November 27
The next day he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
John 1:29 (NASB)
We have a familiar greeting for Easter: “He is risen,” with a response, “He is risen indeed.” Do we have an appropriate greeting for Christmas? I am not aware of one, but John the Baptist’s clarion call at Bethany is a good one. When responding to Jewish leaders at Bethany, who had inquired about whether he was the Messiah (John 1:19–20), John emphatically declared: “I am not!” As Jesus approached him, John the Baptist proclaimed, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
“Behold” is an older English translation that has been replaced by “Look!” in many contemporary versions. This older rendering was used 1,298 times in the King James Bible. It has an urgency that contemporary substitutes lack and connotes a searching gaze beyond a mere glance. For John the Baptist, the gaze was transformative. He saw and testified to Jesus’s Messiahship (1:31–34) and knew that the “Lamb of God” reached into the reservoirs of biblical atonement.
In Leviticus 17:11, we read of the connection between life and blood: “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.” Hebrews 9:22 emphasizes the connection, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” The principle was applied to Israel’s salvation from Egypt: “The blood will be a sign for you . . . when I see the blood of the paschal lamb on your door, I will ‘pass over’ you and not strike down your firstborn” (see Exodus 12:12–13). So, “Christ, our Passover” (1 Corinthians 5:7) is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, accepting the Father’s will for the salvation of all who believe. However, John 1:29 and 1:36 are even stronger. Jesus is not compared to a lamb (lamb-like, with the use of “as”). Jesus is literally God’s Lamb: God, in human flesh, who came as a pascal sacrifice for sin.
Jesus, the greatest gift in all of history, is a reflection of God’s love as the only begotten Son, and whoever believes in him will have eternal life (see John 3:16). So, our clarion call at Christmas should be the same as the Baptist’s: “Behold! God’s Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.” The appropriate response would be, “He is indeed!”