Introduction
Well, we return this morning to our series in the Gospel of John. So please turn again with me in your Bibles to John chapter 1. I mentioned last time that we’ve moved into the first section of the body of John’s Gospel—a section that spans from chapter 1 verse 19 to chapter 2 verse 11. And we also mentioned that this first section narrates the events of a single week of Jesus’ early ministry. When you count up all the references to “the next day” between 1:19 and 2:11, you find that this section is comprised of seven days.
And I claimed that, because John has already made an allusion to the book of Genesis as he introduces the eternal Word who has created all things, it may be that he chooses to outline a seven-day period in Jesus’ early ministry to parallel the creation week of Genesis chapter 1. It’s a subtle allusion to the fact that the God of the creation week has invaded history in the person of the Lord Jesus, and, having been introduced as the Word that was “in the beginning,” He has begun His work of new creation in this first week of His ministry. “New creation week,” if you will.
And last time, we focused on the events of Day One of new creation week: the witness of John the Baptist to the Jews who come to question him about his ministry in the wilderness. And we saw how the Baptist’s testimony was exemplary for all of us, because we have been commissioned as witnesses of the Gospel of Jesus as well. We have beheld with the eyes of faith a beauty and a glory in the Lord Jesus that demands proclamation. We are to testify to this lost world of the worth of this Savior—of what we have seen and heard and tasted and experienced of the majesty of Christ.
And we found, in John’s interaction with the delegation from Jerusalem, a model for our testifying to Christ. And that model was: Not me, but Him! The negation of the witness, and the exaltation of the Word! John’s entire ministry was characterized by (1) the deflection of glory away from himself, and (2) the ascription of glory unto his Savior. “I am not! I am not! I am not! Make way for Him! Focus on Him! Learn of Him!”
Well, that was Day One of new creation week. “Prepare the way for the Lord! Messiah is coming! He stands among you and you don’t even know Him!” As we move into Day Two of new creation week—“the next day,” verse 29 says—John moves from, “Get yourselves ready for Messiah!” to “Look! Messiah is here!” John 1 verse 29: “The next day he saw Jesus coming to him.”
And if we read the other three Gospel accounts in concert with this one, it’s inescapable that Jesus would have been coming to John direct from his forty days of temptation in the wilderness. He was baptized by John in the Jordan River; the Father testified from heaven, and the Spirit descended on Him like a dove. Then He immediately went out into the desert of Judea to be tempted for forty days—where, as the Second and Last Adam, He withstood the temptation of Satan and demonstrated that He was fit to undertake His public ministry. But while Jesus was away in the wilderness, John the Baptist went right on fulfilling his ministry as a witness, preparing the way for Messiah.
But after forty days, John finally sees Jesus “coming to him,” verse 29. And he says, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is He on behalf of whom I said, ‘After me comes a Man who has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’” The day before, John told the priests and Levites, and the Pharisees, to clear the way for the coming Lord. Today, John tells all of Israel—as many who will listen to him as he cries out in the open air—“Here is the One I’ve been preaching about!”
And this passage—chapter 1 verses 29 to 34—forms something of a bridge between the previous passage and the next. On the one hand, it is a continuation of John the Baptist’s witness to Jesus in verses 19 to 28. On the other hand, verses 29 to 34 are the beginning of John’s introduction of the people to Jesus—which he accomplishes by applying a number of titles to Jesus to explain to the crowds who this Man is whom the Baptist has been preaching as a forerunner (cf. Carson, 147). Starting in verse 29 all the way down to the end of the chapter in verse 51, the Apostle John will introduce us to characters who call Jesus: (1) the Lamb of God (vv. 29, 36); (2) the Chosen One (v. 34 variant); (3) Rabbi, or Teacher (vv. 38, 49); (4) Messiah (v. 41); (5) the Son of God (v. 49); (6) the King of Israel; (7) the Son of Man (v. 51); and (8) in verse 45, “Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote—Jesus of Nazareth.”
And so, the narrative moves from calling the leaders to prepare their hearts for Messiah, to calling all Israel to recognize Him for who He is. And all of these titles serve to identify Jesus to Israel. They each bear great significance in teaching us who Messiah is, and how He fulfills all the promises that Israel hoped in for centuries, as they awaited their Deliverer and King to save them.
