Wednesday, January 3, 2024

3 January 2024 - behold the Lamb


I did not know him,
but the reason why I came baptizing with water
was that he might be made known to Israel.

John was given the grace to recognize the deeper identity of Jesus, to such a degree that he could now say, "I did not know him" beforehand. Certainly he knew his cousin, and knew he was in some sense special. But now he came to understand that Jesus was the one he had been appointed to make known. As a consequence of this he came to understand two facts about the identity of Jesus that, at first blush, would appear unrelated or even contradictory.

Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

Lambs brought to mind the Passover, temple sacrifices for sin, and the suffering servant of Isaiah who would be led like a lamb to the slaughter. It was an image tied to suffering, deliverance, and freedom. Isaiah had already alluded to the fact that a human being was to somehow fulfill this role, saying "when he makes himself an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days" (see Isaiah 53:10). 

However, John recognized that, although he was the Lamb of God, Jesus was also God himself.

A man is coming after me who ranks ahead of me
because he existed before me.

Perhaps John came to understand that even the value of the offering of a righteous man was not enough to bring about the redemption from sin that had been promised. Only the value of a life that was also divine would suffice. Or perhaps he came to realize the divinity of Jesus because he was told that Jesus was the one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit. Since it was God himself said he would "pour out [his] Spirit on all flesh" (see Joel 2:28) if Jesus was the one who would pour out the Spirit then it followed that he must be God. The Spirit was, after all, God's to give, and not subject to any merely human will.

Whatever led John to see Jesus as God and Lamb of God, there must still have been a great tension between these ideas in his mind. How, in the end, would God become the promised Lamb? How would this lead to the outpouring of the Spirit? Welcoming the God incarnate as Jesus, seeing the grace and power that filled him, it would have been tempting to forget about hints at sacrifice and suffering that hung like dark clouds over his future. But John, for his part, held to the full revelation he received. He waited to allow Jesus to reveal himself further. It was this self-revelation that would allow those who witnessed it to be transformed.

We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he is.
Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure,
as he is pure.

John died in hope, with faith in what Jesus was going to do and the grace he was going to make available. But we now live in that era of grace, loved by the Father so much that "we may be called the children of God". Like John, however, we still need both Jesus as Lamb and Jesus as God. We still need his help to remove the sin from our lives, to make ourselves pure as he is pure. Because he shed his blood for us we can be free from sin. Because he poured out his Spirit upon us we can live in victory. This was the hope that motivated John the Baptist. But it is now available to us as a reality. We are reminded of this fact every time we go to mass and hear the words of John repeated, "Behold the Lamb of God!"






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