The Lamb of God

Who Takes Away the Sin of the World

John 1:29-34

April is the cruelest month,

Breeding lilacs out of the dead land,

Mixing memory and desire,

stirring dull roots with spring.

Eliot understood the modern world as the waste land in the sense that the industrialized and materially affluent society is full of waste with spiritual poverty, loneliness, and dehumanization. Modern man is eager to enjoy material and technological entertainments but lazy and insensitive in the sincere search for meaning and spiritual life. So, he called the modern man as "the living dead". They enjoy the sleep of death, and therefore April is cruelest because spring tries to wake it. Spring breeds flowers out of the dead land, but humans are not easily awakened from the long winter sleep of sin and death.

2. Jesus came to awaken and revive our souls for the bright and fresh season of spring in our lives. In this season of Lent, I preach to the question: Why had Jesus to die on the cross? Last Sunday, I preach on the Cross and Satan, who tempted Jesus to stop His way to the Cross. He suggested three human ideas of salvation, but Jesus rejected all of them because it lacks the way to forgive our sins and reconcile with God. Human salvation and happiness without reconciliation with their Creator and Ruler of the Universe is vain and useless, superficial and deceptive. And in order to be reconciled with God, the problem of sin should be first solved.

3. John the Baptist described Jesus to his disciples: "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!"(29) Yes, Jesus came to the world as "the Lamb of God"! Though He is the Son of God, the Only Son of God, God sent Him now as the Lamb of God. Why and how was Jesus the Lamb of God?

4. In this world, there is no land without law and order system. We are born with the responsibility to keep the laws and accept punishment when violated. Sometimes, we wish to live without any law or police. But, the lawless world is extremely dangerous and violent. Law and justice system is the destiny of human race. Human states have legal authority to execute law and justice with human legal system, often quite arbitrary and even unjust. The Scripture clearly teaches that there is supreme legal authority with the perfect system of law and justice, which is not limited to one state but embraces the whole world and universe. It is the universal legal system of God! Many people know only the state legal system, but it exists in any human society, small or big. God created this world and rules it with His Law and Justice System. God is perfectly just, and He does neither forget nor compromise any sin and violation. Even in the state justice system, statistical or relative judgment is a non sense. People have responsibility to keep all the laws always. Any single sin is punished. God punished the human race collectively in the Fall and Flood, but God also punishes any sin of any human individually. God punishes in two ways: one is immediate and natural punishment by the use of creation order which is built in the universe, and the other is the delayed and supernatural punishment. Our sins from birth to death are accumulated and recorded one by one before the Court of God and all of them will be punished after our death and the Last Judgment. The accumulated punishment of each sin committed in the whole life results in the eternal punishment. It will be very fierce and painful in the eternity. We humans have tendency to disregard this great punishment!

5. God loved us and wished to forgive our sins, but He is the Just Ruler of the universe. God permitted the substitutionary atonement, because there is no other way to forgive our sins. As seen in the "azazel", this scapegoat needed the procedure of transmission of sins before sacrifice and execution: "He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites--all their sins--and put them on the goat's head. He shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a man appointed for the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place; and the man shall release it in the desert."(Lev 16.21-22). But, no human has ability to atone for other people, because all are sinners. Jesus loved us and assumed the responsibility of our sins to God the Ruler and Judge of the universe. God’s so beloved Son came to the world with such a mission. Only because He loved us so much, Jesus volunteered to be the scapegoat, victim, sacrifice and ransom for our sins! Therefore, John the Baptist called Him "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world". Jesus Himself said that "the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."(Mk 10:45) So, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us."(2 Cor 5.21) "God did not spare His own Son, but gave him up for us all,"(Rom 8.32) "as a sacrifice of atonement"(Rom 3.25) and "as an atoning sacrifice for our sins"(1Jn 4.10, 2.2). Therefore, "Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many"(Heb 9.28), for "Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God"(Eph 5.2) His suffering death was necessary for the atonement of human race(Mt 26.39, Lk 24.26, Heb 2.17), and it was the only way both to maintain the righteousness of God and bestow the gracious justification to sinners: "God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice … so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus."(Rom 3.25-26)

6. In the Old Testament era, Jewish people offered so many lambs to God for the purpose to be forgiven their sins. But, it was simply ceremonial, symbolic act without real power to forgive, and therefore it was repeated endlessly. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice for full atonement once for all. Now, we don’t need to repeat the lamb sacrifice for forgiveness of sin any longer. So, we stopped it. Our all sins were taken by Jesus and paid the full price. God declared that we are fully forgiven! We are forgiven and reconciled with God our Creator and Ruler of the universe. Moreover, He is so gracious and adopted us as His sons and daughters!

7. Jesus was the Lamb of God who was prophesied as the Messiah in Isaiah 53. Remember Jesus’ suffering and death for us and let us read Is 53 together:

[1] Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? [2] He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. [3] He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. [4] Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. [5] But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. [6] We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. [7] He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. [8] By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken. [9] He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. [10] Yet it was the LORD'S will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. [11] After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. [12] Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Because Jesus was the Lamb of God and He came to the world for that purpose, he had silently submitted himself to this procedure of punishment. "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth."(6-7) He silently suffered for us. He did not resist or blame any. He was punished most severely and painfully to pay all the price of all our sins, but He did not open his mouth. We cry even with a small pain, but He was silent with the greatest pain the human history has ever known. He was like a lamb. Yes, He was the Lamb of God, not sacrifice lamb that humans prepared for themselves but the Lamb God prepared for us.

8. What a wonderful grace it is! He suffered and died for me, for you, for us! This is the Good News for the human race: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life…. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son."(John 3:16-18)