And specifically, in verses 29 to 34—Day Two of New Creation Week—we find in John the Baptist’s testimony to Jesus four titles. Four titles that identify Jesus for who He is, and which call us to trust Him and to worship Him above all others. He is (1) the Lamb of God, (2) the Superior King, (3) the Anointed Messiah, and (4) the Son of God.
And as much as I want to keep up with the flow of John’s narrative, I simply could not bring myself to move quickly through such concepts so pregnant with significance. And so this morning we’ll only get to the first title: the Lamb of God. I cannot breeze past this most blessed verse: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” This crown jewel of a verse captures in a brief economy of words the beating heart of the Christian religion, the center of the Gospel message, and the lifeblood of every faithful preacher’s ministry. There is simply too much Good News in this verse—you and I, GraceLife, have too much at stake in this verse—for me to pass over it briefly as the first in a four-point sermon.
Charles Spurgeon regularly preached to more than 5,600 people each week, as he pastored at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. One week in 1857, he was preparing to preach to almost 24,000 people at a building called the Crystal Palace. And you remember: there were no microphones in 1857. So, a few days ahead of time, Spurgeon visited the Palace to decide where the platform should be placed—so that the acoustics would be optimum for trying to preach to so vast a number without amplification. And as he tested the acoustics, he didn’t yell, “Testing, testing; one, two, three.” He cried out in a loud voice, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!”
And Spurgeon tells the story that as he did that, there was a workman in one of the galleries, preparing the building for the event. And he had no idea what was going on; the hall was large enough that he was simply going about his business, when all of a sudden he heard a voice, as if from heaven, calling him to behold the Lamb of God! Spurgeon says, those words “came like a message from heaven to his soul. He was smitten with conviction on account of sin, put down his tools, went home, and there, after a season of spiritual struggling, found peace and life by beholding the Lamb of God.” There is power in this handful of words recorded for us in this verse! So powerful that the mere repetition of them—even in a sound check—might be used by the King of Heaven to melt the heart of stone, and to grant spiritual life where presently there is only the cold darkness of death. And may God be pleased to use them to such an end here this morning.
And we’ll seek to mine out the treasures of this verse along four headings.
I. The Lamb’s Identity
In the first place, consider the Lamb’s identity. John the Baptist sees Jesus coming to him and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” And this would have been a curious announcement. Just the previous day John had told his inquirers that he was a voice, crying out in the wilderness, to prepare the way of Yahweh—to make straight the highway in the wilderness for the coming King. John is announcing the long-awaited coming of Messiah, and when he finally sees Him, he says, “Behold, the Lamb”?
“John! Don’t you mean, ‘Behold the King’? ‘Behold, the Anointed One’? ‘Behold the Ruler of Israel, the One from whose hand the scepter will not depart’? ‘Behold the triumphant conqueror’? ‘Behold the Lord who is lofty and exalted’?” Well, the Baptist would begin calling Jesus all of those things. And as we’ve heard already, the Apostle John will introduce Jesus to us by many of those titles before the end of chapter 1. But when John the Baptist sees the Man He baptized, on whom He saw the Holy Spirit descending as a dove, and to whom the voice God testified from heaven, the first title he ascribes to Him speaks to the Messiah’s principal office. Before He is anything else, Jesus is the sinner’s substitute—the One who will bear our sins in Himself and thereby appease the righteous wrath of God against our sins, by standing in our place of judgment and condemnation.
This is what a lamb was for, in Israel. Calling Jesus “the Lamb of God” would immediately call to people’s minds the lambs that were slaughtered as part of the daily sacrifices of Israel’s temple worship. When the Tabernacle was first constructed, in Exodus 29, God instructed Aaron and the priests—Exodus 29:38: “Now this is what you shall offer on the altar: two one year old lambs each day, continuously. The one lamb you shall offer in the morning and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight.” When we get into the early chapters of Leviticus, which provide the instructions for the detail of Israel’s sacrificial worship to God, Leviticus 4:32 speaks about a lamb without defect being brought for a sin offering; Leviticus 5:5–7 speaks about a lamb being brought for a guilt offering. This is what lambs were for in Israel!
