] one
endures grief.” If we are doing the right thing and we suffer negative
consequences for it, then that is grace; it is part of grace orientation.
So that’s what Peter says here, “This is grace,” and he goes on to say
that again in verse 20. “For what credit is it if, when you were beaten for your faults, you
take it patiently?” You know you did wrong; therefore, you’re taking it
like you should. “But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is
grace before God.” You are demonstrating that you understand God’s grace
and you are exhibiting that towards others. It’s the same word that you have in
verse 19.
Then, in verse 21, we read, “For to this you were called.” This is an
interesting word here. “Called,” KALEO, has the idea of being called in terms of salvation, but it also has
the idea of an invitation. What would that remind you of? It ought to remind
you, especially with the context here, of the invitation that Jesus gave to
follow Him in terms of being a disciple.
Being a disciple, as we will see, is different from
simply being saved. Being saved is the result of trusting in Christ as your
Savior, and being a disciple is something else. So we will look at this a
little bit more when we get down to the word “follow.”
“For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us,
leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps: ‘Who committed no
sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth.’ ” So it’s like Peter just sort of
jumps from talking about submission to the whole dynamic of the Cross. He talks
about Christ suffering for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow
His steps.
What we see in this section all the way through here
we look at verse 21, then we have a quote in verse 22 from Isaiah 53:9 and then
verse 23… who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return. It is almost a
commentary on Isaiah 53. “And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His
mouth.” This is an expansion on that. “When He was reviled, did not revile in return.”
He didn’t open His mouth. “When He suffered, He did not threaten.” He didn’t open His mouth.
Instead, He “committed
Himself to Him who judges righteously.” He turned it over to the Lord.
So verse 22 takes us back to Isaiah 53:9, and it
reiterates the impeccability of the Lord Jesus Christ, that He had no sin.
In verses 24 and 25, “Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on
the tree.” That language comes right out of Isaiah 53. “That we, having
died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.”
That phrase comes right out of Isaiah 53. Verse 25, “For you were like sheep going astray.” “All we like sheep
have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way,” right out of
Isaiah 53.
So he’s taking Isaiah 53, which is about the Suffering
Servant, and he’s applying it directly to slaves and saying, “You need to
emulate the Slave of all slaves, the Servant of all servants, who is the Lord
Jesus Christ.” This doesn’t make you less of a person, and I talked about that
last time.
Probably, in our culture, where we see this conflict
the most is in the realm of women’s rights, feminism, and things of that
nature. The Bible has been completely twisted. I went through this last time to
give us a bit of an understanding of what we should be talking about here.
We have a foundation of all thought, and in this
illustration the iceberg in the background represents any issue in life.
Usually, we talk about what’s above the surface, which is that part of the iceberg which is visible. There’s all this debate about
specifics in terms of the election and politics, and it could be just anything.
It could be creation versus evolution, it could be on the interpretation of the
Constitution, you could be talking about specific foreign policies or
relationship of war, the relationship of the federal government to the States,
how you interpret the Constitution, any number of things, but we tend to argue
details that are above the surface.
But what is below the surface
of every issue are these aspects? First of all, metaphysics.
Metaphysics is just a fancy philosophical term; it means, “beyond the
physical.”
META is a Greek preposition
that means “beyond.” PHUSIKE is a word for the physical. So what is there that exists beyond the
physical? The physical is what we can see, what we can measure; it’s the
universe, it’s the stars, the solar system, the galaxies, the earth, all the
things that we can see.
What is there beyond the physical? What is the
ultimate reality? Is it God, something personal? Or is it something impersonal,
such as matter or energy? I’m not sure what she is—a celebrity of some sort.
Maybe you’ve heard the name Lena Dunham. She’s very, very liberal and very disappointed
that her candidate did not win. In order to assuage her grief, she went out
into the beautiful red rock canyons around Sedona, Arizona, which is a big New
Age site where you can get in touch with the universe. How you can get in touch
with something impersonal,
I don’t know, but that’s what she’s done. She’s been talking to the rocks,
trying to find an answer.
