Christ was an example for us, for we are called to His path, and to follow His steps. The consideration of Christ in all the glory of His perfection cannot fail to have its effect on us, conforming our thoughts and ways to His. Yet even so, we are not as He was, for we have sins and He had none. We needed, therefore, the atoning sacrifice of which verse 24 speaks. He who did no sin “bore our sins in His body on the tree.” This is something altogether beyond us. We cannot follow in His steps here.

Every part of this wonderful verse deserves our most careful attention. He himself became the sin-bearer, and no other. He bore our sins. Isaiah 53 had said He should bear our griefs and carry our sorrows, but it also predicted that He would be “wounded for our transgressions” and “bruised for our iniquities,” and be stricken for “the transgression of My people,” and His soul be made “an offering for sin.” These sins were ours, for the verse definitely speaks of the work of Christ, not in its Godward aspect as propitiating Him, but in its believer-ward aspect as bearing the sins of the believer, not the sins of everybody.

He bore our sins in His own body as our Substitute. We had sinned in our bodies. He, having become a true Man, apart from sin, bore our sins in His holy body as a sacrifice for sin on the tree, for it was exclusively in His death that atonement was effected. He did not bear our sins during His life, but in His death, and we are healed by His stripes. He bore our sins and delivered us from the stripes our sins deserved, in order that we should now live unto practical righteousness.