“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.” (1 Peter 2:24). Often when I imagine Christ “bearing” or “carrying” our sins, I imagine Him staggering under the weight of the world, like Atlas, carrying our burdens in His mighty arms. But in this verse Peter talks about Christ bearing our sins “in his own body.” That makes me think much more of Him carrying our sins the way one might carry an infectious disease. After all, sin is often compared to a sickness that gets inside of us and robs us of our strength. And it would make sense, then, that Christ would take the infectious disease of sin into His own body so that He could learn at the cellular level on how to succor and heal us. An antiserum is an infusion of antibody-rich blood taken from a host who has survived infection and developed an immunity and donated to another to develop a passive immunity so that they will not get sick from the disease. When we take upon us the blood of Christ, we can be cleansed of sin as we allow the antibodies of Christ’s blood to teach our own immune system how to resist the deleterious effects of sin. Whatever mistake we have made or evil we have done, Christ has allowed Himself to be infected with that exact disease of the soul, taking it into His own body so that He can develop immunity and donate to us an antiserum of His blood so that we can be cleansed of our sins and resist any future temptations. The more often that we repent and transfuse ourselves with our Savior’s blood, the more fully we become immune to the temptations of this world. I hope we can all return again and again to the Savior to receive the Antiserum that He has prepared for us so that we no longer have to try to recover on our own from the disease of sin.
