Chapter Iv - The Lamb Of God
CHAPTER IV
THE LAMB OF GOD
TWICE JOHN THE BAPTIST is recorded as having spoken of Jesus as ‘the Lamb of God‘(Jn. I: 29, 36), and on the first occasion he added, ‘which taketh away the sin of the world!’ ‘The Lamb of God’ is a way of referring to Jesus which has made a powerful appeal to Christian devotion through the centuries. The petition, ‘O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us’, occurs in many liturgies, while those who prefer extempore prayer often find the words ‘Lamb of God’ come easily to their lips. Christian art has found the symbolism congenial, and many are the pictures and the stained glass windows which show forth the Lamb. There is something about the expression which does not require explanation before it can appeal to the depths of the heart. In the words themselves lurks a numinous quality.
We are so accustomed to using the expression that we rarely stop to consider that it is a curious description of a man. Why should Jesus be called ‘God’s lamb’? What precisely is meant when He is so called? It is easier to ask the questions than to answer them. John does not stop to explain and as the expression does not appear to be used by anyone before him we cannot appeal to his predecessors.
First, let us notice that the genitive, ‘of God’, is ambiguous. It might mean ‘belonging to God’, or it might mean, ‘provided by God’ (cf. Gn. 22: 8). The Lamb might be thought of as standing in a special relationship to God. Or it might be understood in terms of God’s taking of the initiative in bringing men salvation. The Lamb takes away the world’s sin. In the Bible God is thought of as the only one who can do this. Thus the Lamb may well be the Lamb which God provides in order to bring about His will.
No sufficient reason has been given for deciding in favour of either view. But it is a habit of the Fourth Evangelist to use expressions which may be taken in more ways than one, evidently with a view to including all the possible meanings. For example, William Temple has pointed out that the opening words of this. Gospel, usually translated ‘in the beginning’, might also be understood as referring to the fundamental eternal reality. He says, ‘So the word really means both things; and here the expression used means both “in the beginning of history” and “at the root of the universe”.‘241 A very well-known example of the same sort of thing is found in the expression about being ‘born ἄνωθεν’ in chapter 3. Does it mean ‘born again’ or ‘born from above’? The Greek is patient of either meaning. Most scholars agree that both are true and that probably both are meant. John does this kind of thing repeatedly. It is his habit to use words which may be understood in more ways than one apparently with the deliberate intention that the full meaning should be understood. The probability is that this is what he is doing here. According to his habit he will want us to think of both meanings.242
When we look for the antecedents of the term our search is very barren. The exact expression ‘the Lamb of God’ (ὁ ἀµνὸς τoῦ θεoῦ) is not found in any literature known to us before St. John’s Gospel. We are not in a position to say that John has taken the expression from such-and-such a source. As far as we can see it originated with him. We are driven accordingly to examine ideas and expressions which are sufficiently akin to this one to be taken seriously as its possible sources. For, of course, if we have the source we may well find ourselves with the meaning. A number of suggestions have been made.
1. The Passover lamb. Perhaps the commonest suggestion is that the Passover is in mind. Support is found for this view in the fact that there are indications throughout this Gospel that the Passover imagery was often present to the mind of the evangelist. He mentions the Passover more than any other feast. Most commentators agree that he puts the death of Christ at the time the Passover victims were being slain in the Temple, and in this way identifies Christ’s death with the Passover sacrifice, as does Paul in I Corinthians 5: 7 (Jn. 19: 36 is usually thought to be a citation of Ex. 12: 46 or Nu. 9: 12, both of which refer to the Passover; some see a reference to Ps. 33: 21, but this seems much less likely). The suggestion is made accordingly that the inclusion of this saying of the Baptist right at the beginning of his Gospel is John’s way of introducing this topic. Then he proceeds to develop it throughout his Gospel.
