Hywel George
In the Judean wilderness, John the Baptist was preaching and baptising when he saw Jesus approaching and cried, “Behold! The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
Imagine the crowd in earshot of John. Did they understand his words? To what was John referring when he called Jesus “the Lamb of God”?
Exodus 12
For Goshen’s Israelites, the week leading to the first Passover was surreal. Moses told them to each take a lamb into their homes. Jewish tradition says that the lambs were tied to a bedpost in the house.1 The lambs were perfect, healthy, and clean—nothing was wrong with them at all (Exod 12:5). These lambs to be sacrificed to the Lord were flawless and acceptable offerings. Already, New Testament readers recognise something of Jesus, the acceptable sacrifice (Eph 5:2).
To witness the Passover, one would have to loiter a while because the lambs weren’t sacrificed straight away; they were kept for four days before the feast (Exod 12:3, 6). There is much speculation about why the lambs were kept for four days, including potential parallels with the four days between Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and crucifixion.2
The number four often represents a probationary period in Scripture, usually multiplied by ten.3 At the very least, our fathers had to look at their lamb for four days, contemplating what was going to happen.4 In their homes, perhaps Mams and Dads watched their firstborns play with the lamb and had to think, “Do I believe this? Will the blood of this lamb save my family? Will I trust the sacrifice the Lord has provided?” One can’t be certain, but we may wonder whether, by these four long days of anticipation, the Lord tested and strengthened the faith of our fathers. The same test is put to Israelites annually hereafter: in re-living the first Passover, they re-live the test. “Will I trust the sacrifice which the Lord has provided?” This is wrapped up in John’s pronouncement: Look at the Lamb of God! Will you trust the sacrifice which the Lord has provided?
As darkness encroached on Egypt, the lambs were slain. Having spread the blood on the doorposts and lintel of their homes, our forefathers roasted the lambs, ate their bodies, and burned up the remains so that nothing was left. Goshen went from having innocent lambs everywhere to not a trace of them overnight. The lambs were totally consumed in fires because they were a total substitute for the firstborn, completely paying the price and redeeming them (Exod 13:12ff). We don’t go too far to see our gospel again. Jesus, the Lamb of God, covers his people with his blood and is totally burned up in the perfect wrath of our Father like these paschal lambs—the sinner’s substitute.
Shortly after the Passover was the exodus itself, and this marked a sort of second birthday—a new birth—for the people of God.5 Passover marks the emergence of a new people, a new nation, separate and holy. The lives and times of our forefathers were now recalibrated and reoriented around the lamb’s sacrifice (Exod 12:2).
This is where the “Lamb of God” title breaches beyond atonement. The people of God are liberated by the Lamb of God from slavery to pilgrimage, freedom, and the kingdom of God. The Lamb of God brings the Israelites out of Egypt, into the wilderness, and on to the Promised Land (Jude 5). The same Lamb brings Christians out of bondage and into new life, following Jesus all the way home. Coming to faith in Jesus is not the end of a quest for forgiveness but the beginning of a new life in him; our existence and times are focussed around him now.
Looking at Exod 12, we see the Lamb of God: a perfect sacrifice to trust in, foreshadowing Jesus, around whom all our lives must now be centred. Trust in the sacrifice of Jesus saves us from slavery to sin and propels us into a radically different and privileged life following him.
Leviticus 16
The Day of Atonement features five special sacrifices, but only four are killed. The high priest is instructed to choose two goats for sin offerings. One, with echoes of Passover, is slaughtered at the door of the Tabernacle and its blood applied to cover the sins of the Lord’s people (Lev 16:19). The other, a scapegoat, is treated uniquely among the sacrifices. The sins of the people are confessed onto the head of the scapegoat which then “bears away” the sins of the Lord’s people into the wilderness, never to be seen again.
A substitute for sinners, the goat is exiled. When John the Baptist would call Jesus the “Lamb of God” all those years later, was he thinking of Leviticus 16? There is no lamb in Leviticus 16, but it is surely no mistake that John deliberately uses that gracious phrase “who bears away the sins of the world.”
As with the Passover, there is more to the ritual of the scapegoat than expiation, remission, or atonement.6 The reason the Day of Atonement was given was to cover sin and consecrate the people and Tabernacle so that God and Israel might live together; in short, it was for the perpetuation of Israel’s new life with God.
Recall the context of Leviticus 16, when the high priest’s sons were killed before the Lord (v. 1). How can the Lord and humans live together when even the mediators are consumed in his presence?7 To this question, the text essentially gives the answer, “Behold the scapegoat of God, which bears away the sins of the people.” By this offering, not only are sins covered and carried away, but the way is made for new life with God.
Numbers 28
Not just annual events but daily life for Israel was reoriented around the sacrifice of lambs. In the tabernacle and temple, two lambs were sacrificed every day. Four on Sabbaths, nine on the first of every month and holy days, sixteen on some holy days! That makes one thousand and eighty-six lambs per year, not including individual and voluntary sacrifices. Surely, such a vivid image and constant feature of Israelite culture was at least partly in the mind of John the Baptist at his pronouncement. When John called Jesus the Lamb of God, the nearest sacrifice for his hearers to recall was that very morning.
Sacrificial lambs were a point of reference for daily life. Rabbis later interpreted that the morning sacrifice was to atone for the sins of the night before and the evening sacrifice to atone for the day gone, that God’s people would be sinless ever before him.8 Though the Passover was ritually remembered only once a year, through the regular burnt offerings the same truths of cleansing and consecration were re-lived daily. God’s mercies were new every morning as he provided a lamb to enable Israel’s ongoing communion and life in his presence.
