Jesus has many titles in the Bible: “Son of God,” “Son of Man,” “Good Shepherd,” “King of the Jews,” and “Prince of Peace” to name a few. One of my favorite titles for Jesus is “Lamb of God.” What is the significance of Jesus being called the “Lamb of God?”
To answer that question, we need to look back at the first Passover, jump ahead to Christ’s death on the cross, and then flash forward to the future. We’ll see how Jesus perfectly fulfilled the Father’s eternal plan of salvation as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
The Shadow
In order to understand the significance of Jesus being the Lamb of God, you might think that the starting point would be the gospels. However, we’ll start by going all the way back to the second book of the Bible: Exodus.
For context, the events of this passage take place in the midst of God delivering the Israelites from the oppressive rule of the Egyptians. Pharaoh had repeatedly rejected God’s demands through Moses to free the Israelites, so God had sent nine terrible plagues to terrorize the Egyptians. These included turning all water sources to blood; infestations of frogs, gnats, flies, and locusts; the death of Egyptian livestock, painful boils on the skin of the Egyptians, darkness across the land, and catastrophic hail and fire storms.
The tenth and final plague would be the worst of all: the death of the firstborn sons. This would also be the final straw that broke Pharaoh and resulted in him letting the Israelites go. This event would also lead to the institution of a new feast day for Israel. Exodus 12 opens this way:
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you (Exod 12:1-2).
What is going to take place is so monumental that it will reset the calendar for the Israelites moving forward.
Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, 6 and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month (Exod 12:3-6a)
God wants every household in Israel to take a young lamb that is without blemish or imperfection and bring it into their house. They will take in this cute, innocent lamb and care for it for four days. Let’s read about what happens on the fourth day:
when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight (Exod 12:6b)
After the fourth day, they will slaughter their lamb at twilight.
That is horrific, but let’s continue reading.
Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it (Exod 12:7).
They are to spread the blood up the sides of the two doorposts and above the door of their houses. They are to smear the blood to cover the entrance into their house.
They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts (Exod 12:8-9).
They are to fully consume the lamb in a meal with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
It is the Lord’s Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt (Exod 12:11-13).
The Lord’s judgment will pass over the houses with blood on them. Every house that didn’t have the blood, which was every Egyptian house, will be struck with tragedy. God will kill the firstborn sons of those households.
This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast (Exod 12:14).
This will be a memorial feast that the Israelites were to keep every year to remember God’s deliverance from the hands of the Egyptians. Things played out exactly as God warned. We see this in Exodus 12:29-30:
At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead.
God used this to break Pharoah’s resolve. Instead of fighting against God’s request to free His people, Pharaoh sent them away. Why? The death of his son and the sons of his people.
It’s crucial to note that only the Egyptians were impacted. The Jews responded in faith and the lamb was the substitute for the lives of their firstborn sons. The death of the lamb prevented the death of their sons. The blood of the lamb protected them from God’s judgment. This was a historical event, but it was a shadow of something greater to come.
As Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and into the wilderness on their journey to the promised land, God would instruct him on His laws and a new sacrificial system to address the breaking of God’s laws.
We can see this in the rest of the Pentateuch—God sets up the system of the priests and has the people sacrifice bulls, goats, and lambs as a result of their sin. There were daily sacrifices for sin, as well as yearly sacrifices like the Day of Atonement.
Countless animals had their throats slit, their blood drained, and their bodies consumed in the fire of the altar. You may be thinking: “That’s awful—the murder of these innocent animals. That’s not fair!” You would be absolutely right.
These animal sacrifices showed that God is holy and requires death for the transgression of His law. Imagine the revulsion you would feel as you slit the throat of an innocent animal. This animal is dying because of you. That should result in revulsion for your sin.
However, these animal sacrifices also showed that God is loving and merciful. He provided a substitute for sinners so that they would not be consumed by His holy judgment on the spot.
The repeated nature of these sacrifices also showed that they were insufficient. These sacrifices could not forgive or remove sins. They could not atone for the sinner and reconcile them to God. They temporarily protected the people from judgement, but they had to be offered over and over and over.
