NOTES for Pe1 2:24

Speaking about the Savior's earthly ministry, Peter, like the other apostles, pays special attention to His death on the cross. He sees the meaning of precisely this death in the fact that it made possible for the faithful complete deliverance from the power of sin, opening righteousness to them in all its fullness. What does he mean?

Of course, by this time the Jewish people already knew well the examples of righteous people who ended their lives as martyrs, and many of those examples belonged to comparatively recent times. Each such example became a living testimony that righteousness is more important than life; that the main question of human life is not how long one lives - and not even whether one lives or dies - but how one lives and how one dies. And Jesus' death on the cross was a perfect proof of this, especially since, unlike an ordinary fallen human being, death was not inevitable for Him at all: He made His choice free from the thought that sooner or later He would have to die - a thought that makes the prospect of a soon martyr's end easier for some people.

But if Jesus' martyr's death had simply been the death of a righteous man and witness, it would have differed in no way from the death of those who died for their righteousness or for their testimony long before His coming into the world. Such a death can be an example for others, but it cannot free anyone from sin, which in our fallen world weighs upon everyone. The point, however, is that Jesus died not simply as a witness of the Kingdom. He died for the sake of the Kingdom He brought into the world. Had He refused His earthly path (and in a fallen world that path inevitably had to end in violent death), the Kingdom would not have entered our world and would have remained alien to it. Then, of course, there would be no question of any victory over sin or any fullness of righteousness. Then nothing in the world would have changed at all; even today it would remain what it had been for many millennia before Christ's coming.

And the apostle, of course, understands this perfectly. He understands who Jesus is and what He has done. And he reminds the recipients of his letter of this, because without such understanding there is no Christianity.