Now, we sort of joke about that and shake our heads,
but there are a lot of people who believe that. We, as Christians, need to
figure out ways to communicate to them. Not in this context when they’re
grieving.
I’ve heard some great terms, in various places.
Emotional incontinence. Emotional arson is another term. I kind of like
“emotional incontinence” and “constipation of the brain”; they work together.
And we are seeing a lot of that.
But you have to wait till things calm down before you
get a chance to talk to people, because everything is on edge and they don’t
really know how to talk or communicate. But this is where we have to drive the
conversation. The best way to do that, I find, is asking questions.
When God shows up to talk to Adam and Eve after they
sinned, He doesn’t walk into the garden, say, “Yeah, you ate the fruit. Now
you’re dead.” He doesn’t do it like that, He says, “Where are you?” Now He
knows perfectly well where they are—and why they are where they are, but He
needs to get them to think it through for themselves and to come to that
realization on their own, without being told.
See, a problem a lot of us have is that we want to
tell people what the answer is without walking them through a process of
self-discovery. We need to learn to be patient, because that process of
self-discovery can take about 10 years sometimes; and the process of telling
them can take about 10 seconds, and we are impatient.
We need to learn to ask the right kinds of questions
just to get them to think about it. Don’t hit them with five questions, because
they can barely think their way through the first one. If you hit them with
five questions all at one time, you have just overwhelmed them and they just
shut down. It’s that cerebral constipation thing.
So we need to learn to be patient and to just say,
“Well, I wonder if … I wonder why … Can you help me understand?” Ask questions
like that to get them to think below the surface. It depends on the person; it
depends on circumstances, and a lot of other things.
We realize things build in the way thought is
constructed from ultimate reality and how that works out in terms of how do you
know truth. “Oh, I believe we can communicate with the universe.” Really? How
do you do that? How do you know what the universe says?
I used to like to do this in conversations with Charismatics. They would say, “I have the gift of tongues.”
“Really? And when do you use that?” “Well, when I pray.” “Really? Does that
help your prayer life?” “Oh, yeah! God answers my prayers more when I pray in
tongues.” “Do you understand what you’re saying?” “No.” “Then how do you know
He is answering your prayers?” Just ask questions, and try not to be patronizing.
That takes us to ethics—what is right and wrong. “It
is just so wrong that so-and-so got elected.” “Really? Why? What is your
evidence?” Ask questions, but drive it down. “How do you know it’s true?” “It’s
wrong?” “How do you know it’s true?” “What is your evidence?” “What do you mean
by ‘just’?” “Where do you get your values for justice and injustice?” And then
go on down: “Does that come from the universe?” “That’s impersonal; how can the
universe know what right and wrong is?” That is imputing personhood. If it has
personhood, then maybe it’s not impersonal, but it’s personal. Think about that
a little bit.
The logical progression is from the bottom up. As I
pointed out last time, the pressures of life push us down to think more and
more about these foundational issues. These are the real issues over here that
are usually ignored, but that’s where the conversation needs to take place.
So we talk about submission and authority. People say,
“Well, if I submit that means I’m not as good as the other person.” You’ll hear
that either overtly stated or implied. “I have to obey them? But they are not
very good.”
In my first church, an issue that came up was the role
of women in ministry. There were three adult Sunday school classes that were
taught by women, and there were adult men in the class. They had done this for
a long time. When I had candidated at that church, I was asked the “landmine”
question, “Well, what do you think about women teaching men the Bible?” I said,
“My opinion doesn’t matter, but the apostle Paul says that women are not
supposed to do it.” Women are not to teach men the Scripture; that’s in 1
Timothy 2:8–11, and it’s very, very clear.
Well, some women in the congregation just never could
get over that. But I was wise beyond my years, and I knew that those three
women had been teaching those Sunday school classes for 20 or 30 or 40 years,
and that if I went in there and tried to change anything, then everything would
just blow up. My answer was something that stuck in the craw of several women
in the church, and it eventually blew up; but that’s another story.
