“The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’” (John 1:29).
The air was thick with anticipation on the banks of the Jordan River. Each person who went to see John the Baptist had their own theory about which part of Scripture was coming to life. The differing opinions on John were why the priests and Levites came all the way from Jerusalem to observe his ministry (John 1:19-28).
At first, they thought he might be the Christ. If so, the Jewish people would have a king who could challenge the Roman occupation. Or perhaps he was Elijah from the Book of Malachi — John certainly dressed and acted like Elijah. If that was the case, then the Day of the Lord was coming, where God would judge between the righteous and wicked. Or maybe John was the Prophet from Deuteronomy, and Israel could expect a new version of Moses.
John appears to be as confused as everyone else. He denied that he was Elijah even though Jesus said he was (Matthew 11:13-14), and he had a crisis of faith when Jesus did not act like John expected (Luke 7:18-19). It seems that even John was unsure where he fit in the plan and which part of the Scripture was coming to life.
Everyone expected something to happen, but what? Then Jesus stepped through the crowd, and John erupted with the answer: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
Whatever the people were expecting, none of them would have guessed that God was going to provide a lamb of his own. But that’s what John had said. Jesus was the Lamb of God!
Lambs in the Old Testament
Lambs are everywhere in the Old Testament. They are used in sacrifices, at festivals, and as literary devices. In fact, priests sacrificed a lamb every morning and evening in the temple, just to make sure God remained in their midst (Exodus 29:38-43). But nowhere does God sacrifice a lamb. The very idea would be scandalous.
Sacrifices were the job of the people, not God. The people were the guilty ones. They needed to be accepted, so the work of sacrifice fell to them. And work it was. Leviticus 1:3-9 describes what it took to offer a sacrifice in the tent of meeting. It involved killing your animal, skinning it, carving up the meat, and washing its intestines. It was as exhausting as it was humiliating, but that was the price of sin.
Everyone on the banks of the Jordan had borne that burden. They knew the cost of their sin because they probably gagged every time they made a sacrifice. But if God was presenting a lamb, then it meant he would do the exhausting and humiliating work himself. What’s more, it meant that God’s Lamb—his very own Son—would be put in the place of the guilty.
Though the people brought plenty of expectations to the Jordan River, none of them could have imagined the good news that John announced. They did not have a category for it. They had their theories about Isaiah 53 — the righteous person who was stricken by God and numbered with the transgressors — but no one read it and concluded that the passage was about God.
Yet it was happening before their very eyes. Jesus had come to the Jordan River to receive a baptism for the forgiveness of sins. From our vantage point, we know that those were our sins, not his. Jesus was perfect, yet he prayed psalms that confessed sins and offered guilt offerings in the temple. Slowly, and ever so quietly, the Lamb was already taking upon himself the sin of the world. Golgotha was just the climax.
The Final Lamb
A new Moses and a new king would be ineffective as long as people kept sacrificing old lambs. Hebrews calls those offerings a mere “shadow of the good things to come” (Hebrews 10:1). They could never actually atone for sin, says the author of Hebrews, because it was “impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:3-4). Those lambs offered every morning and evening in the temple did not actually ensure the presence of God. They were a reminder, not a solution.
John’s declaration meant that God was completely reordering the relationship with his people. God was going to let his Son take on the people’s sin so that they could receive his righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). He was going to do what the law could not (Romans 8:3). That’s why the temple veil was eventually ripped in two and Jesus’ followers quit making sacrifices there. The final Lamb had come.
It is hard to imagine being at the Jordan River that day and watching the scene unfold, having more questions than answers. The people, of course, were not wrong to expect a king and new Moses; Jesus is both. But they were not thinking big enough. Jesus embodied the entire sacrificial system as well. Or, as John put it: Jesus is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
Reed Dunn serves as the pastor of Redeemer Hudson in Union City, New Jersey.