The True Significance of Jesus
Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. John 1:29.
People have said many things about Jesus, but none have been more insightful or important than the short sentence of the Baptist as he saw Jesus coming over a rise: "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (RSV). The next day he again called Him "the Lamb of God" (verse 36).
That phrase may not mean much to those of us in the twenty-first century. Many of us have never even seen a real lamb. And none of us has ever sacrificed one. But for John's listeners it was a phrase pregnant with meaning.
Their minds would have gone back to the Jerusalem Temple, the tabernacle in the wilderness, and the book of Leviticus, which sets forth the centrality of the sacrifice of innocent lambs to foreshadow the events that would eventually transpire on Calvary where Jesus would die "once for all" (Heb. 10:10, 14) as the real Lamb of God for the salvation of all humanity.
The Old Testament sacrificial system was essentially substitutionary. Sinners brought their sacrificial animals before the Lord, laid their hands on the animals' heads, and confessed their sins, thereby symbolically transferring them to the animals that were to die as offerings in their place.
It appears that through time the Israelites lost the full impact of the significance of the sacrificial system as the multitude of repetitions dulled their sensitivity to what was taking place. But for Adam and Eve, who had never seen death, the impact must have been crushing. With every pulsation of the cut arteries in the lamb's neck would come the powerful message that "the wages of sin is death," that the lamb had died in their place and for their sins.
If we moderns are disgusted by such a teaching, just think how much more so is the teaching of the New Testament that Jesus, the eternal God, is the Lamb of God who died to take "away the sins of the world." The reality of that shed blood stands at the foundation of all the metaphors of salvation in the New Testament, including redemption (Eph. 1:7), justification (Rom. 5:9), reconciliation (Col. 1:20), propitiation (Rom. 3:25), and cleansing (Heb. 9:23).
John's teaching that Jesus is "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" provides the very foundation of the gospel and Christianity.
Without that Lamb we would still be lost in our sins and subject to the death that He took on Himself. Praise God for the Lamb!
Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. John 1:29.
People have said many things about Jesus, but none have been more insightful or important than the short sentence of the Baptist as he saw Jesus coming over a rise: "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (RSV). The next day he again called Him "the Lamb of God" (verse 36).
That phrase may not mean much to those of us in the twenty-first century. Many of us have never even seen a real lamb. And none of us has ever sacrificed one. But for John's listeners it was a phrase pregnant with meaning.
Their minds would have gone back to the Jerusalem Temple, the tabernacle in the wilderness, and the book of Leviticus, which sets forth the centrality of the sacrifice of innocent lambs to foreshadow the events that would eventually transpire on Calvary where Jesus would die "once for all" (Heb. 10:10, 14) as the real Lamb of God for the salvation of all humanity.
The Old Testament sacrificial system was essentially substitutionary. Sinners brought their sacrificial animals before the Lord, laid their hands on the animals' heads, and confessed their sins, thereby symbolically transferring them to the animals that were to die as offerings in their place.
It appears that through time the Israelites lost the full impact of the significance of the sacrificial system as the multitude of repetitions dulled their sensitivity to what was taking place. But for Adam and Eve, who had never seen death, the impact must have been crushing. With every pulsation of the cut arteries in the lamb's neck would come the powerful message that "the wages of sin is death," that the lamb had died in their place and for their sins.
If we moderns are disgusted by such a teaching, just think how much more so is the teaching of the New Testament that Jesus, the eternal God, is the Lamb of God who died to take "away the sins of the world." The reality of that shed blood stands at the foundation of all the metaphors of salvation in the New Testament, including redemption (Eph. 1:7), justification (Rom. 5:9), reconciliation (Col. 1:20), propitiation (Rom. 3:25), and cleansing (Heb. 9:23).
John's teaching that Jesus is "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" provides the very foundation of the gospel and Christianity.
Without that Lamb we would still be lost in our sins and subject to the death that He took on Himself. Praise God for the Lamb!
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