The Passover imagery is highly appropriate as an illustration of the work of Christ. It reminds us of the lambs and the kids that were slain in Egypt those centuries before, and which were the means of diverting destruction from the households where the sacrifice was made and the blood placed on the doorposts. The great deliverance lingered in the minds of the people, and throughout the Old Testament there are references to it. In some sense it was the Exodus and the events associated with it which transformed the slave rabble into the very people of God. All these things are important for an understanding of Christ’s work for us. His sacrifice of Himself delivers men from the destruction that their sins involved them in. And it transforms men from being slaves to sin to being the people of God. The figure has force.
But objections are lodged against this interpretation. Some scholars reject the identification on the grounds that the Passover was not regarded as an expiatory sacrifice. The Lamb of God is here expressly said to take away the sin of the world. The Passover, it is objected, was not thought of as taking away sin. This objection, however, even though it is sometimes made by reputable scholars, will scarcely hold water. There is evidence that all sacrifice was held to be expiatory,243 and this will include the Passover. But in any case there are Rabbinic passages which specifically include the Passover. There is a Midrash which says, ‘I will have pity on you, through the blood of the Passover and the blood of circumcision, and I will forgive you.‘244 The Midrash says that the Israelites were under God’s condemnation on account of their idolatry. They were liable to the death penalty. But the Passover blood freed them. Plainly this sacrifice is regarded as expiatory. It dealt with their sins. This same idolatry in Egypt is mentioned in another connection and the Passover is equated with the sin offering. Numbers 7: 46 is cited and then the comment added, ‘This was in allusion to the Paschal >sacrifice’.245 It is difficult to see how the Paschal sacrifice could be linked so closely with the sin offering were it not regarded as expiatory.
Another relevant passage is found in Josephus. He tells us that the Israelites in Egypt ‘in readiness to start, sacrificed, purified the houses with the blood ...‘246 This is a plain reference to the Passover and to the Passover as purging sin.
Such passages as these make it impossible to hold that the Passover was held not to be expiatory. Whatever be the case with the original institution, by the time of the New Testament it was certainly held in one of its aspects to be atoning. There seems no good reason then for maintaining that because ‘the Lamb of God’ takes away sin the reference cannot be to the Passover.
More important is the fact that there is no evidence at all that the Passover victim would have been recognized under the expression ‘the Lamb of God’. We so often use the words, ‘the Passover lamb’, that we tend to overlook the fact that this is not a first-century expression. The victim offered at the Passover was in fact not necessarily a lamb at all. It might be, and often was, a kid of the goats.247 There is no more reason for speaking of ‘the Passover lamb’ than of ‘the Passover kid’. When the men of the first century wanted to refer to the Passover victim they called it neither a lamb nor a kid, but simply, ‘the Passover’, τὸ πασχα. A very well-known example is found in I Corinthians 5 : 7, where Paul speaks of Christ as ‘our Passover’ (τὸ πασχα ἡµ
ν).
ν).G. Buchanan Gray says forthrightly, ‘the Paschal victim was ... neither as a matter of fact necessarily a lamb, nor in the usage of the time was it called a lamb; the proper term for it was “Passover”, and it is only reasonable to suppose that had the author of the Fourth Gospel intended this he would, like St. Paul, have used the correct and unambiguous designation.‘248
For all its popularity I do not see how the interpretation which sees in the words a reference to the Passover can be substantiated. A modern habit of speech is no basis on which to erect the identification of an expression in use in the first century. ‘God’s lamb’ is far too general a term to have aroused in the first century specific associations of the Passover. The connection is in modern minds, not in the Greek term.
2. The ‘lamb that is led to the slaughter’ (Is. 53: 7). This is certainly possible. Vincent Taylor, to name no other, sees in ‘the Lamb of God’ a reference to the Suffering Servant chapter, and specifically to Isaiah 53:7,12.249 But there is nothing in John which points to this identification. In John the lamb is ‘the Lamb of God’. In Isaiah this designation is not used. The linguistics of the passages are against it.
