This lesson has Jesus being identified by many titles and Dr. Sproul discusses them with a focus on the title "Lamb of God." In spite of John's recognition of Jesus as the Messiah, he still expressed doubts which Jesus responded by referring to His miracles. Dr. Sproul also discusses the reference to the angels of God ascending and descending.

In preaching through the gospel according to John, I promised that I would not be going verse-by-verse through the entire gospel, because that may take me longer than a normal lifetime to finish. So far, I have violated that promise at every turn, and I am going to be consistent with that violation this morning. Our Scripture today is from John 1:29–42:

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is He of whom I said, ‘After me comes a Man who is preferred before me, for He was before me.’ I did not know Him; but that He should be revealed to Israel, therefore I came baptizing with water.”

And John bore witness, saying, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and He remained upon Him. I did not know Him, but He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘Upon whom you see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.”

Again, the next day, John stood with two of his disciples. And looking at Jesus as He walked, he said, “Behold the Lamb of God!”

The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned, and seeing them following, said to them, “What do you seek?”

They said to Him, “Rabbi” (which is to say, when translated, Teacher), “where are You staying?”

He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where He was staying, and remained with Him that day (now it was about the tenth hour).

One of the two who heard John speak, and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon, and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus.

Now when Jesus looked at him, He said, “You are Simon the son of Jonah. You shall be called Cephas” (which is translated, A Stone).

He who has ears to hear the Word of God, let him hear. Let us pray.

Again, our Father and our God, we look to Your Word, for in it we find truth, unvarnished truth, that comes from You. As we hear the testimony of John the Baptist, give to our minds and hearts understanding, that we might with all our souls be pleased to sing the Agnus Dei, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Amen.

Titles of Christ

In England, it is always a momentous occasion when a citizen achieves knighthood and comes before the monarch to be given the title sir. In England and other monarchies, people are jealous of the titles others receive—king and queen, queen mother, prince and princess, duke and duchess, earl and lady, and so on. People covet the bestowal of ranking titles.

I have said in the past that the most titled person in all of human history is Jesus of Nazareth. I am reminded of an academic convocation at a theological seminary where the guest speaker was a distinguished New Testament scholar. These convocation events usually feature the presentation of weighty, academic, and technical papers. But on this occasion, the scholar did something that had never been done before in the institution.

The scholar got to the podium and began a recitation that lasted a half an hour, where, without comment, he began to give a litany of the titles of Christ that are found in the New Testament. “The Christ, the Son of God, the Son of Man, Lord, the Consolation of Israel, the Lion of Judah, the Son of God, Alpha and Omega . . .” For thirty minutes, he recited the titles found in Scripture that it pleased God the Father to ascribe to His Son.

Twice we hear in the first chapter of John that when John saw Jesus, he announced His coming and His appearance by what we commonly call the Agnus Dei: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

I believe there is something interesting about this. This title, Lamb of God, features prominently in church history, in our art, in our music, and in symbolic depictions of Christ throughout Christendom. It is certainly not a new thing to hear that Jesus was called the Lamb of God. But it might strike you as strange that there are only two books in all of the Bible wherein Christ is called the Lamb of God. Both of those books were written by the same man, the Apostle John.

We hear it here in the first chapter of John, where Christ is described as the Lamb of God by John the Baptist. Then we hear it in John’s vision on the Isle of Patmos in the book of Revelation. In chapter 6, he is told to await the coming of the Lion of Judah. But John turns and beholds not the Lion, but a Lamb, as if it were slain. The songs of the angels incorporated that event, saying, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive honor, glory, power, dominion,” and so on. Yet this is one of the rarest titles we find for Jesus in the Bible.

Lamb of God

Before I comment further, I want you to see something that I think is intriguing in the first chapter. At the very beginning of the chapter, Jesus is introduced as the Word of God, the eternal Word, who was with the Father in the beginning, who was with God, and who was God. But now, in his ministry, John the Baptist introduces Jesus, not by using the term Word, but by the title Lamb of God.

In verse 34, John says, “I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.” If you turn to verse 36, we see again, “the Lamb of God.” In verse 38, when the disciples of John come to Jesus, they say to Him, “Rabbi,” which was another title by which He was known.

In verse 41, Saint Andrew is the first to announce the messianic identity of Jesus. He finds Peter and says to him, “We have found the Messiah,” or, “the Christ.” If we go to verse 49, in his meeting with Jesus, Nathanael says: “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” In Jesus’ own testimony at the end of the chapter, He says, “I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” (John 1:51).

So, in this short literary span, we hear Jesus called the Word, the Lamb of God, the Son of God, Rabbi, Messiah, King of Israel, and the Son of Man. But all these titles following the prologue are introduced to us by John with the title Lamb of God.

I wish I had time to go into all the academic controversies that surround this aspect of John’s gospel. One of the objections raised is this: “Wait a minute. Nowhere in the Old Testament do we find the lamb involved in the expiation of sin. In the sin offerings of the Old Testament, bulls and goats were sacrificed, the scapegoat was driven out into the wilderness, but lambs were not used. So, where does the idea come from that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away sin?”

