AND HE HIMSELF BORE (carried from lower place to higher, offered up like Ge 8:20) OUR SINS: hos tas hamartias (sins is first for emphasis) hemon autos anenegken (3SAAI): (Ex 28:38; Lev 16:22; 22:9; Nu 18:22; Ps 38:4; Is 53:4, 5, 6,11; Mt 8:17; Jn 1:29, 36; Heb 9:28) Help for Popups that won't pop off! In general try to keep mouse pointer in left gutter to avoid links. If multiple popups are open best solution is to Refresh page (Shortcut = Press the F5 key). If single popups are open pass pointer over open link and slowly remove to shut. Note that this problem only occurs in Internet Explorer - consider using Firefox. He Himself - MacArthur comments that this phrase... is an emphatic personalization and stresses that the Son of God voluntarily and without coercion (John 10:15, 17, 18) died as the only sufficient sacrifice for the sins of all who would ever believe (cf. John 1:29; 3:16; 1Ti 2:5, 6; 4:10; He 2:9 [note] He 2:17 [note]). The very name Jesus indicated that He would “save His people from their sins” (Mt 1:21). (MacArthur, J. 1 Peter. Chicago: Moody Press or Logos) They shall therefore keep My charge, so that they may not bear sin because of it, and die thereby because they profane it; I am the LORD who sanctifies them. Peter presents the ultimate illustration of unjust suffering in the Cross of Christ. Bore (399)(anaphero from ana = up, again, back + phero = bear, carry) literally means to carry, bring or bear up and so to to cause to move from a lower position to a higher position. It serves as a technical term for offering sacrifices offer up (to an altar). Anaphero is used 9 times in the NT in the NAS (see below) and is translated as: bear, 1; bore, 1; brought, 1; led, 1; offer, 3; offered, 2. Matthew 17:1 And six days later Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John his brother, and brought them up to a high mountain by themselves. Mark 9:2 And six days later, Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John, and brought them up to a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them; Luke 24:51 And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. (KJV only) Hebrews 7:27 (note) who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins, and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. Hebrews 9:28 (note) so Christ also, having been offered (prosphero) once to bear (anaphero) the sins of many, shall appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him. (Comment: The writer of Hebrews utilizes anaphero with a meaning similar to Peter i.e., to refer to Christ's propitiatory or satisfactory sacrifice) Hebrews 13:15 (note) Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. (Comment: Dear NT believers, you who are now priests of the Most High God and thus have the incredible privilege of continually doing what only the Jewish Levitical priests could do in the Old Testament. Are you "taking advantage" of your high and holy privilege as members of a royal priesthood? [1Pe 2:9-note]) James 2:21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? (Comment: Justified in this context could be translated "shown to be justified". In other words, his offering up of Isaac showed that he had been declared righteous.) 1 Peter 2:5 (note) you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (Comment: Believers now can offer up holy sacrifices because the Holy One offered up Himself! Precious truth!) 1 Peter 2:24 and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. Anaphero is found 135 times in the Septuagint (LXX) (Greek translation of the OT Hebrew) (Gen. 8:20; 22:2, 13; 31:39; 40:10; Ex 18:19, 22, 26; 19:8; 24:5; 29:18, 25; 30:9, 20; Lev. 2:16; 3:5, 11, 14, 16; 4:10, 19, 26, 31; 6:15, 26; 7:5, 31; 8:16, 20f, 27f; 9:10, 20; 14:20; 16:25; 17:5f; 23:11; Num. 5:26; 14:33; 18:17; 23:2, 30; Deut. 1:17; 12:13f, 27; 14:24; 27:6; Jdg. 6:26, 28; 11:31; 13:16, 19; 15:13; 16:8, 18; 20:26, 38; 21:4; 1 Sam. 2:19; 6:14f; 7:9f; 10:8; 13:9f, 12; 15:12; 18:27; 20:13; 2 Sam. 1:24; 6:17; 21:13; 24:22, 24f; 1 Ki. 2:35; 3:4; 5:13; 8:1; 9:15; 10:5; 12:27; 17:19; 2 Ki. 3:27; 4:21; 1 Chr. 15:3, 12, 14; 16:2, 40; 21:24, 26; 23:31; 29:21; 2 Chr. 1:4, 6; 2:4; 4:16; 5:2, 5; 8:12f; 9:4, 16; 23:18; 24:14; 29:21, 27, 29, 31f; 35:14; Ezra. 3:2, 6; Neh. 10:38; 12:31; Job 7:13; Ps. 