who, [when] reviled, reviled not again; [when] suffering, threatened not; but gave [himself] over into the hands of him who judges righteously;
Peter points his readers to the way Christ met insult and injury. Two questions follow. Why did the Lord stay silent when He could have answered? And what does it mean to hand a case over to God?
One writer walks through the steps Peter sets out, then names each trial where the Lord kept silent.
First, He did no sin, and no deceit was found in His mouth. Secondly, He suffered, being reviled and threatened. Thirdly, when reviled, He took it patiently; He neither reviled nor threatened. In the presence of all His accusers His resource was in God. He committed Himself to Him that judges righteously. When falsely accused before the Jewish council, He "held His peace" (Matthew 26:63). When the Jews accused Him before Pilate, "He answered nothing." To Pilate himself, "He answered … never a word" (Matt. 27:12-14). The mocking Herod questioned Him in many words, "but He answered him nothing" (Luke 23:9). He was silent before men because He had a resource in God.
Silence can look like having nothing to say. One writer asks whether that was the case here.
If then He was silent, if He took no revenge on His enemies, was it that He had no resource? Far from it. His resource was not to insult His enemies and turn on those who attacked Him, but to turn to the Father in prayer. As He can say, "For my love they are my adversaries; but I give myself to prayer" (Ps. 109:4).
The first three things said of Him here are things He did not do. The last is something He did.
To do no sin, to speak no deceit, to keep silent when others speak malicious words, all have a negative character. This last step is positive. If we keep silent when insulted, it is not that evil and malice have no answer; it is that the answer is left with God. We are never to try to take vengeance on the wrongdoer. God keeps all vengeance in His own hands. He has said, "Vengeance belongs to Me, I will repay, says the Lord" (Hebrews 10:30).
The older wording in these quotes — "committed Himself," or "committed His cause" — is what the ESV renders "continued entrusting himself." One writer sees our example in how He met the power set over Him.
Our blessed Lord submitted to the power that came from God, and committed His cause "to Him that judges righteously"; and this is our example.
To commit a case to God is to leave the verdict with Him. One writer calls that rest, and a victory.
And then, in deepest confidence, "He committed Himself to Him who judges righteously." If the other statements showed His life by what He did not do, this one shows the constant rest of His soul in a positive way. His vindication was of God. Are we in the habit of making this committal? We gain a victory when we do so, for there the battle ends. His whole life was submission, hearty and unquestioning, to the will of the Father. This was His yoke, and it was easy. When we bow to that will through grace, we too prove the yoke easy and the burden light.
When the Jewish leaders called Him a Samaritan with a demon, He had the power to end the argument at once. His reply shows the same committal at work.
To think of Him, the Holy One of God, being attacked like this! Had He crushed them at once by His almighty power, who could have charged Him with injustice? But He showed He was the Son of God by His patience and His bearing with the Jews. Calmly and with an unruffled spirit He answered them, "I have not a demon; but I honour My Father, and you dishonour Me. And I seek not My own glory: there is One that seeks and judges" (49, 50). Little did they think how their accusation against Him was viewed on high. "He committed Himself to Him that judges righteously," wrote Peter.
This pattern changes what we aim at when others wrong us.
When people wrong us, and say hard, unkind and malicious things against us, our concern should not be to defend ourselves and maintain our rights, but to express Christ. As for any wrongs, we are to commit ourselves to Him that judges righteously. If we make Christ's interest our great concern, we can trust God to make our concerns His interest.
- Reviled — He met insult without insulting back. Before the council, Pilate and Herod, He answered nothing.
- Resource — The silence was not weakness. He had somewhere to go: He gave Himself to prayer.
- Committed — Three negatives, then one positive act. Evil does have an answer, but God gives it: He keeps all vengeance in His own hands.
- Vindicated — His vindication was God's business. When we make the same committal, the battle ends there.
- Copied — When wronged, aim to express Christ, not to defend your rights. Make His interest your concern, and God will make yours His.
who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, in order that, being dead to sins, we may live to righteousness by whose stripes ye have been healed.
