Lamb of God
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
John 1:29
-A Christian term for Jesus first used in the Gospel of John. It carries out the image of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus as a new Passover : a lamb was killed for the Jewish Passover, and Jesus himself, In the sacrifice of his death and Resurrection, is the lamb for the new Passover.
Dictionary.com
A lamb. The idea seems crazy to us today: Sacrificing an animal in exchange for our wrong doings, our sins.
Yet from the earliest of Jewish culture, the sacrifice of lambs played a significant part in everyday life, including Passover (See Exodus 12) and daily temple sacrifice (see Exodus 29:38-410).
The ancient prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah predicted and called Jesus the Lamb of God:
I was like a lamb being led to the slaughter. Jeremiah 11:19a NLT
He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth. Isaiah 53:7 NASB
It is hard to get our heads around it: The God of the Universe placed His son, this perfect lamb, on an altar (the cross) to die. The ultimate sacrifice for our wrongs.
This perfect One in place of imperfect us.
And what about us?Continue Reading