Why? Why two innocent lambs, every single day? Why guilt offerings and sin offerings for fellowship and communion with Yahweh? Because sin against the Holy God of heaven has always been a capital offense. The wages of sin against that God is death (Rom 6:23). The soul who sins by breaking His law will die (Ezek 18:4). And yet God in His grace designed a system by which His people could be spared from the death that their sins deserved: through the death of animal sacrifices in their place. Leviticus 17:11: God says, “The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.” Sinners deserve to die! But God has graciously stipulated that the blood of sacrificial animals may take the place of sinners, and their lives be spared!
But the Jews who heard John the Baptist cry, “Behold the Lamb of God,” wouldn’t think only of the lambs of the daily sacrifices. They would also think of Abraham and Issac in Genesis 22. And you remember that story. God decides he is going to test Abraham by demanding him to take Isaac—his only-begotten son, his beloved son, the son of the covenant promise—and to kill Isaac as a sacrificial offering to the Lord. Just unthinkable! And yet Abraham obediently prepares for the journey, they arrive at the place, and he takes the wood, the fire, and the knife for the sacrifice. And Isaac asks Abraham in Genesis 22:7: “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” And in verse 8 Abraham responds, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And though they eventually found a ram caught in the thicket, which took the place of Isaac on the altar, the Jews would have heard John exclaim, “Behold, the Lamb,” and thought back to the lamb that God would provide for Himself in the place of sinners—even though that Lamb would be God’s only-begotten Son; His beloved Son in whom He was well-pleased; the Son of the covenant promise.
And it’s impossible that they wouldn’t also think of the Passover Lamb of Exodus 12. Turn there with me. The way God redeemed Israel out of slavery in Egypt becomes a picture of how He will finally redeem all of His people out of slavery to sin and death. As He was about to send the tenth plague upon Egypt, God had promised to kill every firstborn child and animal throughout the land. And Israel was not automatically exempted from this plague. In order to be spared from God’s wrath, He required each family in Israel to kill an unblemished lamb. Exodus 12:3: “On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves, according to their fathers’ households, a lamb for each household.” Verse 6: Each family “shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight. Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the flesh that same night….” Verse 13: “The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.”
So the Passover lamb died as a substitutionary sacrifice in the place of the firstborn children of the Jews. The wrath of God against their sin was turned away by the blood of a spotless lamb that was slain in their place. And Israel, verse 24, was to “observe this event as an ordinance for you and your children forever”—every year commemorating their redemption from slavery by slaying a sacrificial lamb. And of course, it was the Passover meal that was the setting of Jesus’ last supper with His disciples, when He instituted the New Covenant, declaring that His body would be broken for them, and that the cup which was poured out for them was, He said in Luke 22:20, “the new covenant in My blood.” In this way, at this Passover meal, Christ was declaring that His death—the breaking of His body and the pouring out of His blood—would be the fulfillment of the feast of the Passover. One writer said, “Whereas the old Passover focused on the body and blood of a lamb, slain as a penal substitutionary sacrifice for the redemption of Israel, the Lord’s Supper focuses on the body and blood of Christ, who gave himself as a penal substitutionary sacrifice for his people” (Pierced for Our Transgressions, 39).
This is what it means for Jesus to be “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” In 1 Peter 1, verses 18 and 19, Peter says that the people of God have not been redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold, but with “the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless.” Paul says it explicitly in 1 Corinthians 5:7: “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.” Jesus is the Lamb of God! Just as the blood of the slain Passover lamb protected Israel from the execution of God’s judgment, so also does the blood of the slain sacrificial Lamb, Jesus, protect His people from the wrath of God against our sin.
Why? Because, Hebrews 10:1 says, the sacrificial system was only a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very form of things. The Levitical sacrifices can never make perfect those who drew near to offer them. And that’s obvious, because they had to keep being offered—day after day, year after year. “It is impossible,” Hebrews 10:4, “for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” Any efficacy that the Levitical sacrifices had, they drew from the ultimate power of the true and final Lamb of God, who had come to accomplish what no lamb before Him could do. Hebrews 10:14: “By one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.”
