Sunday, January 14, 2024

14 January 2024 - behold the lamb


John was standing with two of his disciples,
and as he watched Jesus walk by, he said,
"Behold, the Lamb of God."

In a phrase, John the Baptist summed up God's plan for salvation through Jesus Christ. He would be the Suffering Servant, prophesied by Isaiah, who wrote that "he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth" (see Isaiah 53:7). 

During the Passover the Israelites were instructed to slaughter a lamb at twilight and put the blood on the doorposts of the houses in which they ate it. Then when the Lord passed through Egypt and struck down all of the firstborn of men and beasts those whose doors were marked with the blood would be spared (see Exodus 12). John the Evangelist made connection to Jesus's crucifixion more explicit when he noted that "it was the day of Preparation for Passover" (see John 19:14). There are more subtle allusions as well. The people were called to use a hyssop branch to anoint their door posts with the blood of the lamb. Jesus was offered sour wine to drink on a sponge held up to him on a hyssop branch (see John 19:29). Although certainly not what they intended, that branch would have returned with the Blood of Jesus and anointed the very earth.

Jesus was the lamb of sacrifice. He was also God's own firstborn Son. In the book of Genesis God had called Abraham to offer Isaac, but ultimately chose to spare him, wanting in that moment only to see the faith of Abraham. But Abraham made a mysterious statement that "God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering" (see Genesis 22:8). Rather than demanding our own lives, which were forfeit from the very moment Adam ate of the fruit in the Garden, God instead offered himself in Jesus Christ, buying back our lives by the price of his blood.

knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot (see First Peter 1:18-19).

This was a lot for John the Baptist to convey to his followers, even in the unlikely event that he himself understood it perfectly. Thus the disciples of John were not immediately able to articulate precisely what they sought from Jesus. Jesus, for his part, did not simply sit them down and explain exactly what was to happen based on the Scriptures. He knew the only real way they would come to understand and appreciate his role without rejecting it was by seeing him embrace and live it. Even then it proved too much for Judas. But Jesus knew that friendship with himself and staying near him could help his disciples to accept his role in their salvation in a way that cold intellectual understanding could not. Hence the invitation, "Come, and you will see".

Do you not know that your body
is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,
whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
For you have been purchased at a price.
Therefore glorify God in your body.

The Lord purchased back our entire self, body, soul, and spirit. By becoming incarnate in human flesh and offering that flesh as a sacrifice for sin our own flesh gained an even greater dignity than it had before the fall, and an even greater destiny at the resurrection of the body. This means we can't indulge in sin with our bodies and imagine our spirit is unaffected. It was through the body and soul together that sin came to dominate the human race. And it is now possible to live out the gift of freedom in Christ through both body and soul. If we persist in sins of the flesh we will eventually succumb again to slavery to sin. But if we treat ourselves as temples of the Holy Spirit our lives become about something greater than us and everything that we do can become an act of praise to God.

"We have found the Messiah" — which is translated Christ —.
Then he brought him to Jesus.

Once we recognize all that has been done for us we must open our hearts to share it with others. How can we leave them without so precious a treasure as that which we have found in the Blood of Christ?





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