February 25

The Lamb of God

And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! — John 1:36

This was the first gospel sermon, and it is a model for all preachers and teachers. The preacher pointed his own followers away from himself to Christ. This same beautiful unselfishness appears in all John’s course. He was only a voice, announcing the coming of a King. He was not that Light, but only one bearing witness of that Light. With throngs following him, the moment Jesus came, John asked the throngs to leave him and go after Jesus. His whole ministry was simply a pointing of people to Christ.

This is what all Christian workers should do; they should preach and teach Christ, not themselves. They should not seek to win attention to themselves, but to get all to see Christ and to love Him. Like John, they should be willing to decrease that Christ might increase; they should be satisfied to fade away like the morning star in the brightness of the sun’s rising.

This name by which John drew attention to Jesus is so very important. He called Him the Lamb of God. This meant that Christ had come into the world not alone to be a teacher, but chiefly to be a sacrifice for the sin of the world, to die in the place of sinners. He was called a lamb, no doubt, because of His gentleness and meekness; but the principal reason was because He was to save us from our sins by bearing them Himself. Just the day before this, John said of Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”

Not only did He take our sin upon Himself; He bore it away into eternal forgetfulness, to be remembered no more forever. Now all who come to Him are safe forever from condemnation. Long ago their sins were laid on the atoning Lamb, and they will never have to be borne a second time. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.”