3/11 Behold the Lamb of God

This is Scripture for Students. I’m Steve Whitacre, president of Trinity College and a pastor at Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville. I want to help students build a daily habit for life-long Bible reading. Today is March 11, 2025 and this episode of Scripture for Students is called Behold the Lamb of God. Grab your Bible and let’s get started.

Our readings for today are Exodus 22, John 1, and Job 40.

Please open your Bibles to John 1.

I am tortured nearly every week. In my own home. Here’s what I mean: my daughters have studied and learned their mother’s baking skills. And now my wife and my daughters regularly make amazing desserts—for church events. I can smell them cooking and I come into the kitchen and they will be icing a batch of cupcakes or something. And I just need to honor myself here for the incredible self-control that I model every time I don’t scarf down those desserts for myself. 

I am going to exercise a similar kind of self-control here because our reading for today includes John 1. The first 18 verses of John’s gospel are some of the most sublime, most edifying, and most well-known words in all of Scripture. And as much as I would like to, I’m not going to talk about how carefully John has crafted the opening of these words to echo Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning…” I would love to talk about how John here introduces some of his favorite themes, like life and light. 

And of course I would love to talk about 1:14, “And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” I would love to talk about how the verb “dwelt among us” could be translated “pitched his tent” among us and is meant to bring to mind the tabernacle we’re reading about in Exodus. And I would love to talk about how significant the words “grace and truth” are. But I’m going to kick in some cupcake-level self-control here and not talk about those things. Instead, I want us to look at a paragraph a little deeper in the chapter that sits in the shadow of its more famous earlier paragraph.

Would you please read John 1:29–34 along with me. This passage starts with John the Baptist:

29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 

30 This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’ 

31 I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” 

32 And John bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 

33 I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 

34 And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”

May the Lord bless the reading and the hearing and the keeping of his Word.

Wow, what a passage. John says at least four really powerful things in these verses that I want us to think about. 

First, John says in verse 29, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” With this very brief statement, John is pulling together some of the biggest theological truths of the Old Testament. The “Lamb of God” could be a reference to the Passover lamb of Exodus 12, whose blood was shed and then spread on the door posts of houses to avert the judgment of God on the firstborn. And then, that he “takes away the sins of the world” could be an allusion to Leviticus 16, the Day of Atonement, where the sins of Israel are placed on the head of a goat and sent away into the wilderness physically removed from the presence of Israel. 

And all of this is for the sins “of the world.” This term, “the world” is an important one in John: it doesn’t necessarily mean all people everywhere, but more likely, all kinds of people. In the Old Testament, God’s salvation was for the nation of Israel, in the New Testament, Jesus’ saving mission will extend out to every nation, every tribe, every tongue, every people. 

Second, John acknowledges that Jesus is fully God by recognizing that Jesus is eternal. He says, “After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.” We know from reading Matthew’s gospel that John the Baptist is at least a few months older than Jesus, but John is not talking about birth order here. He is saying that Jesus existed before him—and in fact, he is saying that Jesus exists. This is a powerful statement of Jesus’ pre-existence and an affirmation that he is fully God.

Third, John mentions the baptism of Jesus. John was there and he tells us what he saw. He says in verse 32, “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.” For John, this is a sign of God’s blessing on Jesus and that Jesus is anointed for the task to which he has been called. It is significant that the Spirit of God comes upon Jesus and remained on him. The Spirit will be with Jesus throughout his ministry, empowering his ministry and preparing him for the sufferings of the crucifixion. This is also significant because throughout the Old Testament the Holy Spirit came on different people at different times, but usually only temporarily and usually only for a specific purpose. For instance, we’ll see that next week with two guys named Oholiab and Bezalel in Exodus 31—they were empowered by the Spirit to have skill to build the tabernacle. In the Old Testament, David is the only person whom the Spirit came upon and stayed upon for his entire life—you can read more about that in 1 Samuel 16:13. So this tells us that John sees Jesus as a new king in the pattern of David. But where David failed through sin, Jesus will succeed through obedience.

Fourth and finally, John makes a remarkable statement, “And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.” This is the beginning of John’s gospel but John is writing this after the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, so John is summarizing all he has seen and heard and experienced during his time with Jesus. This is one of the keys to understanding John’s gospel: everything John will tell us about Jesus, he is telling us to convince of this big idea: that Jesus is the Son of God. 

So as we read John’s gospel for the next three weeks, let’s prepare to be amazed by what we read, and let’s read it with all four of these remarkable statements in mind: that Jesus is the sacrificial lamb of God who takes away our sin, that Jesus is eternal with God, that Jesus is empowered by the Spirit to accomplish his ministry and that he is the Son of God.

That’s all for today. If you enjoyed this episode please share it with a friend and follow us on Apple Podcasts.

This content is sponsored by Trinity College of Louisville. We shape young men and young women for Christ and for the church. Learn more at TrinityCollegeLou.com. Until next time, keep growing!