The big point in favour of this view is that the lamb in Isaiah may be held to be linked with the taking away of sin, and the Lamb in John is certainly so linked. But even so, this is not convincing. The fact must be faced that, while in Isaiah 53 it is said that the Servant suffers for sin, it is not said that the lamb suffers in this way. The ‘lamb that is led to the slaughter’ is employed as an illustration of the humility and the submissiveness of the Servant, not of His function as sin-bearer.
It seems to me that the only way in which ‘the Lamb of God’ could be detected as an allusion to the lamb in Isaiah 53:7 would be if ‘the Lamb’ were recognized as a messianic designation and if Isaiah 53 were also widely recognized as messianic. Then the two would come together naturally. The first point should probably be conceded. The lamb symbolism in Revelation shows that some early Christians referred to the Messiah in this way. But we scarcely need that. The way John the Baptist uses the expression in John I shows plainly enough that it was meant as a designation of the Messiah. The difficulty is in the other point. If there was no widely held idea that Isaiah 53 applies to the Messiah, then more than this single expression will be needed to make plain a reference to this prophecy. It seems to me that the evidence produced by H. H. Rowley makes it more than difficult to hold that the Suffering Servant was widely equated with the Messiah in pre-Christian times.250 So I do not think that this identification is at all probable.
3. The Suffering Servant. This view is rather like the one which we have just been considering, but it does not rest so much on the occurrence of the word ‘lamb’ in Isaiah 53. The thought is rather that the term ‘lamb’ in John I is rightly understood only when it is seen to mean ‘servant’. ‘The Lamb of God’ then becomes almost exactly equivalent to ‘the Servant of the Lord’. J. Jeremias puts it this way: ‘the expression ὁ ἀµνὸς τoῦ θεoῦ conceals both a factual and a linguistic difficulty. (1) The description of the Saviour as a lamb is unknown to late Judaism. (2) The expression is an unparalleled genitive combination. Both difficulties are solved if we refer to the Aramaic where ṭalyā means (a) the lamb, (b) the boy, the servant. Probably behind the phrase ὁ ἀµνὸς τoῦ θεoῦ lies an Aramaic ṭalyā dē’ lāhā’ in the sense of ‘ebhedh YHWH.’251
Jeremias certainly succeeds in drawing our attention to the difficulty. But it is not so certain that he has found the solution. He has not shown, for example, that there are real grounds for holding that the Greek ἀµνός, ‘lamb’, was regarded as an acceptable translation of the Aramaic ṭalyā’. Nor has he shown that this Aramaic word was regarded as equivalent to the Hebrew ‘ebhedh, ‘servant’.252 Nor does he face the diffculties that it seems highly unlikely that an expression as well known as ‘the servant of the Lord’ should not be recognized, and that it should be translated by such a difficult and unusual expression as ‘the lamb of God’. Again I must insist that our familiarity with the expression should not lead us into the error of thinking it was either familiar or obvious to the men of the first century. Though it does not lack attractiveness the theory of Jeremias does not really seem as though it will explain the facts.
4. The daily sacrifice. Every morning and every evening a lamb was offered in sacrifice on the altar in the Temple. This would be the most familiar of offerings. Hoskyns may be named as one who sees in it the clue to John’s meaning. ‘Salvation’, he writes, ‘presupposes sacrifice. Salvation from sin depends upon that sacrifice of which the lambs, consecrated morning and evening in the Temple to be the possession of God, provide the proper analogy.‘253
There seems no reason why this daily sacrifice should not have been referred to as ‘God’s lamb’, and if it was, then it will certainly have been in John’s mind. But we have no reason for thinking that it was so known. As far as our evidence goes it was never described in this way. This being so we can scarcely take this sacrifice as the origin of John’s term.
