Healed by Jesus’ Stripes

1 Peter 2:24:
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.

When we think of Christ’s atonement, we usually think of His suffering on the cross.  However, His atonement did not start there.  Before Jesus went to the cross, He had already been whipped viciously by the Romans.  He was so weak from this that He could not even carry His cross all the way to His crucifixion site.  The lashes laid on Jesus were part of the punishment for our sin that He had to bear.

We were healed by the whipping inflicted upon Jesus.  How could His bruises heal us?  He was bearing the physical part of the curse for breaking the Law in His body as our Substitute.  This frees us from having to bear the curse for breaking the Law (which includes all sickness and disease) in our bodies.

If Jesus were not supposed to provide physical healing for us, He could have just hung on the cross and shed His blood for our forgiveness.  He would not have had to endure the scourge that brought physical healing to us.  The only explicitly stated benefit of the scourging that came before His crucifixion is healing.  This is really where His body was broken, more so than on the cross.  This is the act commemorated by the bread when we partake of the Lord’s Supper.

Jesus did more than shed His blood for us.  He had to allow His body to be broken for us.  We celebrate both when we partake of the Lord’s Supper.  We should walk in the benefit of His broken body (healing) as well as the benefit of His shed blood (forgiveness).  He was WOUNDED for our transgressions and BRUISED for our iniquities (Isaiah 53:5).  He did not just shed blood for our sins; He had to be PHYSICALLY punished on our behalf.  But because He bore our physical punishment for sin, He relieved us from having to be physically punished for sin.  Our bodies are now redeemed from sickness and pain because of what He did.