The book of Hebrews tells us that these were merely a shadow pointing towards the need for a perfect sacrifice that could result in the complete and permanent forgiveness of sin (see Heb 10:1ff).
This brings us to our next point and to the gospel of John.
The Fulfillment
At the beginning of the gospel of John we see that John the Baptist has been sent by God as the forerunner for the promised Messiah. He is like a herald preparing the way for the king and announcing his arrival. And who is this Messiah? In John 1:29, we see this:
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
John the Baptist is clearly identifying Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus is the long awaited one who would deliver His people. However, notice that John calls Jesus the “Lamb of God.”
That is not how the Jewish people thought the Messiah would come. They thought He would come as the conquering king who would destroy all of His enemies.
They missed the fact that the Old Testament prophecies would actually be fulfilled in two distinct comings. The Messiah would come as the conquering king in his second coming, but in his first coming he came as a suffering servant. He came as a lamb.
Jesus is the fulfillment of what was foreshadowed by the Passover lamb and the countless lambs that had been sacrificed in the subsequent ~1500 years since the days of the Exodus. They were all pointing to Jesus. He is the ultimate lamb—the Lamb of God.
Paul explicitly makes the connection between the Passover lamb and Jesus:
For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed (1 Cor 5:7).
Like the Passover lamb, Jesus was completely innocent and without blemish. As God in human flesh, Jesus was morally perfect. He never sinned and had kept God’s law perfectly. He fulfilled all righteousness (John 8:29; Heb 4:15; Rom 5:12-21).
Because Jesus was without sin, he could be our representative. He could be our substitute. And, like the Passover lamb, He was going to have to die.
The author of Hebrews tells us:
without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (Heb 9:22).
The phrase “shedding of blood” is a euphemism for death. Jesus was going to be slaughtered on our behalf to pay for our sins. Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would bear our sin and be afflicted like a silent lamb being led to slaughter:
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet 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 (Isa 53:6-7).
Jesus knew He was going to die as a payment for sin. Jesus predicted His death many times in the gospels. For example, Jesus said this to his disciples:
For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).
Unlike the Passover lamb who had no clue what was happening, Jesus knew he came to die. In perfect obedience to the Father’s will, he executed on the plan of salvation that was conceived before the beginning of time.
In love, the Father had predestined that He would send His only son into the world to die for sinful man. And in love, Christ marched towards the cross.
He knew the shame that was awaiting Him. He would be betrayed by one of his twelve disciples. He would be lied about and accused unjustly. He would be mocked and spit on by His enemies. He would be jeered at and rejected by the crowds. He would be crucified like a common criminal. He would hang naked in front of his mother, his friends, and his enemies.
He also knew the physical pain that was awaiting him. He knew that he would be beaten to a bloody pulp. His back would be shredded to ribbons by a whip with tendrils containing razor sharp bone fragments, broken pottery, and hooks. He would have a crown of thorns beaten onto His head—with each blow driving the spikes into his flesh. He would be forced to place a heavy rugged cross on His shredded back and carry it to the place of his execution until He could go no further. He would have nails driven into his wrists and his ankles to crucify him to his cross. He would have to lift himself up by the nails in his feet as he struggled to breathe.
But the shame and the physical pain weren’t the worst parts. The worst part was that He would bear the wrath of God for the sins of all who would believe in him (Rom 3:21-26). If the sins of one person are enough to send them to hell for an eternity of judgment, imagine the full weight of judgment that Christ bore for the sins of all who would believe in him.
Up until that point, Jesus knew perfect communion and fellowship with God from eternity past. Yet, on the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
On the cross, God poured out his wrath on Christ for the sins that were placed upon him. Jesus absorbed our punishment as the substitute for those who would believe in him.
Do you know when Jesus was killed? During Passover. This was no coincidence. Like the Passover Lamb, Jesus was killed so the wrath of God would pass over those who He was substituting Himself for.
God implemented the Passover during the Exodus to set the stage for Jesus’ death to occur on Passover. This was the centerpiece of history. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
What was the result of Jesus’ sacrificial death as the Lamb of God? We’ll explore this question in our next article.