5. The ‘gentle lamb’ (Je. 11: 19). On one occasion the prophet Jeremiah said, ‘I was like a gentle lamb that is led to the slaughter’ (Je. 11:19), and it is possible that John had this passage in mind. The only attraction in this suggestion appears to be that the meekness of the lamb mentioned by the prophet may well point to the unresisting way in which Christ went to His death. There is an emphasis on innocency. But we have no reason for thinking that this particular piece of imagery was widely known so that ‘the Lamb of God’ would immediately recall it. Nor does Jeremiah associate his lamb with the taking away of sins, and that is the characteristic point about the lamb in John. Gentleness and innocency are not the same thing as expiation. There is ancient evidence for thinking of this passage in connection with the Johannine one. Origen mentioned it and linked it with Isaiah 53: 7.254 But, despite this high authority, few have been persuaded.
6. The scapegoat. The fatal objection to the last suggestion was that the lamb of which Jeremiah speaks is not thought of as taking away sins. Perhaps in reaction to suggestions of this kind some have thought that the allusion may be to the scapegoat of Leviticus 16. The scapegoat certainly supplies what Jeremiah’s lamb lacks, for if there is one thing that the scapegoat does it is to take away sin. It fits in very well with the words, ‘which taketh away the sin of the world’.
But for all that it is more than a little difficult to see why the suggestion should be taken seriously. For after all the scapegoat was a goat and not a lamb. I see not the slightest reason for holding that the scapegoat could ever have been called ‘God’s lamb’. There is certainly no evidence that it ever bore this name or anything like it.
7. The triumphant lamb of the apocalypses. A most interesting suggestion arises from the frequent use of the lamb imagery in the apocalyptic imagery so popular in the first century. There the lamb was often used in a way which is, to us at least, quite unexpected. It was usual in the apocalypses to use beasts of various kinds as symbols for men. The lamb, and more especially the horned lamb, was used as the symbol of a leader, a triumphant conqueror. It may be that this animal was deliberately chosen by the apocalyptic writers because it was the last animal that would be suspected of pointing to military conquerors. It may be that there was the thought of the bell wether leading the flock and that this led on to the thought of the Messiah leading His people. Whatever the reasoning there can be no doubt as to the fact. The apocalypses did make use of the lamb in this way.
Perhaps the outstanding illustration of this is in the Revelation. There Christ is seen as the mighty conqueror. This note runs through the book. And the writer’s favourite way of referring to the victorious Lord is as ‘the Lamb’. This title will carry an allusion to the Lord’s death, for a lamb was a sacrificial animal, and Revelation not seldom brings out the thought that believers are saved only through the death of Christ. But coupled with this is the thought of Christ triumphant. The Lamb is supreme. ‘Unto him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, be the blessing, and the honour, and the glory, and the dominion, for ever and ever’ (Rev. 5: 13).
Since Revelation so plainly shows that Christ can be spoken of as the Lamb who triumphs, some have thought that this gives us the clue to the imagery in John I. They suggest that the Baptist with his deep interest in eschatology saw Jesus as God’s triumphant Hero. This view has been powerfully argued by C. H. Dodd.255 He thinks there are four possibilities, the sin offering, the paschal lamb, the suffering Servant and ‘the young ram which is ἄρχων 
αì ἡϒoύµενoς τν πρoβάτων, i.e. the Messiah as “King of Israel”.‘256 He examines and rejects the first three and concludes that ‘We are left with the idea of the lamb as a symbol of the Messiah as leader of the flock of God, i.e. as “King of Israel”.‘257
αì ἡϒoύµενoς τν πρoβάτων, i.e. the Messiah as “King of Israel”.‘256 He examines and rejects the first three and concludes that ‘We are left with the idea of the lamb as a symbol of the Messiah as leader of the flock of God, i.e. as “King of Israel”.‘257This is not the most convincing line of argument. It is noteworthy that Dodd cites little positive evidence. He is content with the weaknesses of the other positions and the general probability that a reference to a lamb in such a context will necessarily point us to the apocalyptic lamb with its associations of triumph.