The reality is that we have to go back to look at what
the Scripture says. They would say, “There is not a man in the church who can
teach the Bible as good as I can. Not one. I know the Bible a whole lot better.
These men are all spiritual losers and they don’t know anything, but I can
teach the Bible, so why shouldn’t I?” “Because God said so; you shouldn’t.”
That’s right. And that’s where you have to end. But you have to start with, “Is
that valid reasoning?” And your presupposition is that submission makes you
somehow less equal.
I pointed out last time that Genesis 1:26–28 says we
are all created in the image of God. “Male and female He created them,” so that we
are equal. But we have different roles that are assigned, and these roles are
in the Trinity, in the Godhead.
We have God Himself represented—the unity of God—in
this slide, but He also exists as three distinct Persons with one essence. He
is the Father, He is the Son, and He’s the Holy Spirit; and this is known as
the doctrine of the Trinity. The Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God; and the
Father is God. But the Son is not the Father, and the Son is not the Holy
Spirit, and the Father is not the Holy Spirit. They are three distinct Beings.
The Father is equal to the Son, the Son is equal to
the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is equal to the Father. That is called
metaphysical or ontological equality. Basically, they are equal in essence, but
they are functionally distinct. Some theologians call it an economic
distinction, but we will just use the word “functional.” I think it
communicates better.
The Son obeys the Father. The Son sent the Holy
Spirit, and the Father sent the Holy Spirit. So they have distinct roles. It
doesn’t mean because the Son submitted Himself to the Father, that He is less
equal to the Father. So we have to under understand that that’s the
metaphysics; that’s what tells you what submission and obedience and humility
are—right there. If you don’t understand the Trinity, you can’t understand
submission, humility, and obedience.
On the other hand, if you make mistakes in the way you
understand submission, humility, and obedience; then you’ll end up with a
heretical view of God. This is what happened many times and in church history.
I concluded this by saying,
That’s what the Declaration of Independence is talking
about when it says, “All men are created equal.” We are all equal in our being;
whether you’re born poor or rich, whether you’re born short or fat, or tall, or
male or female, or British or American, or Mexican or Bolivian, or whatever—all
are created equal. That means they are equal before the law.
It doesn’t mean they have the same talents. It doesn’t
mean they are interchangeable. Men and women are not interchangeable because
they are equal. That’s part of the gender-role distinction problem; it also
goes back to this issue.
It’s tyranny; it always seems to assert an ontological
inequality. For example, in Islam men are superior, innately, to women. Women
are just marginally better than animals, in some cases, by nature. Okay? That’s
embedded within their theology.
That’s your review. 1 Peter 2:21 Peter’s reasoning is
this, “For to
this …” To what? “To this …” That is, submission—even submission in a harsh situation
when the master may be harsh, as in verse 18. “Be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and
gentle, but also to the harsh.”
“For to this [submission] you were called” [you were invited]. I am going
to use that term, because this last word here, follow His steps, directly
brings in the idea of discipleship that we find in Matthew.
“To this you were invited.” When we look at the Scripture, we see
that there are three kinds of followers. The word that we have here for
following in His footsteps is EPAKOLOUTHEO. It means to follow, but the basic route is AKOLOUTHEO, and it has EPI, which is a preposition
prefix, to it to intensify its meaning.
But we see this idea of following in the steps of
Jesus. When you go back and look at the Gospels, there are three kinds of
followers.
So you have the curious multitudes in Matthew 12:15
and also mentioned in Matthew 14:13. As Jesus began to teach more and more
about what it meant to follow Him, John 5 says that they began to leave.
They are justified; they believed in Jesus as the
Messiah, so they’re going to spend eternity in Heaven, but they’re not real
learners. They are not going to submit to Jesus’ authority. There were probably
some of those among the disciples that left. See, the word “disciple” is a term
that a lot of people think is a synonym for a believer, but “disciple” doesn’t
mean a believer, it means a learner, a student.
