The Lamb of God
Jesus. He has so many attributes. He is our friend. He is our brother. He is our Savior. He is our redeemer (actually our kinsman-redeemer). He’s our strong tower. He’s our fortress. He’s our shield. He is our salvation. The list could go on and on. One of the best though is “the Lamb of God”. In John 1:29, John the Baptist sees Jesus coming towards him and calls him “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”.
He took away the sin of the world! Think about that…He was the perfect Son of God who came to take away our sins. He didn’t just cover them up which is all the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament could do; he took them away completely. The bible says in Psalm 103:12 that “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our sins from us.” I had a coworker once share something that blew my mind. He started by asking me if I was at the North Pole and started going south at what point would I stop going south. I thought this was a trick question and so he helped me out by stating that once I hit the South Pole, if I continued, I’d be heading north which meant there is a finite distance I can travel south or north before switching directions. Then he asked if I started heading east from where I was currently at (Colorado at the time), at what point would I begin to head west? As he pretended to circle his finger around a globe, I realized what he was saying…there was no end point…there was no point where I would be forced to stop and begin traveling west. And then it hit me…this is why God says as far as the east is from the west…there is no end to how far he has removed our sin from us. Jesus took our sin and removed it permanently from us. The bible says that he knew no sin. That he had no sin. He became sin for us so we could become the righteousness of God in Him. (See 2 Corinthians 5:21)
We couldn’t save ourselves. Nothing we can or could do would ever get us out of the state we were in. Nothing could repair our broken relationship with God. Only Jesus could…and he did! He was the final sacrificial lamb! The only response needed on our part is to receive what he has done for us. As the Apostle Paul so eloquently stated in Romans 5:17 “For if by the transgression of the one (meaning Adam – my addition), death reigned through the one (again, meaning Adam), much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.”
As we draw closer to Resurrection Sunday, may God increase our revelation of Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
