Christ Died So That We Can Die to Sin
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2010 · 6 June 2010
“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.”
So here we are at the end of chapter 2 as just another testimony to how Christ works in our daily life. But that's not the main thing we see here at the end of 1 Peter 2. The main thing in God's word to us is about his purpose for our church and what He did to accomplish and assure that purpose.
So what I hope you hear this evening from this text is an unshakable, compelling commitment from God to bring about His good purpose for us. And I hope you see that this purpose has to do with how we as Christians treat other people.
Three times in this text Peter tells us that Christ died and that the purpose of his death was to enable us to live differently. Or another way to put it is that he tells us that God's purpose for us as a church is that we live like Christ, that we live righteously.
And he tells us three times that his unshakable compelling commitment to fulfill that purpose in us is the death of his Son to make it happen. His commitment to make it happen is seen in the sacrifice of his Son to make it happen. Let us look at these following statements.
1. "Follow in His Steps" First, verse 21: "Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps." Literally: "Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you might do exactly what He did."
In other words Christ suffered for us; He suffered even unto death, and all of that was for this purpose: that we might follow in his steps. And we can see God’s power behind that purpose in that Christ "suffered for us."
The purpose is that we live like Christ. The power is the substitutionary death of Jesus. He died for us to make us like Him. And living like Him includes all the “one another” commands of the New Testament. That's why all of this is foundational for understanding the rest of the letter.
2. "Die to sin and live to righteousness." Second, verse 24a: "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness."
God's purpose for us is stated like this: "that we might die to sin and live to righteousness." God's commitment to make it happen is stated like this: "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross."
So the teaching in verse 24 seems to be identical to the teaching in verse 21, only things are made more explicit. Peter says very clearly what he meant in verse 21 by "Christ suffered for you." He meant, "Christ bore our sins in his body on the cross."
Christ's suffering was the agony of being physically nailed to the cross and suffering spiritually "for us" bearing our sins and dying there. It was a substitution. He bore our sin in death instead of our having to bear them in death.
It's the fulfillment of Isaiah 53:6, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." That is, "Christ bore our sins in his body."
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:1, 3, "I remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you the gospel . . . that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures." That's what Peter is spelling out here: Christ bore our sins in his body on the cross according to Isaiah 53:6.
This is the best news possible for sinners! And while the ongoing consequences of our sins are very painful, the hope of our lives and our church and our families is, "Christ bore our sins in his body on the cross."
Do You Believe This? We need to linger here. Do you really believe this about your own sins and about the sins of your brothers and sisters? The implications of this for each of us individually and as a church are huge.
It means that we can leave the past with God. We can say, "I trust you, Jesus, that all my sins; all the ones that are public and all the ones that are private, all of them, have been lifted, borne, suffered for, and therefore removed from me. I bear them no more. I do not carry their guilt into the future with me."
Let this sink in. You do not have to carry your sins or be burdened by them. You do not have to wake up with guilt or go to bed with guilt. You can bank your hope on the commitment of God in Jesus: "Christ bore our sins in his body on the cross." Let's do that together as a church. Do it this evening even if you are not part of this IBF church.
The devil is persistently accusing you of not being a worthy Christian because of some past sin in your life. But now God has given you the power to believe and confess your sin and repent of your sins, and that is the same power of Christ who bore our sins on the cross that provides you grace.
So notice again what God's aim is in this guilt-lifting death of Jesus on the cross in verse 24: ". . . that we might die to sin and live to righteousness." This corresponds with the purpose mentioned in verse 21: "that you might follow in his steps." Following in Jesus' steps is the same as living to righteousness.
Now this is so important in this text that we need to pause here a moment. Does this feel to you like good news of the cross is being given with one hand and taken away with the other? Does it feel like good news that the message of the cross on the one hand is a lifting of the guilt of sin but on the other hand is giving you a burden to live like Christ?
On the one hand the suffering and death of Jesus are "for us" and "bear our sins away"—that feels liberating and joyful and hopeful. On the other hand the suffering and death of Jesus are designed by God to create people who follow in Jesus' footsteps as to live righteously, and that involves your commitment.
Now there are all kinds of reasons for this being difficult, ranging from rebellion in the heart to painful memories from the past to theological misunderstandings. There is no time to analyze all those reasons. I want to simply stress that the purpose of the cross to liberate from the enslaving power of sin as well as the guilt of sin does not diminish the good news; it enlarges it.
Would it really be good news if the Bible taught that the death of Christ took away the guilt of sin and left us enslaved to its power? That would simply mean that you could go on living in sin the way the world does, only without punishment. But then it also shows that you only love sin and do not love God.
But if you long to be set free not only from the guilt of sin, but also from the enslaving power of sin by the cross, then these verses don't diminish the good news, they in fact make this good news even better news.