The term “disciple” is even used of people in the New
Testament who were not believers—like Judas Iscariot. There were others that
were not believers; they were just temporary students. “Jesus is an interesting
Rabbi. He’s different from everybody else. So let me just learn from Him.” So
they’re not real learners.
There is another phrase that is used here in 1 Peter
2:21 that we ought to pay attention to, and it’s translated, “For us.” “For to this you
were called [invited to be a disciple], because Christ also suffered for us.” That’s
the foundation, and in the Greek it is HUPER HUMON. The preposition is HUPER, which is a preposition
of substitution and can be translated, “in place of, instead of.” Christ
suffered in our place; Christ suffered instead of us; that’s the idea there.
It is found a number of different places; that’s the
substitution preposition. We see it indicated in the methodology in 1 Peter
1:18–19; we studied this just back in the last chapter. Peter told us, “knowing that you
were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless
conduct received by tradition from your fathers.”
What does that phrase mean? We talked about this on
Sunday morning where Jesus is condemning the Pharisees, and He says, “Don’t
call anyone, ‘Rabbi.’ Don’t call anyone, ‘father’.”
“Father” wasn’t just a term, like it is used in the
Roman Catholic Church today, to refer to somebody who’s a priest. It was a term
that was used of a rabbi, mostly dead rabbis, who were considered to be as
authoritative in their interpretation of Scripture as the Scripture was. They
were spoken of as if they had direct revelation from God, and so their opinions
were stacked up over the Word of God.
That tradition is what Peter is talking about here. He
says, “You
were not redeemed with corruptible things … from your empty tradition from your
fathers, but
with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without
spot.”
That phrase is related to what we just talked about in
verse 21: that Christ is without sin. He is sinless. This expands that more
clearly in the imagery of the lamb. The lamb was without spot or blemish. This
was a lamb that would be brought to sacrifice, specifically the Passover lamb.
When first Passover occurred, the Israelites were in
Egypt and they were slaves in Egypt. They went through the nine plagues, and
still Pharaoh would not let them go. Pharaoh told Moses to have everyone
isolate a lamb. If it was a small family, they were to get with another small
family next door and they would all have their meal together.
They would find a lamb and they would identify this
lamb on the 10th of Nisan, and then they would watch the lamb for
3-1/2 days to make sure it was without spot or blemish. It had to be
impeccable, because that “without spot or blemish” would speak to the character
of the antitype that it was representing, which is Jesus.
So they would pick a lamb. If you’ve ever spent time
with a lamb, you just realize how innocent they seem. They are soft, and they
can be quite cuddly. You’re looking at those brown eyes, and you realize, “I’m
going to have to kill this lamb because I sinned. He’s going to die because of
me.” That is a thought that is really driven home in these sacrifices.
So Christ is compared to this lamb. He is going to
suffer on our behalf. In this picture, you see what would take place in the
ritual where the person who is bringing the lamb as a sacrifice places his hand
on the head of the lamb and then recites his sins. What is happening ritually
is that those sins are being transferred from him to the lamb, to this
innocent, spotless, guiltless, innocent lamb.
Then he is going to take the lamb, he will slit the
throat of the lamb, and the lamb will die. And that is because of your sin.
That is an extremely strong image. Joel Kramer has a video on the lamb. It is
called, The
Sacrifice. You ought to watch this video. He goes through what happens at
the Samaritan Passover, which is different from the Jewish Passover. They still
have ethnic Samaritans who go to the Samaritan temple up on Mount Gerizim, and
they sacrifice lambs. It’s quite, quite moving to think about that. But that’s
the picture for every believer.
Second Corinthians 5:21 says, “For He made Him who knew no sin [that is
Jesus, who is sinless] to be sin for us …” There is that same phrase again, HUPER HUMON—on our behalf,
instead of us, in our place. He was made sin, or a sin offering, for us (in our
place) for the purpose that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. So
in Christ we have His righteousness; it’s imputed to us.
