Text: John 1:29-42 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
The Lamb of God
29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, for he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him; but for this I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” 32 And John bore witness, “I saw the Spirit descend as a dove from heaven, and it remained on him. 33 I myself did not know him; but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”
The First Disciples of Jesus
35 The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples; 36 and he looked at Jesus as he walked, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 Jesus turned, and saw them following, and said to them, “What do you seek?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” 39 He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying; and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. 40 One of the two who heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41 He first found his brother Simon, and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). 42 He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him, and said, “So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter[a]).
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
How would you feel if someone pointed you out in a crowd and proclaimed that you were a “lamb”? My guess is that any of us would be just a bit put off by that, if not even a little annoyed. We like calling babies and small children “little lambs” as a sign of endearment, but outside of being woolly and cute, lambs otherwise don’t get a lot of respect. When I hear the word lamb, I almost always add the word “chop” – lamb chops are one of my favorite foods.
As well, who hasn’t heard the term “sacrificial lamb”? Throughout Jewish history, it was customary to sacrifice lambs at Passover and other holidays. This custom continues up to and including the present day.
And the word “lamb” is too close to the word “sheep” in our minds, isn’t it; because what is a lamb, after all, if not a young sheep? And who likes being called a “sheep”? Whenever someone or some group is referred to as “sheep,” it’s always meant in an insulting and negative way. “They act like a bunch of sheep!” “They’re as lost as a flock of sheep!” Even the Bible uses the term in a derogatory way – the Prophet Isaiah sums up the human condition in this way: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6, KJV) There’s even a new word that has entered our vocabulary – you’ve probably heard it – “sheeple.” As you would expect, the word “sheeple” is used to describe people who act like sheep. It’s not a compliment.
So when John in his boisterous enthusiasm calls Jesus “the Lamb of God,” we have to ask just what it was that John was getting at and why he meant it as something positive.
To get to that, we have to go all the way back to Genesis. In Genesis 22:8, we read that Abraham said to Isaac that God would provide a lamb to sacrifice: “Abraham answered, ‘God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.’ And the two of them went on together.” The lamb which Abraham said God would provide is the lamb which had to be sacrificed to save Abraham’s son. Genesis 22:13 says, “Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.” (And yes, we know that a ram is a male goat and not a lamb!) In short, the ram was given by God to Abraham as a substitute for his son, Isaac.
So far, so good. Old Testament sacrifices, though, were a temporary arrangement. Sacrificing lambs was a daily occurrence in the Temple in Jerusalem, and the purpose was the same every time: The lamb was sacrificed for the sins of the people. In other words, this Lamb was a substitute sacrifice, like the ram had been in place of Isaac. So, John – who was the son of the priest Zechariah – may have had this in mind when he called Jesus the Lamb of God.
He might also have been thinking of the Passover lamb. At the time this encounter took place, the Passover was not far off, as we read in the next chapter – John 2:13). The imagery of the Passover is very striking – William Barclay writes that “[t]he old story of the Passover was that it was the blood of the slain lamb which protected the houses of the Israelites on the night when they left Egypt (Exodus 12:11-13). On that night when the Angel of Death walked abroad and slew the first-born of the Egyptians, the Israelites were to smear their doorposts with the blood of the slain lamb, and the angel, seeing it, would pass over that house. The blood of the lamb saved them from destruction…The blood of the Passover lamb delivered the Israelites from death; and it may be that John was saying: ‘There is the one true sacrifice who can deliver you from death.’ Paul too thought of Jesus as the Passover lamb (I Corinthians 5:7). There is a deliverance that only Jesus Christ can win for us.”[1]
So, in today’s lesson, John tells his hearers that Jesus is the Lamb of God, who will be the ultimate sacrifice who will take away the sins of the world, once and for all. This is known in Christianity as “substitutionary sacrifice” or “substitutionary atonement.”
The Christian website “GotQuestions.org” has this to say about Jesus as the Lamb of God: “While the idea of a sacrificial system might seem strange to us today, the concept of payment or restitution is still one we can easily understand. We know that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) and that our sin separates us from God. We also know the Bible teaches we are all sinners and none of us is righteous before God (Romans 3:23). Because of our sin, we are separated from God, and we stand guilty before Him. Therefore, the only hope we can have is if He provides a way for us to be reconciled to Himself, and that is what He did in sending His Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross. Christ died to make atonement for sin and to pay the penalty of the sins of all who believe in Him.
“It is through His death on the cross as God’s perfect sacrifice for sin and His resurrection three days later that we can now have eternal life if we believe in Him. The fact that God Himself has provided the offering that atones for our sin is part of the glorious good news of the gospel that is so clearly declared in 1 Peter 1:18-21: ‘For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.’”[2]
Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away our sins by His sacrifice on the cross. This has been a bedrock concept of the Christian faith pretty much since the beginning. This is what Christians have believed for centuries; it’s what I grew up believing, too. And I still do. But, having said that, I think there’s more here than meets the eye.
