1 Peter 2:24-25, “He Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds, you have been healed. For your were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”
If you trace the parallelism of this verse, the healing worked by the wounding of the Lord is analogous to our soul’s return to their Shepherd and Overseer. That is beautiful. What is the HEALING that the work of Christ brings to His people? Most essentially, it is the healing of reconciled fellowship with a person. Ultimately, to be healed is to be embraced by the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls…..to be healed is to belong to another, to God in Christ.
Might we, at the risk of over sentimentality, say that to be healed is to be held? To be held by Him for whom our souls were created, to be carried by the Shepherd (Is.40:10), to be encompassed by our Soul’s Caretaker and Overseer, to belong to and be hidden in the person for whom we exist….THIS is true healing. Yes, healing is a person.
This, in turn, means that spiritual woundedness, sickness, brokenness, etc. is most essentially and profoundly separation from Him for whom we exist….separation from the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls. Just as our healing is ultimately a matter of fellowship with a person, so too our brokenness is ultimately a matter of severed relationship with a person.
All people are stricken with the wound of separation from God…This wound is overcome only by the wounds of the risen Christ; wounds through which our sin is cleansed, our punishment is swallowed, our God is revealed, and we are gathered home to Him for whom our souls—and all things—exist.