That’s why we are declared righteous, not because of
any morality or good on our part, but because we are covered with the
righteousness of Christ—with His righteous, white garments. Isaiah 64:6 says that
all of our works of righteousness are as filthy rags. We come to God in these
filthy garments. God doesn’t take those away. He puts a white robe on us—that’s
the righteousness of Christ—and that’s what He sees when He looks at us. And He
declares us righteous.
Hebrews 4:15 expresses the same point. “For we do not
have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses.” In English
that’s a double negative. It is saying we have a High Priest who can sympathize
with our weaknesses, because He is made like us. He was fully human, but
without sin.
He was, “In all points tested as we are, yet without sin.”
So He understands what we’ve gone through. He is like us in the sense that He
is true humanity and has been tested in every way.
Then in Hebrews 9:28 we read, “So Christ was offered once to bear the sins
of many.” That is substitutionary atonement. He stands in the place of
many. Guess where that language comes from? It comes right out of Isaiah 53. It
talks about “the many” there, those for whom Christ died.
So, we look at 1 Peter 2:21–22. “For to this [that is, suffering
unjustly] you
were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should
follow His steps.” Remember what Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew
16:24. Jesus
said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me [that’s following Him], let him deny
himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”
Think about that. Jesus says, first of all, “If you
want to follow Me.” This is not talking about, “If you want to go to Heaven.”
It is, “If you want to follow Me,” if you want to be a disciple, if you want to
grow to spiritual maturity.
“If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself.” See,
that’s not part of the gospel. The gospel is, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you
will be saved.” That’s not self-denial; that is believing in Jesus; that is
justification. Discipleship goes beyond that; that’s a believer in terms of
their spiritual growth.
If you want to follow Jesus, if you want to do the Father’s
will,
What does He mean by that? This is based on an idiom
that was understood at that time under the Roman Empire. First of all, it is to
deny yourself. The essence of rebellion is to give into ourselves.
The essence of rebellion is to do what the sin nature
wants us to do. I talk about the sin nature as being self-absorbed. When we are
self-absorbed, what do we do? We indulge ourselves. We give into ourselves.
That’s not denying ourselves. That’s the opposite of denying ourselves.
So, as a believer,
We see what happened with Jesus when He took up His
Cross. What was Jesus condemned for? “Because He made himself out to be to be
God and to be the king of the Jews,” which was an act that was viewed as
rebellion by Rome.
Crucifixion was a horrible, horrible, violent death.
The person who was crucified went through horrible beatings, they were whipped
until their flesh came off, until their organs were exposed, and they were
beaten beyond recognition. Then they would be nailed to the cross. In the
process, they would be forced to carry the cross piece, the patibulum, on their
shoulders to the place of execution. Now why would they do that? Because
crucifixion was only reserved for certain kinds of crimes, and one of those was
the crime of insurrection, or the crime of being a traitor to Rome. They were
being made an example of, and by carrying their cross to the place of execution;
it was an act of forcing them to demonstrate their submission to the authority
of Rome.
A lot of people will tell you a lot of different
things about what it means to “take up your cross.” “Taking up your cross,” in
a Roman context, was to be submitted, forcefully, to the authority of Rome.
Rome was asserting its full power over this person and forcing them to submit.
They are carrying their cross to the place where they are going to be executed
because of their insurrection against Rome, because of their rebellion against
Rome, and because they failed to respect the authority of Rome. Again, “taking
up your cross” is an act of submission to authority. Interesting how these
themes keep coming back.
So Jesus is forced to submit to the authority of Rome
by taking His cross and going to Golgotha. He said the following to His disciples.
That’s the progression, “No” to the sin nature, “yes” to
the authority of God, and then following Jesus—doing what Jesus says to
do–learning the Word and applying the Word, letting your mind be transformed
into the thinking of God.