There are objections. A minor one is that the triumphant lamb of the apocalypses is usually a horned lamb (cf. Rev. 5: 6). But no horn is mentioned in John I. Again, the word for ‘Lamb’ in Revelation is ἀρνíoν while that in John I is ἀµνoς, but we should probably not make too much of this difference. A more weighty objection is that the specific function of the ‘Lamb of God’ in John is to take away sin, whereas this function is not associated with the triumphant lamb. He rather is the one who overthrows the enemies of God. While admittedly these two concepts are compatible yet the language of John I is not such as naturally to evoke memories of apocalyptic.
Dodd’s answer to this point is that the Greek need mean no more than ‘remove sin’. It does not necessarily point to atonement. He points out that ‘To make an end of sin is a function of the Jewish Messiah, quite apart from any thought of a redemptive death’.258 But this is to ignore the cross. A putting an end to sin which takes place quite apart from the cross can never give us the clue to the removal of sin in a system which makes the cross as central, as does Christianity in general, and the Fourth Gospel in particular. John’s language is not the same as that of the writers Dodd cites, and it does seem to mean that the ‘Lamb of God’ will take away sin in a sense different from the conqueror of the apocalypses who brings in a new shape of affairs where sin finds no place.
C. K. Barrett agrees that Dodd does not do justice to the language used. He points out that the passages Dodd cites for the Messiah’s making an end of sin do not contain the word αἴρε
ν. The expression αἴρεν ἁµαρτíαν he thinks suggests the Hebrew ns’
ḥṭ’, ns’ ‘wn, ‘which occur not infrequently in cultic contexts, and often signify the removal not of evil simply but of guilt’.259 This is the critical point. The Johannine language means more than Dodd is prepared to admit. It is different from the language of the apocalypses and full justice must be done to this difference.
ν. The expression αἴρεν ἁµαρτíαν he thinks suggests the Hebrew ns’
ḥṭ’, ns’ ‘wn, ‘which occur not infrequently in cultic contexts, and often signify the removal not of evil simply but of guilt’.259 This is the critical point. The Johannine language means more than Dodd is prepared to admit. It is different from the language of the apocalypses and full justice must be done to this difference.A further objection arises from a consideration of the readers for whom the Fourth Gospel was written. To say that there are difficulties in deciding this question is a massive understatement. But, whoever were the precise first recipients of this Gospel, most scholars agree that in part, at any rate, it was meant to appeal to men whom Barrett calls ‘adherents of the “higher religion of Hellenism” ’. There is too much that would appeal to the Greek mind for us to think that it is accidental. Now it is difficult to see how such men could possibly discern the allusion to the horned lamb. To cite Barrett again, ’What, we may ask, would these men make of the horned lamb of Enoch? They could indeed speak of spiritual sacrifices, allegorizing the familiar cultus of the Hellenistic world, but anything less likely to appeal to them than the apocalyptic figure of the Lamb-Messiah would be difficult to imagine.‘260 These are strong words, but they appear to be justified. Unless we are prepared to maintain that this Gospel was written with no intention of appealing to the Hellenistic world, it is difficult to take Dodd’s contention seriously. All the more is this the case in that we have no more than two references, neither of them with an explanation. In a book like Revelation references to ‘the Lamb’ are so frequent that any reader, Hellenist or Semitic, must begin to ask what they mean. But a couple of unexplained references are a different proposition. They are not prominent. They receive no particular emphasis. They do not form a leading idea of this Gospel. It seems to follow that they must have been recognizable by the Gospel’s first readers at sight. It is more than difficult to envisage this with Hellenists if the apocalyptic conqueror is indeed in mind. And in any case it is to be borne in mind that there is less apocalyptic in the Fourth Gospel than in other parts of the New Testament.
There is also the fact that, while there are quite a number of references to the apocalyptic lamb, in none so far known to us is this lamb called ‘the Lamb of God’. Once again it is necessary to insist that this is an unusual expression. If we are to claim that it applies to one particular lamb then we need convincing reason. And that has not been shown.