And the faithful Israelite would have recognized that the sacrifices couldn’t forgive their sins, and that therefore they were to look to a final Lamb—an ultimate Lamb—who would make an end of sin. Because in Isaiah 53, they were told of a substitute, who would bear their griefs, and be crushed for their iniquities. Isaiah 53:7 says, “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.” Pilate says, “Do You not hear how many things they testify against You?” And Matthew 27:14: “He did not answer him with regard to even a single charge.” John says: Here is the Lamb you’ve been waiting for!
But by that time, their sin wasn’t their concern. At least not the priests and Levites and Pharisees. Pastor John says, “The Jews wanted a king. They got a lamb. They wanted a leader; they wanted a monarch. They got a substitute. They wanted an exalted messiah. They received rather a humiliated sacrifice. They wanted one who could kill all their enemies, and they got One whom their enemies killed.”
Dear people, this is Jesus above all. The first thing that John the Baptist says when he sees Jesus is not, “Behold the Great Example, whose life we can imitate in order to please God!” It’s not, “Behold the Prophet and Teacher, whose instruction will enlighten us and free us from our ignorance!” It’s not, “Behold the nonviolent revolutionary who comes to enact social justice!” First of all—before everything else—Jesus is the Lamb of God! Because what we sinners need—first of all, before everything else—is a substitutionary atoning sacrifice for our sin that frees us from the just wrath and punishment of God!
O, there is no end to the blessings that Jesus Himself becomes for us! He is our Prophet and Teacher, who becomes our wisdom from God. He is our example in suffering righteously, whose steps we are to walk in. Every blessing that there is is wrapped up in Him. O, but dear people: He will be none of those things to you before He is your Lamb! Every blessing is downstream of His being our substitutionary atoning sacrifice, who stands in our place to do for us what we could not do for ourselves: to satisfy the righteous wrath of God against our sins.
II. The Lamb’s Work
Such is the Lamb’s identity. He is our substitutionary atoning sacrifice. Then, consider in the second place, number two: the Lamb’s work. Back to verse 29: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
This is the doctrine of expiation—the bearing away, or taking away of our sins from us. And Jesus does this—He bears our sins away—by bearing our sins in Himself. Before He bears sin from us, He must bear sin for us. First Peter 2:24: “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross.” And in order to be qualified to bear others’ sins, He had to have no sins of His own. And I’m convinced that that’s part of what John intended by calling Jesus “the Lamb of God.” The Passover Lamb had to be tammim, Exodus 12:5: “without defect,” or “without blemish.” And so Christ redeems us with His “precious blood,” Peter says, “as of a lamb unblemished and spotless.”
And more than that: a phrase very similar to John 1:29 appears in 1 John 3:5, where the Apostle John says, “You know that He appeared in order to take away sins.” But in his first epistle, John adds the comment: “in Him there is no sin.” In 1 John 3 we have an explicit comment on Jesus’ sinlessness; in John 1 He’s described as the Lamb of God, who is unblemished and spotless. Isaiah 53:7 says the lamb is led to the slaughter; First Peter 2:22 quotes Isaiah 53:9 and says, He “committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth.”
The Man Christ Jesus was absolutely free from sin. Not in thought, not in word, not in deed—nothing He ever did or didn’t do fell short of God’s holy standard of perfect righteousness. Think of it, friends! A man of the same nature as you and me! He always loved the Lord His God with all His heart, soul, mind, and strength. He always loved His neighbor as Himself. He only ever did what was pleasing to His Father. Only a sinless substitute—only one who “knew no sin” of his own, 2 Corinthians 5:21—could qualify to bear the weight of the sins of others.
And He does qualify! Praise God: our spotless Lamb bore our griefs! He carried our sorrows! “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but Yahweh has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” And oh, how great did our sin fall upon our Substitute! “My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death.” “And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood.” He fell to the ground, and prayed, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.” “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” Spurgeon said, “The heaviest thing in the universe is sin; the earth has been known to open beneath the unbearable load of it. Neither angels nor men can stand under the load of sin; it sinks them lower than the lowest hell. … To have borne up the weight of the world would have been nothing compared with bearing the sin of the world.”
