4. The lamb of God

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Now that Our Lord had mastered the supreme temptation to become the King of men by filling their stomachs, by thrilling them with scientific wonders, and by making a political deal with the prince of darkness, He was ready to go before the world as a sacrificial victim for sin. After the long fast and trial, angels came and ministered unto Him. Then He returned to the Jordan and mingled, for a while unnoticed, in the crowd that surrounded the Baptist. On the previous day, John had spoken of Our Lord to a deputation of priests and Levites from the temple of Jerusalem, who had come to ask, “Who art thou?” They knew the time was ripe for the coming of Christ or the Messias, hence their pointed query. But John told them “he was not the Christ.” He was merely the Voice announcing the Word. As Christ refused titles of external power, so also John refused titles which the Pharisees were willing to confer on him, even the greatest, that he was the One sent by God.

The next day Our Lord was in the crowd, and John saw Him at a distance. Immediately, John reached back into the Jewish heritage of symbol and prophecy, known to all his hearers.

Look, this is the Lamb of God;

Look, this is He Who

Takes away the sin of the world.

JOHN 1:29

John was affirming that we must not look first for a teacher, a giver of moral precepts, or a worker of miracles. First we must look for One Who had been appointed as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. The Passover was approaching, and the highways were filled with people driving or carrying their one-year-old lambs to the temple to be sacrificed. In full view of those lambs, John pointed out the Lamb Who, when sacrificed, would end all sacrifices in the temple, because He would take away the sins of the world.

John was the parting voice of the Old Testament, in which the lamb played such an important role. In Genesis, we find Abel offering a lamb, the firstling of his flock, in a bloody sacrifice for the expiation of sin. Later on, God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac—a prophetic symbol of the Heavenly Father sacrificing His own Son. When Isaac asked, “Where is the lamb?” Abraham said:

My son, God will see to it

That there is a lamb to be sacrificed.

GENESIS 22:8

The answer to the question, “Where is the lamb of sacrifice?” asked in the beginning of Genesis, was now answered by John the Baptist as he pointed to Christ and said, “Here is the Lamb of God.” God had at last provided a Lamb. The Cross that had been defended in the wilderness during the temptations was now showing itself over the Jordan.

Every family sought to have its own Paschal Lamb; and those who were now taking their lambs to Jerusalem, where the Lamb of God said that He must be sacrificed, knew that the lamb was a symbol of Israel’s deliverance from the political slavery of Egypt. John was saying that it was also a symbol of deliverance from the spiritual slavery of sin. The Lamb would come in the form of a man; for the prophet Isaias had foretold:

And God laid on His shoulders our guilt,

The guilt of us all. A victim?

Yet He Himself bows to the stroke;

No word comes from Him.

ISAIAS 53:7

The lamb was most often used as a victim of sacrifice, because of its innocence and mildness; therefore, it was an emblem most suited to the character of the Messias. The fact that John the Baptist called Him the Lamb of God is most significant; He was neither the peoples’ lamb, nor the lamb of the Jews, nor the lamb of any human owner, but the Lamb of God. When the Lamb was finally sacrificed, it was not because He was a victim of those who were stronger than Himself, but rather because He was fulfilling His willing duty of love for sinners. It was not man who offered this sacrifice, although it was man who slew the victim; it was God Who gave Himself.

Peter, who was a disciple of John and who probably was there that day, would later on make clearer the meaning of “the Lamb” when he wrote:

What was the ransom that freed you….

You know well enough that it was not paid

In earthly currency, silver or gold;

It was paid in the Precious Blood of Christ;

No Lamb was ever so pure, so spotless a Victim.

I PETER 1:18

After the Resurrection and Ascension, the Apostle Philip encountered a courier of the Queen of Ethiopia. The courier had been reading a passage from the prophet Isaias which foretold the Lamb:

He was led away like a sheep to be slaughtered;

Like a lamb that is dumb before its shearer;

He would not open His mouth.

ACTS 8:32

Philip explained to him that this Lamb had just been sacrificed and had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven. St. John the Evangelist, who too was at the Jordan that day (for he was one of John the Baptist’s disciples), later stood at the foot of the Cross when the Lamb was sacrificed. Years later, he wrote that the Lamb slain on Calvary was by intent slain from the beginning of the world. The Cross was not an afterthought.

The Lamb slain in sacrifice

Ever since the world was made.

APOCALYPSE 13:8

This means that the Lamb was slain, as it were, by Divine decree from all eternity, though the temporal fulfillment had to await Calvary. His death was according to God’s eternal plan and God’s determinate counsel. But the principle of self-sacrificing love was eternal. Redemption was in the mind of God before the foundation of the world was laid. God, Who is outside time, saw from all eternity mankind falling, and being redeemed. The earth itself would be the stage for this great event. The lamb was the eternal antetype of every sacrifice. When the Hour of the Cross came and the centurion ran his spear into Our Lord’s side, then was fulfilled the Old Testament prophecy.

Toward Me they shall look,

Me Whom they have pierced through.

ZACHARIAS 12:10

The phrase which John the Baptist used to describe how the Lamb of God would “take away” the sins of the world is one which is parallel in Hebrew and in Greek; Leviticus describes the scapegoat which

Will carry away all their sins into a land uninhabited

Set at large in the desert.

LEVITICUS 16:22

As the scapegoat on which sins were laid was driven out of the city, so the Lamb of God Who really took away sins would be driven from the City of Jerusalem.

Thus, the Lamb which God promised to provide Abraham for his sacrifice, and all the subsequent lambs and goats offered by Jews and pagans throughout history, derived their value from the Lamb of God Who stood before John. Here it was not Our Lord who was prophesying the Cross; rather it was the Old Testament through John, declaring Him to be a Divinely appointed sacrifice for sin and the only remover of human guilt.

The Israelites had long realized that forgiveness of sin was in some way connected with sacrificial offerings; therefore, they came to suppose that there was some inherent virtue in the victim. Sin was in the blood; hence, blood had to be shed. No wonder then, that when the Victim had been offered on Calvary and had risen from the dead, He reaffirmed how necessary it was for Him to suffer. To apply the merits of that redemptive blood to ourselves became the theme of the New Testament. In the Old Testament, when the lambs were sacrificed, some of the blood was sprinkled on the people. When the Lamb of God came to be sacrificed, some asked again for the sprinkling of the blood, in a horribly ironical way!

His blood be upon us and upon our children.

MATTHEW 27:25

But millions of others would also find glory because of the sprinkling of the Blood of the Lamb. John the Evangelist later on described them in eternal glory.

Then I heard, in my vision, the voices of a multitude of angels,

Standing on every side of the throne,

Where the living figures and the elders were

In thousands of thousands, crying aloud,

Power and Godhead, wisdom and strength,

Honour and glory and blessing are His by right,

The Lamb that was slain.

And every creature in heaven and on earth,

And under the earth, and on the sea, and all that is in it,

I heard crying out together, Blessing and honour

And glory and power, through endless ages,

To Him Who sits on the Throne, and to the Lamb.

APOCALYPSE 5:11–14

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