The Lamb of God
The outline of John’s Gospel is as follows:
- Prologue – The Lamb is the Logos (John 1:1-18)
- The ministry of the Lamb of God – The Book of Signs (John 1:18-John 12:50)
- The Passover of the Lamb of God – The Book of Glory (John 13 to John 20:31)
- Epilogue – The Lamb is the Lord (John 21: 1-25)
The Lamb of God is one of the central motifs of the Biblical narrative. In the eternity past, the Logos was the Lamb of God slain before the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8). In the eternity future, we will see Him with the marks of the Cross that John saw Him in his vision(Revelation 5:5) as if He was the Lamb slain. John the Apostle reports that John the Baptist introduced the Logos, Jesus Christ as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). We can say that there was the Cross before the Cosmos because the Lamb of God was slain before the foundation of the world.
For the first-century Jews, the lamb was of great importance because one of their most important festivals, the Passover, was a celebration of a sacrificial lamb—the Passover Lamb. Jewish history is intertwined with the Passover because Jews came out of Egyptian slavery and became a free nation only after the Passover Lamb was sacrificed. Until the lamb was sacrificed, they could not come out of Egypt, and once the lamb was sacrificed, they could not stay in Egypt; they were driven out.
The Father of the Jewish Nation, Abraham, sacrificed the Ram provided by God in the place of his son Isaac (on Mount Moriah), prefigures the Lamb of God sent/provided by God to take away the sin of the world. We can see that the Lord who provided a lamb to Abraham to sacrifice in the place of his son now provided the Lamb of God as a substitutionary sacrifice for the lost humanity (John 1:29). We will study John’s Gospel through the lens of the Lamb of God and see His pre-existence, incarnation, life, ministry, miracles, crucifixion, and resurrection during the Lent Season of 2025.
Shalom!