Isaiah 53
The servant songs of Isaiah are often cited as the source of John’s declaration about Jesus.9 In chapter 53, the Christ is presented as one who will suffer under the judgement of God for the sins of his people; but for Isaiah, this substitution may not be as novel as it first seems. Throughout the song, Isaiah makes repeated allusions to what has gone before.10
The Christ is described like a sheep to the slaughter in v. 7, even as a sin offering in v. 10, reminiscent of Exod 12 and Lev 16. In v. 4, the prophet says that the Christ will vicariously bear the sins of his people using the same word for “bearing” (נשׂא) as Moses did in Lev 16:22. In vv. 5–6, Isaiah again borrows from Lev 16:22 to say that the Christ suffers for the “iniquities” (עָוֹן) of others. It makes sense, then, to find that the Christ will “sprinkle” the nations (נזה, Isa 52:15) as the high priest did the tabernacle on the Day of Atonement.
Having sung about the Christ’s atoning sacrifice, Isaiah sings of the effects: a new relationship of peace with a propitiated God and a new life walking with him (Isa 54–55). The slaughter of sacrificial lambs throughout the Old Testament concerns not just salvation but communion, not just remission but redemption, the beginning and perpetuation of life with God in Jesus.
John 1
Jesus is positively identified by John as “the Lamb of God.” So, what is John thinking? What passages is he recalling?
Having briefly considered how intimately connected the likes of Exodus 12, Leviticus 16, and Isaiah 53 are, it seems a tad naïve to narrow it down to one. John can hardly allude to one without calling on the others, too. John declares that Jesus is the Passover lamb, the scapegoat, the lamb of daily sacrifices, the one who would be led like a lamb to the slaughter that he might make many to be accounted righteous. Jesus is the atoning, substitutionary propitiation for the Lord’s people.
John adds that Jesus takes away the sin of the world—bearing away the iniquity like the goat of Lev 16, like the servant of Isa 53. The Greek term John uses (αἴρω) means something like to lift up and carry away. That is a dynamic image: the spotless Lamb of God, coming to the sin of rebellious humanity, stooping, taking hold of it with pure hands, and heaving it onto his own shoulders. Jesus does not just subtract, delete, or make guilt disappear. He lifts it up and carries it away himself, as far as the east is from the west.
Like his fellow prophets before him, John wraps up more in the pronouncement than Jesus’ great expiatory work. Passover marked the beginning of a pilgrimage following the Lord. The Day of Atonement perpetuated that new relationship with God. Isaiah sang about the new life won by the Lamb for his people. And John expects the same fulfilled here.
Pointing at Jesus and naming him the Lamb, John tells the people to behold and follow him (John 1:35–37). The Apostle Andrew is exemplary here. Once a disciple of John the Baptist, he beholds the Lamb of God and follows him instead (John 1:40). In so doing, Andrew is in step with the Lord’s faithful people down the ages, reorienting his existence around the sacrifice the Lord has provided and pressing in to new life in Jesus.
When John famously declared Jesus to be the Lamb of God, he was drawing on centuries of significance. He preached that Jesus is the perfect sacrifice provided by the Father to atone for the sins of his people. John called all people everywhere to look to Jesus as their only hope of forgiveness. But in looking to him, the Lord’s people are not simply forgiven. They embark on a new life of restored fellowship—communion in God’s holy presence—upheld, sustained, and ever provided for in Jesus, the author and perfecter of their faith.
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Eph 5:1–2)
Hywel George is a Pastor from Wales, United Kingdom and a student at Union School of Theology. You can follow him on Twitter @_HywelGeorge.
Image: Francisco de Zurbarán, Agnus Dei
- m. Kelim 19:2.[↩]
- Henry, Bede, and Law parallel these days with Jesus’ on the Temple Mount. Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible (Peabody: Hedrickson, 2012), 87. Bede the Venerable, Homilies on the Gospels. (Trans. L. T. Martin and D. Hurst; 2 vols.; Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1990), 2:23–4. Henry Law, The Gospel in Exodus (London: Banner of Truth, 1967), 21. Mackay suggests that the four days merely impressed the gravity of substitution. John L. Mackay, Exodus (Fearn: Mentor, 2001), 215. Poole agrees with Mackay but adds some correspondence with the “three or four prophetical days, i.e. years, before [Jesus’] death”. Matthew Poole, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (3 vols.; Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1974), 1:138.[↩]
- Gen 8:6; Exod 16:35; Deut 8:2; 1 Sam 17:11, 16; Jonah 3:4.[↩]
- This element is also suggested by Poole, Commetary, 1:138.[↩]
- Passover is inextricably associated with the exodus itself. When we hear “Passover,” we think “that night in Exod 12.” The Israelite, however, thinks, “the night we left Egypt.” In the rest of Moses’ books, that is the emphasis: Num 33:3; Deut 16:1, 6.[↩]
- Vos observed that animal sacrifices are all about two things: expiation of sin and consecration of self. Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2015), 157.[↩]
- The question of sinful man and a holy God cohabiting is a conundrum throughout the Sinai literature, answered by the priesthood and sacrifices: Exod 28; Lev 9; Heb 5:1.[↩]
- Tan., Pinhas, 13.[↩]
- E.g., Henry, Commentary, 1532.[↩]
- Moses, though earlier in revelatory history, serves as a crucial controlling source for the prophets. O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Prophets (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2008), 15–20, 77–137.[↩]