But O, dear people: the misery of our Lamb has delivered us to the most unspeakable joy, because by bearing our sin in Himself, Jesus has borne our sin away from us. What Good News! How pleasant those words are to the soul that is sensible of his sin! I feel myself collapsed under the unbearable load of my own sins. I feel bound to them and in them, like a black ink from which I can never wash my hands clean. But Behold: the Lamb of God, who takes away sin! whose blood is a fountain that washes me clean!
In Isaiah chapter 6, the prophet Isaiah is undone by the thought that he, a man of unclean lips, who dwells among a people of unclean lips, has seen the Holy King of Heaven. And he cries out, “Woe is me, for I am ruined!” But the angel ablaze with the fire of holiness touches Isaiah’s lips with the burning coal from the altar, and says, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven.” Psalm 103:12 says, “As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.” In Isaiah 38:17, Hezekiah says, “You have cast all my sins behind Your back.” He says, “Before, it was as if my sins were in front of God’s face, and were a barricade to any communion with Him. But He has taken my sins and put them behind His back, so that He can look upon me with favor, and so that I can look upon Him with peace (cf. Martin). In Isaiah 43:25, Yahweh says, “I, even I, am the one who wipes out [or blots out] your transgressions for My own sake, And I will not remember your sins.” It’s as if our sins are recorded in a book, and God comes along and, with divine whiteout, He blots out every record of our sins, so that He remembers them no more. Not that Omniscience forgets; but that He refuses to let them have any bearing on our relationship to Him. Micah 7 verses 18 and 19: “Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in unchanging love. He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities under foot. Yes, You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” Where is that load of sin that clung tenaciously to your back? O, if you trust in this Lamb of God, your sin is at the bottom of the ocean! And I love Jeremiah 50:20. God says, “Search will be made for the iniquity of Israel, but there will be none; and for the sins of Judah, but they will not be found; for I will pardon those whom I leave as a remnant.” Dear believer, you can assemble a search party to look for your sin, but the sins that were once indelible stains on your filthy rags are now nowhere to be found! They are behind His back, out of His mind, in the depths of the sea, nailed to the cross. “Now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” Matthew Henry said, “God could have taken away the sin by taking away the sinner, as he took away the sin of the old world; but he has found out a way of abolishing the sin, and yet sparing the sinner…” And that way was to lay it upon the head of our Lamb: the Lamb of God.
And note, the Lamb of God takes away sin, present tense. Christ’s satisfaction was indeed finished upon Calvary, but the efficacy of that sacrifice is as fresh today as it was on Good Friday. It is the efficacy of that propitiation accomplished once for all, First John 2, that is the basis upon which our Advocate pleads for us in heaven before the Father, so that we are as righteous today as the first moment that we believed! Better: as righteous today as Jesus was when He rose from the dead! It is the power of that satisfaction that infuses continual supplies of grace to our souls. Spurgeon said, “Blessed be God! I have a Saviour today as fresh and full of power as if he had been crucified this very morning for my sin. He is now as able to save me as if he were at this hour on the Cross. Those dear wounds of his in effect perpetually do bleed; …the print of the nails is the token of an inexhaustible fount of merit, which is always flowing forth for the removal of my guilt; eternally efficacious, ceaselessly sin-cleansing. This is where we rest. It is the grandest fact in the history of all ages that Jesus takes away the sin of the world.”
III. The Lamb’s Sufficiency
Well, we’ve seen the Lamb’s identity: He is our Substitute. And we’ve seen the Lamb’s work: He takes away sin. We come now, in the third place, to the Lamb’s sufficiency. “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
Now, it is evident that, when John says “the sin of the world,” he does not mean “all the sins of all the people who have ever lived or will live in the world.” This is not a declaration of universalism. John is not saying that Jesus, by His substitutionary atonement as the Lamb of God, will take away the sins of all people without exception, How do we know that? Because the sad reality is that some people will die in their sins. Jesus Himself says in John 8:24, “Unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” And of course there are some who do not believe in Jesus; 2 Thessalonians 3:2 says, “Not all have faith.” In Matthew 7:13, Jesus says, “The gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.” And so if there are many who enter through the gate of destruction and die in their sins, then Jesus did not “take away” those sins.