As I was wrestling with this lesson for today’s sermon, I came across an interesting post by Michael J. Kruger on the blog of something called “The Gospel Coalition.” The title of the post was “Did Early Christians Believe in Substitutionary Atonement?” Kruger writes, “Critical scholars, led by the classic work of Gustaf Aulén, have long argued that the earliest Christians did not believe that Christ died as a substitute for sinners. Instead, they say, these Christians believed what is known as the ‘Christus victor’ view of the atonement – that idea that Jesus’s death on the cross (and resurrection) conquered the Devil and other forces that held people in bondage. On this view, Christ did not die in place of rebellious sinners but instead rescued victims from a fallen world.”[3]
Although Kruger comes down in the end very strongly in the camp that says early Christians did indeed believe in substitutionary atonement – he writes that the New Testament itself, and particularly the letters of Paul, not to mention the writings of other early Christian writers, serve to refute the argument that they didn’t – nonetheless it seems to me that there’s something to be said for the idea that Jesus died on the cross, not as a willing victim, but as the Victor over the world. That, too, is a recurring theme throughout the history of Christianity, though it’s not as frequently emphasized as the theme that Jesus died for our sins.
Something that’s always nagged at me about this whole question is the idea that God had to be placated, essentially bought off, by the death of Christ, like some kind of Polynesian volcano god or the god Kali Mah in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” to prevent Him from bringing the hammer of His wrathful justice down on our heads (the stock in trade of the “fire and brimstone crowd”) seems – at least to me – to run counter to what Jesus Himself told everyone He spoke to about the nature of God. The vengeful, wrathful, jealous God – the kind of God who floods the whole earth, wiping out just about everything and everybody in the process, owing to the defiance of a chosen few; the kind of God who is not shy about turning a woman into a pillar of salt essentially just because she was curious; the kind of God who causes a man to be swallowed by a whale simply because he’s being defiant; this kind of God strikes me as being quite at odds with the God Jesus talked about.
The first words of the Lord’s Prayer, as one major example, are “Our Father, who art in heaven.” Addressing God as “Father” is actually a mistranslation. There are numerous references even in the Old Testament where God is described as a Father, and sometimes even addressed as a father;[4] but Jesus, when He taught His disciples to pray, taught them to pray to God as Abba, which was the word for “Daddy.” That is a child’s word. It is the word a child uses to name that strange Person who disappears for hours every day but is always there to read them stories and tuck them into bed at night; the name for that person who holds their hand and keeps them safe when crossing a busy street; the name for that man who plays catch with them in the back yard, who takes them fishing and to ball games. Daddy. No one else in the entire history of the world had ever done that before, had ever used “Abba” to name God. That is the kind of deeply personal, loving, and intimate relationship Jesus had with God, and which He wants each and every one of us to have with God, too. And so you see the potential disconnect here – it’s kind of hard to have that kind of a relationship if you’re afraid that, at any given moment, that same Person might turn you into a container of kosher salt or throw you overboard as fish food!
Then there are all those examples of Jesus healing the sick, raising the dead, like His friend, Lazarus, showing compassion to people who had long since given up hope of ever again experiencing compassion; examples like the Sermon on the Mount, where He in essence tells those poor, downtrodden, and suffering people in the crowd that God is on their side; examples like going out of His way to visit a Samaritan woman and tell her that the Living Water was hers for the asking, too. And so many others. These are not acts you would expect a vengeful, wrathful God to do. But they are definitely the kinds of things you would expect a loving, caring, and forgiving God to do.
So where does all that leave us with our image of Jesus the Lamb of God? Our old friend, William Barclay, helps us out here: “There is a …. picture [of the Lamb of God] which would be very familiar to the Jews, although very strange to us. Between the Old and New Testaments there were the days of the great struggles of the Maccabees. In those days the lamb, and especially the horned lamb, was the symbol of a great conqueror. Judas Maccabaeus is so described, as are Samuel and David and Solomon. The lamb – strange as it may sound to us – stood for the conquering champion of God. It may well be that this is no picture of gentle and helpless weakness, but rather a picture of conquering majesty and power. Jesus was the champion of God who fought against sin and mastered it in single combat.”[5]
The takeaway today for me, at least, is that, though Jesus’ sacrifice on that Cross as the Lamb of God was indeed to take away the sins of the world, it was far more than that, too: This loving Daddy not only took our sins upon Himself in the person of Jesus, but by that act also covered us, as with a warm blanket that keeps out the cold, with His own righteousness. What does that righteousness do? It hides, blots out, our sins. As Kruger puts it, “It ‘makes upright’ the lawless. And this happens in a ‘sweet exchange.’”[6] It exchanges sin for righteousness, hopelessness for hope, and death for life.
Jesus, the Lamb of God is Christus Victor indeed!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Barclay, William, The Gospel of John, Volume I, The New Daily Study Bible, Louisville, KY, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001, p. 95
[2] https://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-Lamb-of-God.html
[3] Kruger, Michael, “Did Early Christians Believe in Substitutionary Atonement?”, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/did-early-christians-believe-in-substitutionary-atonement
[4] https://biblethingsinbibleways.wordpress.com/2013/12/29/was-god-known-as-father-in-the-old-testament/
[5] Barclay, p. 96
[6] Kruger, Michael, “Did Early Christians Believe in Substitutionary Atonement?”, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/did-early-christians-believe-in-substitutionary-atonement