51:19; 66:15; Prov. 8:6; Isa. 18:7; 53:11f; 57:6; 60:7; 66:3; Jer. 32:35; Ezek. 36:15; 43:18, 24; Da 6:23) Anaphero is the verb the translators of the LXX Old Testament usually used to picture the offering of a sacrifice. Figuratively (as used here by Peter) anaphero means to take up and bear sins by imputation (act of laying the responsibility or blame for) as typified by the ancient sacrifices. Jesus our Great High Priest bore our sins as our substitutionary sacrifice, dying in our place, in order to bring about atonement for our sins. The priests in the Old Covenant could not bear our sins. Wuest's paraphrase conveys Peter's allusion to the Old Testament sacrificial system -- Jesus Himself carried up to the Cross our sins in His body and offered Himself there as on an altar It is notable that anaphero is used 25 times in the Septuagint translation of Leviticus regarding offerings! For example, Moses records that Aaron's sons shall offer it up (anaphero = bear, carry) in smoke on the altar on the burnt offering, which is on the wood that is on the fire; it is an offering by fire of a soothing aroma to the LORD. (Lev 3:5) Jesus, as our Great High Priest , offered up the sacrifice of Himself by bringing His body up to the Cross. Anaphero is used in Hebrews which records that Jesus "does not need daily, like those (Jewish) high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins, and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself." (He 7:27-note) Exodus discusses the parallel role of the OT high priests recording that Aaron shall take away (to lift, to carry) the iniquity of the holy things which the sons of Israel consecrate, with regard to all their holy gifts; and (the turban) shall always be on his forehead, that they may be accepted before the Lord. (Ex 28:38) This was but a shadow of which Jesus was the Substance. Isaiah in his famous prophecy of the suffering Servant (the Messiah) records that Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. (Isa 53:4, 5, 6) Isaiah adds that As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear (LXX uses anaphero) their iniquities. Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the booty with the strong, because He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet He Himself bore (LXX uses anaphero) the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors. (Isa 53:11,12) When John the Baptist saw Jesus coming to him he declared the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy (and all the OT Messianic prophecies for that matter) saying Behold, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world! (Jn 1:29, cp Jn 1:36) It is interesting to note that the Jewish people did not crucify criminals. They stoned them to death. But if the victim was especially evil, his dead body was hung on a tree until evening, as a mark of shame (Dt 21:23). Jesus died on a tree—a cross—and bore the curse of the Law (Gal 3:13). The force of ana = up, appears in the fact of the altar was in fact elevated. Anaphero is often used of carrying from a lower to a higher place (Mt 17:1; Lk 24:51) Matthew Henry writes that He Himself bore our sins teaches... 1.That Christ, in his sufferings, stood charged with our sins, as one who had undertaken to put them away by the sacrifice of himself, Isa. 53:6. 2 That he bore the punishment of them, and thereby satisfied divine justice. 3. That hereby he takes away our sins, and removes them away from us; as the scapegoat did typically bear the sins of the people on his head, and then carried them quite away, (Lev. 16:21, 22), so the Lamb of God does first bear our sins in his own body, and thereby take away the sins of the world, Jn. 1:29. He Himself bore our sins - During the Napoleonic Wars, men were conscripted into the French army by a lottery system. If your name was drawn, you had to go off to battle. But in the rare case that you could get someone else to take your place, you were exempt. On one occasion the authorities came to a certain man and told him that his name had been drawn. But he refused to go, saying, “I was killed two years ago.” At first they questioned his sanity, but he insisted that this was in fact the case. He claimed that the records would show that he had been conscripted two