When we look at our verse in 1 Peter 1:22, it says that
He’s our example that we should follow. When it says, “that you should follow,” that is a
purpose clause. The purpose for Him suffering for us is that we should follow
Him. But it’s a subjunctive, so it’s not mandatory; it’s optional. It is left
to our volition. But that’s its purpose. You can say, “No. I’m just going to go
to Heaven. But I’m not going to follow You, because I really don’t want to have
to submit to authority. I don’t want to go through injustice, where I’m going
to have to demonstrate grace orientation. I would just rather be my nasty
little vindictive self.”
Then we have the quote from Isaiah 53:9, showing that
Jesus did not commit any sin, “Nor was deceit in His mouth.” He’s perfectly sinless. Then, 1 Peter
2:23 expands this, and says, “Who [that is, Jesus], when He was reviled, did not revile in return.”
You have two different words there for “reviled,” and they are related each
other. The first word is LOIDOREO, which means, “to revile, to abuse verbally, or to criticize abusively.”
This would be verbal abuse today—a very popular term.
When He was reviled, when He is slandered, when He is
yelled at, when He is insulted, He did not return that. And that’s just another
form of that word, ANTILOIDOREO, ANTI meaning “against.” So it means “to revile back,” or “to talk back.”
He’s silent like a lamb before its shearers is dumb.
Then it says, that “when He suffered”, and this is the word PASCHO. This refers to all
manner of suffering and adversity. Anything where life isn’t going your
way—that’s what suffering is. Some people say, “Well, I never really feel like
I suffer.” Well, if things don’t go your way, then that is part of
adversity—the adversity of life—whether you feel like it or not. It’s not a
subjective concept; it’s an objective concept.
If you’re living somewhere where you are restricted
from being able to do the things you would like to do, by government edict,
then that is suffering for Jesus. If somebody gossips about you or slanders
you, then that is suffering for Jesus. There are all kinds of different
ways—some things we know, and some things we don’t know.
That’s all within this general word PASCHO, meaning “to suffer.”
It’s used 11 times in 1 Peter. That’s an interesting statistic. What do you
think 1 Peter is talking about? How to handle suffering—biblically.
Then it says, “When He suffered.” Usually, when people suffer
they want to react in some way, usually with some kind of verbal sin. “He did not
threaten.” That’s the word APEILEO. It’s used in the imperfect tense which
means continuing action.
“When He suffered [or while He was suffering], He did not threaten.” He didn’t continue
to threaten, because this lasted for a long time when He’s on the road to the
cross. They ridiculed Him, they abused Him, they verbally did things—slandered
Him and accused Him of all kinds of things—and He didn’t respond at all to what
they were saying.
“But instead [the contrast there] He committed Himself,” and this word is
sometimes used of handing someone over. This is what Judas Iscariot did. This
verb is used. He betrayed Jesus; he handed him over to the authorities. It’s
also used here; it has that idea of “handing over.” “He handed Himself over to Him who judges
righteously.” He put it in God’s hands.
What’s the verse here at the end of 1 Peter? 1 Peter
5:7, “Casting
all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.” It’s the principle that is
exhibited here. He handed himself over; He put His case in God’s hands.
Now did that mean He didn’t suffer? Did that mean He
didn’t go to the Cross? Did that mean that He didn’t have to go through hell on
earth? Not at all. He knew that eventually God’s justice is going to bring
justice to the situation of injustice.
Then we come to 1 Peter 2:24. In English this reads, “Who Himself bore
our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live
for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.” When we look at this
verse in the English, there are several things that stand out. We ought to say,
“What is this word, ‘bore’?” That’s not a common word today. We know that it’s
the past tense of the word “to bear,” but how did He bear our sins? What does
that mean? What does “sins” mean? What does it mean that “He bore our sins in His own body?” What does it
mean, “That
we, having died to sins”? How did we die to sin? “Might live for righteousness.” What are we talking
about here? This is not talking about justification. “By whose stripes you were healed.” Where
does that come in?
Let’s look at a couple things. The reason I underlined
“our sins” here in this first slide is that’s the first phrase in the Greek
text. So it says, literally, “Our sins, who He himself bore.” The emphasis is on our sins. The
focal point at the beginning of the verse is our sins, because that’s the first
phrase that we see in the verse. “Our sins, He himself bore.”