And just as this text does not teach any form of universalism, neither does it teach any form of what is nowadays called provisionism. You see, some teachers acknowledge that Scripture does not teach universal final salvation, but they still maintain that it teaches a universal atonement—that when passages like these say that the Lamb takes away the sin of the world, it means that Jesus died for all without exception. And you ask them, “If Jesus died for all without exception, why aren’t all without exception saved?” And the reply comes back, “Well, Jesus’ death doesn’t save people; it provides salvation (hence “provisionism”), and they have to accept the provision by faith.” But this verse doesn’t say anything like that. It says the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world, not that He makes the sins of the world take-away-able.
So if “world,” here, does not mean “all without exception,” what does it mean? Well, it means “all without distinction.” The crowds of the Jews that John the Baptist preached to knew the Messiah was coming for God’s nation. But they thought He was also coming to judge the nations—to overthrow the Gentiles that had mistreated Israel, not the least of which were the Romans, who were occupying them at the present time. But while the Passover Lamb and the lambs of the daily sacrifices took away the sins of Israel alone, this Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world: of all peoples without distinction, whatever nation they belong to, whatever language they speak; if only they will trust in this Lamb to bear their sins, because they know they can’t bear their penalty themselves. The Baptist says here what the Apostle says of Caiaphas’s prophecy in John 11:51–52: that “Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but in order that He might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.”
This is the Lamb’s sufficiency. The Lamb of God takes away the sin of everyone who trusts in Him. Though they be scattered throughout the whole world—whatever ethnicity, or culture, or socioeconomic status—there is no limit to the value of this Lamb’s sacrifice. His atonement is sufficient for every kind of sinner there is. There is no sin so wicked that this Lamb’s blood cannot cover, no sinner so contemptuous that he can be disqualified from the saving power of Christ’s atonement. Spurgeon said, “He removes sins of long duration, of aggravated criminality, of crying heinousness: any sin that can be compassed within the bounds of the world, Christ take[s] away. O repenting sinner, though [your] sins should be as many as the hairs of [your] head, and each one as black as the midnight of [hell], yet Christ take[s] away each sin. Though [you may] have cursed God and slain [your] fellow men, yet such sin as this comes within the range of ‘the sin of the world.’”
And so Matthew Henry asks, “If Christ takes away the sin of the world, then why not my sin?” Dear unbeliever: Why not your sin? Why not today? Why not right now? Behold, now is the acceptable time! Behold, today is the day of salvation! If this Lamb’s sacrifice is sufficient to take away the sin of the world, and if He alone is the Lamb of God, then there is no other means of atonement for sin that you will ever find! Penance will not take away sin. Purgatory will not take away sin. Grief and suffering will not take away sin. Religion will not take away sin. The outward reformation of your behavior will not take away sin. You stand face to face this morning with the only Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Do not look away from Him until you have looked upon Him in faith. Behold this Lamb, with the eyes of faith, trusting in His wrath-bearing sacrifice alone to pay for your sins, and you will be forgiven!
IV. The Believer’s Duty
In fact, that is the command issued in this very text, isn’t it? We have considered the Lamb’s identity, and the Lamb’s work, and just now the Lamb’s sufficiency. But we must come, in the fourth place, to the believer’s duty. What did John call the crowds to do when he saw this Lamb coming toward him? He said, “Behold!”
“Look!” “Fix your eyes upon Him!” Isaac said to Abraham, “Father, behold the fire, and behold the wood; but where is the lamb?” And John says to you and me, who, like Isaac, would have perished for lack of a suitable sacrifice: “Behold the Lamb!” Dear friends: here is our Lamb for the offering! We must behold Him in faith!
But that’s not true only for the unbeliever. That’s true also for the believer. It is the believer’s duty to behold this Lamb—to look upon Him in faith—not only in our conversion, but to look upon Him in faith every day of our Christian lives: (a) to stir up our hatred of our own sin for how it had slain the Lamb of God; (b) to stir up our love for the Savior that subjected Himself to God’s wrath in our place; and (c) to stir up our assurance of the love of God for us, even when we still sin, because we know that a sufficient sacrifice has been offered in our place, and so we need never despair.
We must behold the Lamb bowed to the dust, in agony in the garden.