Peter has been holding up Christ as the pattern for believers who suffer for doing right. Then the argument turns: at the cross He did what no follower can copy, and two questions follow — when did He bear our sins, and what is the healing He bought?
The verse marks a break in Peter's flow. Until now Peter has held up Christ as a model of patience. Here the subject changes to something we can only receive. Everything at the cross falls on one side: the sins were ours, the judgment was His.
At this point the apostle turns from the more general reference to the Lord's sufferings for us, the peerless example of unrepining love and unswerving yet patient righteousness in a world of evil, to that which stands alone from all before and after in the expiation of our sins, here expressed in terms of extreme simplicity. In atonement Christ had no companions and no followers.
As a believer I had nothing to do with the judgment of my sin on the cross, or with the bearing of my sins there. God's only Son was there alone for me. "For our sake He made Him to be sin," not us with Him; "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree," not we bore our sins with Him... His alone was the judgment, just as surely as the sin and sins were ours alone.
The words "in His body on the tree" fix both the place and the moment. Writers insist that this was not a burden carried through His lifetime.
He bore our sins in His own body. He was definitely our Substitute. We had sinned in our bodies. He became a true Man, without sin, and He bore our sins in His holy body as a sacrifice for sin. He did this on the tree, for He made atonement only in His death. He did not bear our sins during His life, but in His death.
Some have said He carried our sins through His whole life. Kelly answers from what happened at the cross. The darkness and the cry of abandonment could not fit a life of unbroken closeness to God.
What did that supernatural darkness mean, which covered the cross in broad daylight from a certain point on? And what did the cry mean, from One who had always said "Father" in the full enjoyment of His love, but now cried "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"... His suffering for our guilt, and God's face shining at the same time! If He had been bearing our sins all His life, God must have abandoned Him all His life, for God cannot make the least allowance for sin.
Peter's word "tree" carries the idea of a curse. One writer warns against treating the visible scene as the whole of it.
First, and this should be obvious though some miss it, the hanging on the tree is not itself the curse. It only marks out the one on whom the curse falls. The curse itself is not something outside a person. It is a deep reality in the soul of the one who bears it. This was the wrath against sin that Christ bore for us: God forsaking Him. If He had not borne it, no blessing could ever have come to anyone.
The sentence does not stop at forgiveness. Peter names an aim, and it is a practical one. Older translations read "dead to sins" in the plural here, and the writer below builds on that reading.
The practical aim suited Peter's earnestness: "that, being dead to sins, we should live to righteousness."... Here, as in 1 Peter 2:24, Peter urges death to sins as a practical reality. This is not the Christian privilege of having died with Christ to sin. It is the duty that flows from His death: that we should no longer serve sin, but live righteous lives after Christ's example.
The cost of the cross becomes the argument against going back.
Christ has borne our sins in His own body on the tree. He did this not only so that God would count us righteous and save us from the judgment of sins, but so that we should live to righteousness. His wounds have healed us — can we go on with sin that cost Him so much to remove?
The closing phrase speaks of healing. One writer names the sickness it cures as sin itself.
This is not healing of the body, but healing from the dreadful disease of sin. Those wounds are the wounds of God's judgment, poured out on Him at Calvary.
The image is a lowly one — the mark a lash leaves — and that is where the comfort lies.
A strange contrast, but no less wonderfully true! The word means the welt or swelling left by the lash, which many a slave knew well. How comforting to the Christian, slave or not, who rests with assurance... on what God did for the ungodly through the shameful yet glorious death of His Son!
- Alone — Christ bore our sins alone: the sins were ours, the judgment was His. The example ends where the atonement begins.
- Body — He bore them in His own body, as our Substitute, and only in His death — not through His life.
- Tree — Hanging on the tree marked the One on whom the curse fell; the curse itself was the forsaking He endured within.
- Purpose — The aim was not forgiveness alone but a life done with sins and given to righteousness.
- Healed — The wounds of the lash cure the disease of sin. So why return to what cost Him so much?