Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Peter · About this commentary
By His Wounds
1 Peter 2:24-25
24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live to righteousness. You were healed by his wounds. · WEB
The example gives way to something no one is asked to copy, and the section ends by telling slaves that they have an owner of a different kind.
Verse 24 changes register without warning. Up to here Christ has been the pattern; now he is doing something the readers cannot join — he himself carried our sins in his body to the tree. The preposition matters: the sins were not merely endured, they were borne, and the word for the tree is the plain one for timber rather than the word for a cross.
The purpose clause keeps the passage from drifting into abstraction: that we, having died to sins, might live to righteousness. The transaction has a destination in conduct, which is where this whole section began.
Then the letter quotes again, and the source is the same chapter it has been drawing on: by his wounds you were healed Isaiah 53:5. Said to people whose backs were at the mercy of an unreasonable master, the sentence is chosen with some care. The wounds that heal are someone else's.
Verse 25 finishes with a third line from that chapter — straying like sheep Isaiah 53:6 — and then supplies the destination the prophet did not name. They have returned to the shepherd and guardian of their souls. To household slaves, at the end of a passage about masters, the letter says they have come back under an oversight of an entirely different kind.
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