8. The lamb that God provides (Gn. 22: 8). When Abraham and Isaac were ascending Mount Moriah the boy was puzzled. ‘Behold, the fire and the wood’, he said to his father, ‘but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’ Abraham replied, ‘God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering my son’ (Gn. 22: 7f).John may have been thinking of this incident. The reference links God with the lamb. It is not unreasonable to hold that a lamb that God provides might be called ‘God’s lamb’. And the incident we know to have been very prominent in Jewish thought. The ‘Binding of Isaac’ was a well-known and well-loved Rabbinic theme. Isaac’s willingness to be sacrificed profoundly impressed Jewish expositors and they often refer to the Binding (Akedah). The fact that it does not loom large in Christian thought ought not to blind us to its importance for first-century Jews.
So important was it that G. Vermes is of opinion that, when this is recognized, the passage in John should no longer be regarded as a difficulty. ‘For the Palestinian Jew, all lamb sacrifice, and especially the Passover lamb and the Tamid offering, was a memorial of the Akedah with its effects of deliverance, forgiveness of sin and messianic salvation.‘261 Since all lamb sacrifice pointed back to the Akedah so must the reference to ‘the Lamb of God’.
A. Richardson is another who supports the view, though perhaps not so forthrightly as Vermes. Richardson examines various suggested explanations of the expression ‘the Lamb of God’, but is most convinced by this one. He points out that ‘Jewish thought increasingly came to hold that the covenant-relationship with God was founded upon Abraham’s offering of Isaac: St John is asserting that the new relationship of God and man in Christ (the new covenant) is based upon the fulfilment of the promise contained in Gen. 22. 8, that God would provide the Lamb which would make atonement for universal sin ... Christ is the Lamb of sacrifice promised by God to Abraham, the father of many nations, and thus he is the God-given universal Sin Bearer’.262
This is an interesting line of approach and Richardson has brought out very well the implications of this particular identification. But we would have more confidence in accepting it if we could be certain that the thought of John the Baptist and that of the Rabbis went along similar lines. At many points they certainly diverge, and to establish this identification it would need to be shown, or at least rendered probable, that they did not diverge in their view of the importance of the Akedah. It would also be a help if it could be shown that the victim provided in Isaac’s stead (which incidentally proved to be a ram, not a lamb, Gn. 22: 13) was ever called by any name resembling ‘God’s lamb’. This expression is far from being self-explanatory and it carries no obvious or immediate reference to Genesis 22. For all the confidence of some of the supporters of this view it cannot be held to have been clearly established.
9. The guilt offering. We are very much in the habit of thinking of the guilt offering as being a ram, and so it often was. But on certain occasions it was prescribed that a lamb should be sacrificed as a guilt offering (e.g. Lv. 14: 12ff., 21, 24f.; Nu. 6: 12). We even find the expression ‘the lamb of the guilt offering’ (Lv. 14: 24, etc.). There is thus some basis for the view that in John I the reference is to the guilt offering, the offering which took away sin. This seems very plain to James Morgenstern: ‘Here, beyond all doubt, Jesus is conceived of, precisely as was the Servant, as an ‘shm, “a guilt-offering”, sacrificing himself for the redemption of mankind from its iniquity and thus effecting its salvation.’263
No explanation is more satisfactory than this for the words which refer to the taking away of the world’s sin. The guilt offering would fit admirably. But it is difficult to regard it as satisfactory for all that. After all, the guilt offering was so often another animal than a lamb. Characteristically it was a ram, and it might on occasion be a he-goat. ‘A lamb’ carries no necessary connection with this particular sacrifice. To put the objection the other way round, there seems no reason at all why the guilt offering should be spoken of as ‘the Lamb of God’.
Thus there is no lack of suggestions as to the meaning of our expression. Widely divergent ideas are put forward and sometimes urged very confidently. We have seen that more than one of the suggestions has much to commend it, but that in every case it may fairly be urged that it is too specific. The fact is that ‘God’s Lamb’ is too indefinite an expression for us to confine the meaning to any particular lamb, at least to any which has so far been suggested. It is a very general expression, and the suggestions made are all very specific. In each case that is a critical difficulty.
