“The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’ ” (John 1:29)
We’re leaping forward 30 years from the birth of Jesus to the beginning of his three-year ministry before the cross. His cousin John the Baptist declares to all who will listen exactly who Jesus is – the Lamb of God.
But how can a lamb take away sin? All those who heard John’s words understood. They had seen the lambs slaughtered as a sacrifice to temporarily pay for their sin. They had seen the blood; they had counted on the fact that those lambs bled as a substitute for them.
Jesus, too, would be sacrificed, along with a quarter of a million lambs killed during Passover. That’s the estimate of some historians of the time, that more than 250,000 lambs were sacrificed in Jerusalem during the Passover celebrations every year.
Those were the lambs of the people. Jesus was the Lamb of God, slaughtered to take away – permanently – the sins of the world, of all those who trust in him for their salvation.
Think: If someone asked why Jesus was sacrificed like a lamb to pay for our sins, how would you explain it?
Pray: Thank God for sacrificing his Son Jesus as a lamb to take away the sin of the world.
Do: Read Hebrews 10:1-14 to hear more about Jesus’ once-for-all sacrifice.