‘He carried our sins’ (1 Peter 2.24). What could be clearer? We know exactly what it means when we see the family car full of family, camping equipment and say ‘That’s a big load.’ Or we see the early daffodils being packed into the jet to reach the market in a few hours. Ot we see Christopher carrying the stranger through the flood. Surely if we understand those carrying cases, we can make sense of what Peter is saying. Perhaps. Perhaps not.
It’s not quite the same thing. We’re not talking about a physical load, a pile of books, perhaps or a packing case. We are talking about a question that needs answering and an action that needs taking, though that may come to involve a physical load amongst other things. If I remember correctly ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ ends with a casualty being carried to a dressing station, though the man carrying his mate now becomes aware he is carrying a dead body.
The kind of responsibility Peter is talking about is the shadow in human nature. If we say it is what disfigures our personalities and has done so through the centuries, we shall not be far out. The word ‘sin’ had a designation of this kind once. But it has now become redundant. You can’t have sin without a Maker who is content only with the perfect product. If he originated the whole cosmos a word like ‘sin’ is needed to put the thing in its extensive context.
We may say that Jesus carried the universal burden. He faced the outstanding shortcoming of God’s creatures. He intended to put things right. Not affected himself, he gave himself to the task. As the hymn says: ‘There was no other good enough/ To pay the price of sin./He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in.’ That, of course, needs verification and we look for it in the distant or near future as did Frances Alexander in her clear-cut narrative hymn. As for its punitive or forensic nature, we have to see that the Maker brought into being a moral arena in which such issues are to be settled. That does not mean that the Maker is interested only in right and wrong or good and evil. He has a concern for beauty, for harmony, for order, for the welcoming of those rebels who return to their Father.
Here is a load beyond our bearing. Christianity is the story of that load being taking up by the only one capable of dealing with it. So Christians believe.
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