I find it difficult to escape the impression that the expression is sacrificial. The majority of the suggestions that have been made have this in common that in one way or another they understand the words to refer to the offering of Christ as a sacrifice availing to put away the world’s sin. The conspicuous exception is that which sees the Lamb as an eschatological figure. Dodd sees it as an allusion to the victorious lamb of the apocalypses, and, while this Lamb is indeed sacrificial in the book of Revelation, it is not sacrificial in the majority of the apocalypses. As we have seen, Barrett rejects Dodd’s view. He cannot see a specific reference to the Lamb of the apocalypses. But the Lamb-imagery may well lead us, he thinks, to the idea that in part at least the Lamb is an eschatological conception. This he finds amply attested in Revelation, while it is also true that John the Baptist, who uses the expression ‘the Lamb of God’, was very interested in the last things. Indeed it would not be out of keeping to call him an eschatological figure. Out of all this Barrett lays down two propositions which, he feels, give us the key to the expression: ‘(I) It would be entirely consistent with John the Baptist’s message in its original form that he should have described the Messiah as the Lamb of God in the apocalyptic sense. (2) It would be entirely consistent with the Church’s handling of the Baptist tradition, and in particular with John the Evangelist’s recasting of the earlier gospel tradition, if this “Lamb of God” became a less primitive and more profoundly theological conception. I venture to suggest that we have here the solution to the problem of the title, the “Lamb of God”.‘264
In view of the use of Revelation I imagine that it is not possible to deny outright that there is any eschatological content in the expression ‘the Lamb of God’. But I am not persuaded by Barrett’s arguments. His approach in this matter is highly speculative. It may be freely granted that more than one idea is fused together in the ‘Lamb of God’ concept. But I cannot feel that the case for eschatology has been made out. The Lamb in John I takes away sin. None of the eschatological references to the Lamb so far cited refers to such an activity.
And the fact ought to be faced that in the Old Testament the overwhelming majority of passages containing the term ‘lamb’ refer to sacrifice of one kind or another. There are a few references of a general character, but the great majority concern the offering of sacrifice. In the canonical Old Testament the LXX uses the noun ἀµνός a total of 96 times, and of these no less than 85 refer to the offering of a lamb or lambs in sacrifice (71 refer to the burnt offering). Add to this a reference to the taking away of sin and I do not see how a reference to sacrifice can possibly be excluded. None of the lambs mentioned in the Old Testament apart from those used in sacrifice had anything to do with the putting away of sin.265 And no-one appears to have cited the use of the lamb imagery outside the Old Testament for a lamb, other than a sacrificial lamb, as being concerned in the taking away of sin.
We may fairly conclude that John has in mind the offering of Christ as a sacrifice. No other lamb than a sacrificial lamb takes away sin, and that is the critical point.
The difficulty comes when we try to define the reference with greater precision. The sacrifice in the Old Testament above all others where the LXX uses the term ἀµνός, ‘lamb’, is the burnt offering, but there appears no particular reason for holding that that sacrifice is expecially in mind in John I. When we reviewed the various suggestions put forward we noticed that several suggestions have much to recommend them even though none is completely satisfying. Add to this the fact which we noted earlier that John has a habit of using expressions that may be understood in more ways than one and the result is a composite picture.
‘The Lamb of God’ does appear to be definitely sacrificial, and it awakes memories of more sacrifices than one. The conclusion to which I am driven is that John intended by the expression to express his conviction that in Jesus Christ there is fulfilled all that is foreshadowed in all the sacrifices. The term is sacrificial. But it refuses to be bound to any one sacrifice. It is a most satisfying concept that Jesus did accomplish the perfect sacrifice which completely removed the sin of the world. He is the complete embodiment of all the truth to which the sacrificial system pointed.
That the Lamb is said to be ‘of God’ would seem, in accordance with this view, to indicate that the perfect sacrifice is the one which God Himself provides. Men might offer sacrifices which make this or that aspect of truth plain. But it is only God who can produce the sacrifice which completely deals with sin.