Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.
His own self - there being none other who could have done it. His voluntary undertaking of redemption is implied. The Greek puts in contrast OUR, and HIS OWN SELF, to mark His substitution for us.
Bare, х aneenegnken (G399)] - carried and offered up: a sacrificial term. Isaiah 53:11-12, where bearing on Himself is the prominent idea; here offering in sacrifice is combined with it. So 1 Peter 2:5, if He were only an example, the effect of His sacrifice would only be to His successors: there would be no retrospective efficacy to those who lived in Old Testament times. Our sins. In offering in sacrifice His body, Christ offered in it our sins' guilt upon the cross, as upon God's altar, that it might be expiated in Him, and so taken away from us (cf. Isaiah 53:10). Peter means by "bare" what the Syriac expresses by two words, to bear, and to offer:
(1) He hath borne our sins laid upon Him (namely, their guilt, curse, and punishment);
(2) He hath so borne them that He offered them along with Himself on the altar.
He refers to the bullocks and goats upon which sins were first laid, and which were then offered thus laden (Vitringa). Sin among Semitic nations is considered as a burden lying upon the sinner (Gesenius).
On the tree - the cross, the proper place for the Curse-bearer. This curse stuck to Him until it was legally (through His death as the guilt-bearer) destroyed in His body: thus the handwriting of the bond against us is cancelled (Colossians 2:14). х Epi (G1909) to (G3588) xulon (G3586): He took them to the tree and offered them on it.]
That we, being dead to sins - the effect of His death to 'sin' in the aggregate, and to all particular "sins " - namely, that we should be as entirely delivered from them as a slave that is dead is delivered from service to his master х apogenomenoi (G581)]. This is our spiritual standing through faith by virtue of Christ's death: our actual mortification of sins is in proportion to the degree of our being made conformable to His death. 'That we should die to the sins whose collected guilt Christ carried away in His death, and so LIVE TO THE RIGHTEOUSNESS (cf. Isaiah 53:11), the gracious relation to God which He has brought in' (Steiger).
By whose stripes, х mooloopi (G3468)] - stripe.
Ye were healed - a paradox, yet true. 'Ye servants (cf. 1 Peter 2:20) often bear the stripe; but it is not more than He bore: learn from Him patience in wrongful sufferings.' Compare Paul at Philippi (Acts 16:23-25).