Now this is an interesting word that brings a
lot—pardon the pun—to bear on the verse. No pun intended.
“He Himself bore our sins.” I’ve always wrestled with this. I had to
memorize this verse years and years and years ago when I was going through the
Navigators Topical Memory System. I think this was in the second or third set.
It’s a little awkward. I wondered, “What does that mean that, ‘He bore our sins
in His own body on the tree’?”
At the time I never quite had the study tools to be
able to look that up and come to an understanding of that. But the Greek word
here is the word ANAPHERO. The root word is PHERO, and it means, “to carry something, or to bring something back, or to
raise something up.”
You see some of the various ways in which it’s used,
but this idea of “offering a sacrifice” is inherent to this concept. Let me
show you how that happens. This word ANAPHERO doesn’t just pop up in Peter’s vocabulary because he thinks, “Oh, this
sounds like a good word. I think I’ll use this.” Guess what chapter it comes
from? Anybody want to hazard a guess? Isaiah 53—there you go! We’ve heard that
several times already.
“Surely He has borne our griefs [talking about the Suffering
Servant] and
carried our sorrows.” It’s parallelism there. Carrying and bearing—these
words are used in synonymous parallelism. Griefs and sorrows are the effects of
sin. The effects are put for the cause—it’s poetry.
“Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed
Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.” Now, as I note in the cut out
here on the verb, the Hebrew word for “borne” is the Hebrew word nasa. It is
translated in verse four in the Septuagint by the Greek word, PHERO.
In the second verse, Isaiah 53:12, where it says, “He was numbered
with the transgressors,” what does that mean? That means that there is a
thief on one side and a thief on the other. He is numbered, or identified, with
the criminals. That’s a prophecy that’s fulfilled at Golgotha.
“He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many.”
That, again, is the word ANAPHERO, the same word that we have in 1 Peter 2:24. So this language is
sacrifice language. It’s to offer a sacrifice. So it’s the idea of originally
lifting or carrying something to the altar where it was sacrificed. This is
seen in how this word is used in passages in Leviticus.
Leviticus 14:20 says, “And the priest shall offer,” and this is
the Hebrew word nasa.
Here, in the Septuagint, it uses ANAPHERO to translate that. “And the
priest shall offer [or shall bear] the burnt offering and the grain offering on the
altar. So
the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be clean.”
Leviticus 16:22 talks about the goat. This is in the
situation where you have the scapegoat. You have the two goats on the Day of
Atonement. One is the goat that bears the sin of the nation; he is sacrificed
and dies in a good cause. Then you have the other goat that is taken way, far
away—so far away that he won’t be able to find his way home; he’s the one who
removes the sin as far away as possible, so that they’re not remembered or
brought back. “The
goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an uninhabited land.”
Same concept; it’s a different word, though.
This is seen also in 1 Peter 2:5. Notice how aspects
that are brought out here go back to 1 Peter 1:17, 18, 19 also here, 1 Peter
2:5. “You
also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy
priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus
Christ.” It’s the word ANAPHERO. So, when it talks about He Himself ANAPHEROed our sins, it is talking about a
sacrifice that is being made. He carried, as a sacrifice, our sins, in His own
body. He physically died.
The physical death isn’t what paid the penalty for
sin, but it was part of the package. He could not just die spiritually, because
there is a consequence of spiritual death that is physical death.
How do we know that there is such concept as spiritual
death? Ephesians 2:1, “You were dead in your trespasses and sins.” That’s the word there.
It can’t be physical death, because he is talking to the Ephesians who are now
saved and saying that, “Before you were saved, you were dead.” It was some kind
of death, and so that’s not a physical death.
Then 1 Peter 2:24 goes on. He says, “Who Himself bore
[carried] our
sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for
righteousness.”