What verse 24a is saying is that when Christ bore our sins in his body on the cross, he secured not only the removal of our guilt, but also release from our bondage. Christ bore our sins in his body so that we might die to sin and live righteously.
That is the design and purpose and commitment of God in the cross. You might think: maybe it's just an offer instead of a goal reached. Maybe you think that the cross really doesn't secure and guarantee anything for us, but only offers something to us. Well think again.
3. "By His Wounds You Were Healed" The third and final statement of the purpose of the cross in this text clarifies this immediately. Verse 24b says, again quoting Isaiah 53 (v. 5): "By His wounds you were healed."
It does not say: By his wounds healing is offered. Or: By his wounds healing is a possibility. It says, "By his wounds you were healed." In other words the cross is effective. It achieves what God designs for it to achieve. The cross creates new persons.
Now Peter is not thinking here mainly of physical healing for cancer and arthritis and so on. As a matter of fact the cross will one day accomplish that in our lives whether here or in the age to come. But that is not Peter's thinking at all here.
He explains in verse 25 what he has in mind by the healing that the suffering and wounds of Christ accomplish is, a spiritual healing, not just physical healing. And that sheds a tremendously important light on what we have learned so far.
Verse 25: "For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls." This is the spiritual healing Peter has in mind: the return of straying, perishing sheep to their Guide and Provider. So here is the third statement of the design and purpose of the cross.
The first in verse 21 was that Christ died so that we would follow in his footsteps. The second in verse 24a was that Christ died so that we would live to righteousness. The third in verses 24b–25 is that Christ died so that He might bring straying sheep home to the green pastures of the Good Shepherd.
Isn’t this good news? I hope you see that Peter wants you to feel it as good news by the way he describes it in verse 25: the word of the cross brings us to a shepherd not a slave master.
Yes, the Shepherd guides. He does not let sheep stray very far or very long. He uses a rod and staff when he must. He provides and He protects. And he continually pursues us with goodness and mercy all our days. His commitment to do this is signed with the blood of Jesus. It is the New Covenant, sealed with the blood of the Covenant.
Let us discuss one other issue before we end this text. What does it mean to die to sin as described in verse 24, “Christ bore our sins in his body on the cross that we might die to sin."? Why do we have to die to sin?
It didn't say Christ did it that we might go to heaven. It didn't say He did it in order that we might have peace. It didn't say He did it in order that we might experience love. He didn't sacrifice Himself for those reasons primarily.
He did it to transform us from sinners into saints. He did it to change us. He did it to regenerate us. He bore the punishment in order that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.
When the word of the cross breaks into our heart by the power of God's Spirit, and we awaken to the fact that God loves us so much that he takes the life of his own Son in order to bring us under His care, protection and guidance, at that moment we die to sin.
We were alive to sin, and believed in sin, and followed sin, until the cross impacted on us the conquering love of God and constrains us so when we are straying; when we are erring; when we are self-destructing in the path of sin.
What he is saying is that the purpose of this substitutionary work of Christ is that we might depart from sin. That's what he's saying...that we might escape from sin and that we might live to righteousness, so that we might enter into a new life pattern.
We die to the power of sin's deceit which tries to persuade us that a better future can be had through sin than through righteousness. What causes our death to sin is the work of the cross convincing us that God is committed to us like a mighty Shepherd.
And when the cross releases that power in us, we die to sin. We do not depend and follow sin anymore like before, we just want to absorb all the love of God that He has given us. And we awaken to the beauty of righteousness in the pasture of our Shepherd.
There's so much compromise today everywhere, even in our churches. The Christian believers at Peter’s time wouldn't compromise. How did they overcome their sin character? They overcame because they had the power of Christ and because they would not compromise their testimony and finally because they really didn't care about their lives here on earth.
What it means is that the values of this world are no longer your values, you do not care anymore about all the things you own, you don’t care anymore about making more money, you don’t care anymore about people’s opinions and you don’t strive anymore for the praise of men.
Dying to sin means that those desires that we just mentioned are replaced by desires to follow God by living righteously, where it is no longer ourselves that we seek to please but it is all God that we seek to satisfy.
Living righteously means to become more like Jesus in living more holy, in loving God more, in loving our neighbors more and forgiving others more and in telling others more about Jesus any chance we get.
It certainly would be our prayer that this might be said of us. The early Christians lived in a hostile world, Satan threw everything at them he could but they overcame him. They never lost their testimony; they never cared about their life here on earth.
Consider the purpose of the cross for your life this evening. Embrace it and return to the Shepherd of your soul. And what we will find is the will and joy of all commands of the New Testament, and the power to move forward as a church. Amen?