The Lamb of God 

     I cannot count how many times this phrase has been used: The Lamb of God.  So many Christian songs and old hymns mention this Lamb in reference to Jesus, but why?  When did people start this strange way of referring to our Lord and Savior?  Well, it actually began about 4000 years ago.  But how can that be when Jesus was alive here on Earth only around 2000 years ago? 

     Many make the mistake of believing that there was no Jesus before He was born on Christmas morning in Bethlehem, Israel.  We forget that He is God the Son who is a part of the Holy Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit – the Alpha and Omega – the beginning and the end.  He actually had no beginning and no ending for He is, in fact, God and the Son of God.  Being God, He knew the perfect time in our history that He needed to be born in order to fulfill His destiny of dying on the cross for our sins as the sacrificial Lamb of God.  It was all planned out even before He created the universe in which we live.

 

     He knew beforehand that if mankind was created with the free will of choice that we would eventually choose to sin leading to our deaths forever apart from Him.  He also knew that the only solution to that sin problem was that He Himself would need to suffer the consequences for our very own choice of transgressing His Laws.  The penalty of sin is death apart from God in a place reserved for those who choose to pay for their own transgressions.  Because of Jesus’ great love for us, He chose to shed His own blood as payment for our sins.  Since He lived a life completely innocent of sin, as well as being God, His blood was worthy to cover the payment of sin for all of mankind.  Because He was not only a man but was fully God, the grave could not hold Him, death could not keep Him and Hell would never have Him.  When we choose to accept His sin debt payment for our very own iniquities and then fully commit our lives over to Him as Lord and Savior, death will not keep us, neither will the grave hold us and Hell will never have us.

 

     The timing of Jesus’ birth in that Bethlehem stable was planned out from before the beginning of creation.  This particular stable was where the sacrificial lambs were born and wrapped in swaddling strips, keeping them from harm or spots (bumps and bruises), awaiting their eventual sacrifice on the alter for sin.  There are no coincidences with God.  Jesus was born in that stable being wrapped in swaddling strips because He was The Sacrificial Lamb of God whose blood would eventually be shed and placed upon the actual alter of God in Heaven for the sin of all mankind.  This happened one time and was sufficient to pay for our sins past, present and future.

 

     Two thousand years earlier, God provided Abraham with a ram (and adult male sheep) to sacrifice in the place of his one and only son Isaac.  God led Abraham on a journey of many days to a very specific hilltop to perform this sacrifice.  He told Abraham that God will provide Himself a sacrifice.  Upon that very hilltop two millennium later would stand the cross bearing a beaten, bruised and bloody Jesus, an innocent man whose Godly blood would pay for all of our sins.

 

     When Moses was told to lead the Jews out of Egypt, Pharoah refused to let them leave.  As a consequence, Moses explained to Pharoah that they would experience many plagues. One by one Moses told Pharoah what would happen ahead of time and they all occurred, and yet, Pharoah refused to let them go.  The last plague was the worst.  God told Pharoah through Moses that the first-born male child of every family would die.  To keep the Jews safe, Moses told all the Jews to kill a lamb and place its blood above the door and on each side (a cross).  On the particular night that the death angel swept through Egypt, wherever he saw the blood of the lamb, that family would be safe.  Pharoah was so devastated, as even his own son died that night, he let the Jews leave.  This was not only a historical event that happened but also a prophecy regarding the future lamb of God.

 

     God always had a plan to redeem us from our sin and He never kept the details hidden from us.  When Adam and Eve sinned He told us in Genesis that there would be one born of a virgin who Satan would be allowed to bruise (death on the cross), yet in that bruising he would be defeated as his own head would be crushed (Satan, sin, death and Hell defeated).  This is all laid out in Genesis 3:15 which is in fact the first prophecy of Jesus’ birth, death and the victory over the consequences of mankind’s sin by His resurrection for our justification.

 

     Over seven hundred years before Jesus was born, God spoke through the prophet Isaiah regarding the Lamb that would come to die for our sins:

He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.  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; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth.  He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.  And they made His grave with the wicked – But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth.  Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief.  When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.  He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.  By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities.  Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great; And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors.

 

     In Revelation, God not only inspired John to write but gave Him an actual glimpse of this world’s very own future.  John saw Jesus in all of His glory as well as seeing Him as the Lamb as though it had been slain.  He saw Jesus as the only one worthy to open the scroll containing the first of the judgments that are to be meted out upon a Christ rejecting world during the Seven Year Tribulation.  The plan of God from the very beginning of time was to provide a way that we could be saved from our sins.  God truly provided Himself as a sacrifice just as He told Abraham that He would all those years ago. 

 

     This Easter, humble yourselves before an all-loving God who spared not His One and Only Son in order that we could all be set free from our sin debt, having then been given the free gift of Eternal life with Him in Heaven.  Acknowledge and repent of your sin asking His forgiveness.  Accept Him as Lord and Savior of your life and prepare to live forever in His loving arms.

© 2025 G. R. Workman  

Copy and Distribute, With Copy Right Notice, For Non-Profit Purposes Only