We were like Sheep Gone Astray

Peter uses the phrase "by whose stripes ye were healed" to summarize and label all the work of Christ in saving and sanctifying His people by His cross-work.

We are healed by Jesus bearing our sins in His Own body on the tree, resulting in our being dead to sin and alive to righteousness. Our crimes are imputed to Christ, and His perfection is imputed to us.

But next, Peter continues to quote from Isaiah 53 when he adds, "for ye were as sheep going astray."

This was our former condition, from which Christ's stripes have healed us!

Sheep wander away, conduct foolish investigations into dangerous things, are disobedient and stubborn and cantankerous, and become lost and in great danger.

That is why we have fences, and sheep dogs, and shepherds.

Note the gentleness of the Biblical metaphor used to describe God's lost people gone astray. It is a kindly, helpless, melancholy description of real danger to the sheep.

We are foolish, rebellious, and disobedient to God in our lost conduct.

The metaphor of sheep and shepherds is widely used in the Old Testament to picture the Lord's people. No doubt Israel loved this metaphor, because it gives comfort to know that God is so concerned with our well being.

Mostly in the Old Testament, the blame for why the sheep are scattered and lost and endangered is placed upon wicked rulers, false prophets, and foreign despots.

It is comforting to think that our wandering and lostness is someone else's fault!

This is emphasized in Ezekiel 34, where the Lord denounces the false shepherds, and promises to send a good shepherd, David's descendant, to rescue His sheep, heal them, guard them, and feed them!