Behold the Lamb

In John 1:29 John the Baptist announces Jesus when he sees Jesus coming toward him. He shouts forth "behold the Lamb of God" speaking to the perfect sacrificial nature of Jesus. Sacrifice to the Jews meant an offering to God to appease Him for their own sin against Him. Sacrifice then to the peeps of John's time meant man's action toward God on their own behalf so they could then be acceptable to God.

John announces something astounding, that the person of Jesus IS the sacrifice to God on man's behalf. Interestingly, man is not the one making the sacrifice on their own behalf. God provides the PERFECT sacrifice when man cannot. It's God's act on behalf of man to reconcile man to Himself. BTW, that why Christianity is not a religion, which is man's attempt to establish his own relationship with God.

The point John is ultimately making about Jesus is that He "takes away the sin of the world." You ever thought what that means? Does it refer to Jesus's purpose is to correct all immoral behavior? Make peeps good enough for God by fixing what they do wrong? Does Jesus simply erase God's memory so He forgets what we've done or puts a blindfold on God so to speak so God doesn't see our misbehavior?

What are the key words here? First, world means inhabitants of the world or mankind. Next "take away" simply means that Jesus removes, not can remove but does remove. What does John mean by sin? This is where many peeps get confused. There are numerous different Greek words translated into the word sin. Most involve actions or behavior of humans, such as making a mistake, transgressing the law, or failing to meet moral code, and so forth. However, quite often in Scripture and in this case the word for sin, hamartia, literally means missing the mark. Its general application was to the true end of life and typically meant "to miss the true purpose of life as to not share in the prize." Thus, sin in this statement means that a person misses the point of the Gospel and doesn't see the Gospel as good news, not missteps in their life.

It would seem to me more beneficial for peeps, who wish to appease God so that they are acceptable to Him, to accept the sacrifice God made on their behalf than to produce acceptable actions on their own. The sin we should all attend to is not behavioral mistakes, moral failures, or transgressions of our actions but failing to receive the action God has already taken on our behalf, called the Lamb of God.

"Behold" means to see with absolute surprise. It is so amazing that our biggest and only failure is in receiving what God has done on our behalf in faith. Our eternal well-being is at risk but peeps of this world too often just can't believe this and so trust their own ability to be good enough for God and to produce from the world around them their own well being. This approach gets no piece of God's pie (provisions and privileges of the Heavenlies), and that's our sin.

probably worth pondering as much as our stock portfolio, or even where we going to go to dinner tonight :-)