years previously and that he had been killed in action. “How can that be?” they questioned. “You are alive now.” He explained that when his name came up, a close friend said to him, “You have a large family, but I’m not married and nobody is dependent on me. I’ll take your name and address and go in your place.” The records upheld the man’s claim. The case was referred to Napoleon himself, who decided that the country had no legal claim on that man. He was free because another man had died in his place. While any illustration of Jesus' substitutionary death in our place must pale by comparison, I recently read an illustration recorded by Harry Ironside which gives us an inkling into this great exchange and especially speaks to how this grand truth should motivate our love for the Savior... Many years ago, on a car one day, a number of high school girls were laughing and chatting. A woman with a heavy veil over her face boarded the car, and as she got on the wind blew the veil aside and one could see that she had a terribly scarred face; it had evidently been badly burned. It looked horrible and one of these girls exclaimed, “Oh, look at that fright!” Another of the girls seeing who it was about whom they were speaking wheeled around and turned to the other in flaming anger and said, “How dare you speak of my beautiful mother in that way?” “Oh, I am so sorry, I didn’t think what I was saying. I did not mean to say anything unkind of your mother, I did not know it was your mother.” “Yes, it is,” the other replied, “and her face is the most beautiful thing about her to me. Mother left me in my little crib when a small child and went to a store to get something. When she came back the house was on fire, and my mother fought her way through the fire and flames and wrapped me all up so that the flames could not reach me; but when she got outside again she fell down burned terribly, but I was safe. And whenever I look at her I think what a beautiful mother I have.” They say beauty is only skin deep. Moral beauty goes to the depths of the soul (From Studies on Book One of the Psalms) Comment: And even as this heroic mother was scarred for life, our great Redeemer is scarred for eternity, as His hands, feet and side bear the scars of His wounds for us on Calvary's Cross! May this truth motivate a deep, abiding love for Him, a love that in turn motivates passionate obedience to Him! (Jn 14:15, 21, 23, 24, 15:10, 1Jn 5:3) John describes his heavenly vision of Christ this way "And I saw between the throne (with the four living creatures) and the elders a Lamb standing, as if slain..." (Rev 5:6-note) The verb "slain" is in the perfect tense describing a past completed event (wounds on the Cross) with continuing, abiding (permanent) effects (scars forever and ever). The Lamb's scars are His marks of covenant as it were (cp Isa 49:16, Mal 3:1 - see Oneness of Covenant-Scar & Covenant), and as such are our assurance that we are forever safe and saved in Him. If you believe you can lose your salvation, you may as well believe John's record was a result of his poor vision. Once saved, always saved. But be careful - you want to be certain that you are truly saved by grace through faith, that you have truly been transferred from darkness into light, that you truly are a new creation in Christ (2Cor 5:17-note) -- How can you tell? New behavior. New desires. (cp 2Peter 1:10, 11-note, cp 2Cor 13:5-note, cp Mt 7:21-note, Mt 7:22,23-note). IN HIS BODY ON THE CROSS: en to somati autou epi to xulon: (Dt 21:22,23; Acts 5:30; 10:39; 13:29; Gal 3:13) Moses records the OT teaching regarding "the tree"... And if a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is accursed of God), so that you do not defile your land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance. (Dt 21:22,23) Paul quotes in part from Moses declaring that on the Cross... Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us-- for it is written, "CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO HANGS ON A TREE"-- (Galatians 3:13) Take up thy cross and follow on, Nor think till death to lay it down, For only he who bears the cross May hope to wear the glorious crown. --Everest Christ showed His love by dying for us; we show our love by living for Him.