Additional note: Did Christ ‘carry our sins up to the cross’? (2:24)
Additional note: Did Christ ‘carry our sins up to the cross’? (2:24)
BAGD, p. 63, 3 surprisingly denies that anapherō can mean ‘bear’. Yet it occurs in this sense in Polybius (2nd century BC) 1.36.3 (to bear slander and false accusation for a time); 4.45.9 (to bear, endure the burden of war); Thucydides (5th century BC) 3.38.3 (the city itself bears, endures dangers); cf. LSJ, p. 125, 3: ‘uphold, take upon one’ (with specific reference to Isa. 53:12, Heb. 9:28, and other passages from classical authors). The ana- prefix in this case apparently conveys the nuance ‘bear up under’ (a burden). This is the sense in the LXX of Isaiah 53:11 and 12, where the Servant of the Lord is said to bear the sins of transgressors (cf. v. 4, where pherō, ‘bear’, is used in the same sense). Hebrews 9:28, citing Isaiah 53:12, also uses the word in this sense: ‘having been offered once to bear the sins of many’.
Deissmann, pp. 88–91 argues that anapherō followed by epi with accusative (as in 1 Pet. 2:24) cannot mean ‘bore (sins) on the tree’, for that would have required epi with dative. He suggests that the phrase meant that Christ carried our sins ‘up to the cross’. He concludes, ‘The expression thus signifies quite generally that Christ took away our sins by His death: there is no suggestion whatever of the special ideas of substitution or sacrifice’ (p. 90). Indeed, he then argues that instead of saying that Christ ‘bore’ men’s sins himself, 1 Peter 2:24 uses anapherō in the sense ‘carried and put upon someone else’, and means that Christ took our sins up to the cross and laid them ‘upon the cross’, thus transferring them from men not to himself but to the cross (p. 91).
Yet (1) Deissman was incorrect to say that ‘on the tree’ would require epi with dative, for epi with accusative can certainly mean ‘on’ with no necessary suggestion of ‘motion to a position upon’ (see 1 Pet. 4:14, ‘the spirit of glory and of God rests on you’; cf. 3:12; Mark 4:38, ‘asleep on the cushion’; also examples in BAGD, p. 288, Ill.1.a. (zēta), and the note in Beare, pp. 149–150). The use of the accusative (instead of the genitive which is found in the LXX of Deut. 21:23) may be just a stylistic change or the result of quoting from memory—it is not surprising in the light of Peter’s free citation of the LXX at several points. (2) The Isaiah 53 background to 1 Peter 2:22–25 is so clear that there must be a compelling reason to take anapherō in a sense quite different from the sense it has in Isaiah. (3) Isaiah 53 explicitly indicates the ‘bearing’ of our sin when it says, ‘The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all’ (v. 6; cf. vv. 4, 5, 8, 10). (4) While Colossians 2:14 does say the ‘bond’ against us was nailed to the cross, in that passage God the Father does this action, and certainly not instead of putting punishment on Christ (for Paul’s image of ‘nailing’ could only recall Christ’s crucifixion and imply that the bond against us was cancelled when Christ bore our punishment by being himself nailed to the cross). (5) The teaching of the rest of the New Testament would view Christ’s bearing our sins up to the cross (and putting them on the cross instead of bearing them himself) as something just as ineffectual as the placing of sins on a ‘scapegoat’ under the Old Covenant: only a man, one ‘like his brothers in every respect’, could be the sacrifice which would truly ‘make propitiation for the sins of the people’ (Heb. 2:17, NASB mg. and AV mg., cf. 7:27; 9:14, 22, 26, 28; 10:4, 10; Rom. 4:25; 2 Cor. 5:21).
It is best then to reject the suggestion that 1 Peter 2:24 means that Christ ‘carried up’ our sins to the cross. The verse affirms rather that ‘he bore our sins in his body on the tree’, suffering the penalty due to us for our sins.