This is not only an unusual word; it’s the only time
this word is used in the Greek New Testament. It’s APOGINOMAI, and it means, “to die.” It’s a
participle, which means that it should probably be taken causally—that because we
have died to sin.
When did we die to sin? When we trusted Christ as our
Savior. We are identified in His death, burial, and resurrection.
Because “that we, having died to sin, might live for
righteousness.” The purpose that God identified us with Christ in His
death, burial, and resurrection, so that we would live differently—so that we
would not live according to our sin nature, that we would be transformed by the
renewing of our minds, and by walking by the Holy Spirit, we would be able to
live for righteousness. So that is the purpose here.
“That we … might live” i.e., that our purpose is to live for
righteousness. Then there’s a reminder, “By whose stripes [that is, that He was whipped]
you were
healed.” In Isaiah 53, the word “healing” is often used in parallel to
“dying for sin.” So when you look at that, you know the healing there isn’t the
healing for illness, or some kind of miraculous healing, but is solving the sin
problem. The word SOZO is sometimes translated, “healing, to deliver from illness.” In this
case, it’s talking about sin.
Now, Roman 6:3 says, “Or do you not know that as many of us as
were baptized [or identified] into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?”
We are identified with Him when we are baptized by the Holy Spirit at the
instant of salvation. Paul says, “Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death.”
That never happened to any believer prior to the Church Age.
“Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just
as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also
should walk in newness of life.”
That’s the same thing that that Peter is saying in 1
Peter 2:24, “That
we…might live for righteousness.”
Paul says that, “we should walk in newness of life.”
Then he goes on to say, “For if we have been united together in the
likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His
resurrection, knowing this, that our old man [that is everything that we
were before we were saved] was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with,
that we should no longer be slaves of sin.”
The term “body of sin” refers to the sin nature.
The term “old man” doesn’t refer to the sin nature,
but because somewhere along the line in theology the sin nature was referred to
as “the old
sin nature,” people got confused, and they thought “old man” meant the sin
nature. But right here it’s very clear that our old man was crucified with Him.
If our old man was crucified with Him, then it’s dead. But it’s [our sin
nature] not dead. It happened for the purpose that the body of sin might be
done away with in the future—that’s the process of sanctification.
About three weeks ago I got an e-mail and the question
was, “Robby, what do you think ‘the old man’ means?” I said, “It does not mean
the sin nature.” I put in passages in Ephesians 4 and Romans 6, and I said, “It
doesn’t mean that. It refers to everything that we were before we were saved.”
We have a new identity in Christ. The “old man” is dead, but it takes a while
for the sin nature to be processed into death. And it doesn’t happen completely
until we are face-to-face with the Lord. Jim Myers replied to me and he said,
“That’s exactly what I think. Scary.” So we have a lot of fun together.
Then verse 25, “For you were like sheep going astray, but have now
returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” These allusions to
Isaiah 53 are one reason why I think he’s really writing to Jewish-background
believers, because the Gentile background believers wouldn’t relate to any of
this—Isaiah 53—they wouldn’t even know about it. So it reinforces what I said
from the beginning—that he’s primarily writing to diaspora Jews in central Asia
Minor, or north-central modern Turkey.
“For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the
Shepherd and Overseer of your souls,” which are two titles for the Lord
Jesus Christ. This comes right out of Isaiah 53.
“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his
own way.” That’s self-absorption. Everybody wants to do what’s right in his
own eyes; that is from Judges.
“We have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him.”
That’s why “He
carried our sins in His own body.” “And the Lord has laid on Him [substitutionary
atonement] the
iniquity of us all.”
So here is Isaiah 53:7, the next verse. “He was oppressed
and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth.” See, this is exactly
what we saw here. He was reviled, but He reviled not. He suffered, but He did
not condemn or threaten. He committed himself—instead He turned it over to the
Supreme Court of Heaven.
“He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was
led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so He opened not His mouth.” And that was exactly fulfilled.
Next time we are going to get into the Servant’s
humility in Philippians 2. We didn’t make it tonight; we will make it next
time.