We must behold the Lamb betrayed by His own disciple with a kiss.
We must behold the Lamb arrested and bound and interrogated, as if He were a common criminal.
We must behold the Lamb denied and disowned—with curses and swearing—by the chief of His disciples.
We must behold the Lamb beaten with whips, and crowned with thorns, and slapped in the face, and mocked by sinners.
We must behold the Lamb condemned to death.
We must behold the Lamb collapsed under the weight of His own crossbar.
We must behold the Lamb stripped naked and crucified, until the weight of His own body so pressed against His lungs that He could no longer gasp for air.
We must behold the Lamb bearing the curse of our sins, already abandoned by His friends, now forsaken by His Father. All the bitterness of hell itself as it were invading His holy soul as He felt the weight of our sins upon Him, and cried out: “My God, why?”
Brothers and sisters: we need to behold what our sins have done to this spotless Lamb, and we need to rouse all our hatred against that sin that put so precious a Savior to such grief. Dear people, sin is the knife that slit the throat of our spotless Lamb. Can we behold the Lamb slain, and treasure that knife? Could we sharpen that knife by continuing to dally with sin? by making provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts, as if to wound the Lamb afresh? Matthew Henry says, “See him taking away sin, and let that increase our hatred of sin, and [our] resolutions against it. Let not us hold that fast which the Lamb of God came to take away.”
But not only let it increase our hatred for sin. Let it increase our love of our Savior. Let us behold the deep degradation He submitted to, and remember that He bore our sins willingly—that He contemplated the shame that being our Substitute would mean for Him, and He rose to the task like a conquering Champion: “Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God”! “No one takes [My life] from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord”! “I would rather be ruined than to see them ruined!” O, how can we behold the Lamb as He takes away our sin, and fail to love Him? Let us fix our eyes on Jesus—let us behold a bleeding Savior—and find our hearts warmed with love and affection for the One who loved us, and gave Himself up for us! And then let us let the flames of that love fire the furnace of our obedience.
And then: we need to behold the Lamb, subjected to such humiliation, and we need to rest absolutely assured of His love for us. We who have beheld Him for the forgiveness of our sins unto justification must not fail to behold Him for the fresh pardon that we need for our daily offenses against Him. Because, despite stirring up our hatred for sin when we’re in the proper frame of heart, we too quickly take our eyes off of Him, don’t we? And we forget the wickedness and the loathsomeness of sin, and we commit sin against our kind and gracious God every day of our lives.
And it bows us to the dust. And we grieve and mourn and weep over our sin, and we fear that we can somehow cross the line—that we can out-sin the Lord’s grace. We can’t understand how so good a God could tolerate such adulterous disregard of His grace. But when we feel like our sin disqualifies us from asking for more grace, we must raise our eyes to behold the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. And seeing Him, we must remember: the perfectly sufficient and God-pleasing sacrifice has been offered once for all. We may speak of Jesus as the Apostle John does in Revelation 1:5: He is “Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood.”
Nobody says it like Spurgeon, and so I can’t help but quote him again. He says, Jesus “is the Lamb that God always accepts, must accept, glories to accept. Bring thou but Jesus with thee, and thou hast brought God an acceptable sacrifice. Thou canst not fail to be forgiven, when thou comest pleading the name of Jesus. If thou shouldest bring the fattest of thy flock, and the choicest of thy herd, thou mightest hear God say, “I will not accept thy sacrifice”! But when thou bringest Gods own sacrifice, he cannot reject thee. Thou art accepted in the Beloved; there is such acceptance of Christ with God that it overlaps thine unacceptableness; it covers thy sin, it covers thee, it makes thee to be dear to the heart of God. … [O,] those eyes can never be sore again that have once seen sin put away by Jesus.”
Behold Him, dear people. Rest your sore eyes upon the Lamb, who has taken away your sins. And let your sight of Him loosen the grip of every sin and temptation in your life. Let your sight of Him tighten the cords of love that bind you to your Savior. And let your sight of Him sweeten every hour of your life, as you walk with Him through the wilderness of this world, until that day when He brings you to Himself, then to behold Him forevermore—no longer by the dim glass of faith, but by the unhindered, sin-free sight that is the substance of all blessedness.