Critics of the New Testament come to this text and say, “Obviously, this is something that John made up in his own mind and put into the mouth of John the Baptist, because there’s no Old Testament precedent for it.” Others say: “We do find lamb metaphors in the Old Testament, most notably in Isaiah 53. There, God gives Isaiah the vision of the Suffering Servant, the servant of the Lord who will come and die for His people’s sin. There, it will please the Lord to bruise Him and transfer to Him our sins.”

We read in that text:

He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth. (Isa. 53:7)

There in the imagery of Isaiah 53, you have the Suffering Servant being compared to a lamb. But He is still not called “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” So again, the critics say, “This must have been something that John invented.”

I say: “Does that mean that Isaiah invented his metaphor too? Does that mean that Moses invented the function of the lamb on the day of Passover?” Does it ever occur to these people that John the Baptist was himself a prophet, and has as much power to give a fresh revelation from the mind of God as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, or anyone else? I would like to suggest that the origin of the concept of Christ as the Lamb of God is not in the vivid imagination of the Apostle John or in a lucky guess of John the Baptist, but it is one of God’s designations for His Son.

Christ Our Substitute

Throughout history, we see a strand of redemption that runs all the way back to Genesis. In Genesis 22, God calls Abraham to go to that distant place, Mount Moriah, and offer his only son, Isaac, as a sacrifice. We know that story. We have visited that story more than once at our church.

At the last possible moment, after Abraham had tied Isaac to the altar and was preparing to plunge the knife into his heart, God stopped him, saying, “Abraham, Abraham, lay not thy hand upon thy son.” There was a ruckus off to the side, and Abraham turned and saw a ram caught in the thicket by its horns. God provided a lamb as a substitute for the sacrifice of Abraham’s son.

Even there in Genesis 22, with the ram that is offered as a substitute, nothing in the text says that it is an expiatory sacrifice. Nevertheless, it is substitutionary. The idea of the atonement of Christ is that Christ stands as our substitute. Instead of God pouring out His wrath upon our sin, He provides a lamb of His own, and He will accept the life of the substitute, the Lamb of God, which certainly is also prefigured in the Passover.

When the angel of death comes upon the Egyptians to bring death to the firstborn male of every Egyptian household, including the crown prince of the pharaoh, God instructs His people Israel to slay a lamb without blemish and place its blood on the doorposts. This is a sign for the avenging angel as he comes to take the lives of the firstborn sons. When he sees a house that is marked by the blood of the lamb, he passes over it, because the Lamb of God has redeemed His people from the wrath of God.

It is foolish to say that the lamb imagery is a novelty in the gospel according to Saint John. We see it in the celebration in heaven, the future hope of the church, where the Lamb will receive the glory and honor of all the hosts of heaven.

When Jesus appears on the plane of history, when He begins His public ministry, He comes to the Jordan to be baptized in water for the sake of His people. At the same time, He is anointed by the pouring out of the Holy Spirit from heaven. He is the One who will bring Pentecost, by which He will baptize all His people in the same Holy Spirit.

John the Baptist sees Him and says: “This is the One whom I baptized. This is the One upon whom I saw the Holy Spirit come down and remain.” So now he says to his disciples, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

The Identity of Christ

We have seen all these titles in the first chapter. Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is the Son of Man. Jesus is the Messiah. I do not believe that Nathaniel, Andrew, Simon Peter, or even John the Baptist had a comprehensive understanding of the meaning of these titles.

John the Baptist, who says, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” is thrown into prison not much later. He sends a messenger to Jesus. What does he say? “Are you the One who is to come, or should we look for someone else?” This indicates that even at the baptism, John did not fully understand the identity of Jesus because he had his own expectations. He believed that the Lamb of God would come and drive the Romans out, just like everyone else believed.

When Jesus is teaching and preaching, John is languishing in prison, and he is confused. Jesus says, “Go tell John that the blind are seeing, the deaf are hearing and the poor are having the gospel preached to them.” What did Jesus mean by that? What was Jesus really saying to John? He was saying, simply: “John, do you remember Isaiah 61? The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to proclaim freedom to the captives, to give healing to the sick,” and so on. Jesus says: “John, if you really studied your Bible, you shouldn’t have to ask, ‘Are you the One who is to come?’ You don’t have to look for another one. You had it right the first time. I am the Lamb of God.”

This is true of the disciples at the great confession in Caesarea Philippi, when Peter says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). What a wonderful confession of faith. But almost immediately, Jesus says: “Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah, and you’ll be called Petros. But now, I have to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die.” Peter says, “Never, no way!”

What does that tell you? One minute Peter is saying, “You’re the Messiah,” the next, he is revealing that he does not understand all that is involved for Jesus to be the Messiah. It is only when we look at the whole picture, with the cross, the resurrection, the ascension, and the day of Pentecost behind us, that we begin to see the depths and riches of all that God was communicating through the announcement of His messenger: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Let us pray.

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the earth to receive glory and honor, dominion and power. We lift up our voices to You, O Christ, to give You honor and glory. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.