Most people would look at this Name of God and focus on “the Lamb of God”, they would focus on the Old Testament parallels and sacrifices and probably mention Genesis 22 and the sacrifice replacement for the son of Promise, Isaac and talk about how the same hill that God led Abraham to was Golgotha. And I am certainly tempted to do so, because those are some awesome revelations and for a couple of years, Genesis 22 was the centerpiece of my studying. But since other authors have done such a great job of that, I will not echo their revelations. John is giving us a look into how great this Lamb of God is. He is not simply “The Lamb of God”, but His identity enables Him to do something that no one else can – take away the sin of the world.
Like a merchant ship at port, the Lamb of God takes up the cargo of the sin of the world and sails away with it. If He is to take the sin of the world away, then it is necessary that He be able to not only bare the weight of the sin, but also carry it away from and out of the world. Therefore the nature of the Lamb must be such that He is able to traverse the realms that are outside of the cosmos. Natural things function best in the realm for which they were designed, outside of their intended context, worldly things cease to have power. So when the Lamb bares the sin of the world and removes it from its empowered atmosphere, it is rendered useless and impotent. Echoing off of the Lamb we can hear the words of the prophet “His thoughts and ways are higher than ours”.
What is the cargo that the Lamb has stowed in His vessel? It is “the sin of the world”. We must define sin so that we can understand what He is removing in order to understand what a glorious thing the Lamb has done for us and how great His heart is towards us. “Sin” in this verse is the word “hamartia”, which means, “to miss the mark”. If you grew up in the church like I did, you have heard this definition before. It is like an archer missing the perfect center of a target. It is explained to be the imperfections of living carnally. But we must understand why it would matter that we missed the center of the target. There is nothing more frustrating than competing against someone who doesn’t understand the purpose of the game or care about the results of the competition.
Hitting the mark ensured that you would receive the prize of victory. He who can consistently hit the mark for longer than everyone else is the victor and will win the prize. This is what the Lamb has done for us, He has removed our missed shots and granted us access to His perfect shooting record. The Expert Marksman has switched target sheets with us and ensured that we win every competition using His shots. This is why Paul was able to say that He works everything out for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. No matter how bad we shoot, His scorecard has our names on it.
So the Lamb of God comes from the realms of Eternity, takes on every time, in every place that any person ever did anything even slightly less than perfect anywhere in the universe, bundles all of those failures into one package and removes it from the temporal atmosphere where sin and death have power. He replaces that package with a Promise of His return and a Helper to show us how to live like the saints we have become. Truly this Lamb is worthy of beholding and is worthy of imitation.
*Lamb, thank You for setting us up for eternal success.
