Who is Jesus: Lamb of God?

So Who is Jesus? Is He just a man? John, His cousin, called Him the Lamb of God. He is also called out advocate by the apostle John in 1 John 2:1. It was known to the prophets, particularly Jeremiah, that Jesus is LORD (Lamentations 3:57,58) when Jeremiah writes, “Thou drawest near in the day that I called upon thee and Thou saidest ‘Fear not’. Oh LORD Thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul. Thou hast redeemed my life”. And Jesus is a man, as we see Him pleading with God for us in John 17, not unlike Jonah in his plea for the life of shipmates he did not know. He also took compassion on those who knew Him not yet wanted to know Him, as He spoke to the thief on the cross and promised him a place with Him.

Worship Christ: follow the LAMB!!!

Why is the sacrifice that Christ made so important? In fact, cleansing and purification was so important to God that He spelled it out in Numbers 19:9-18 about how to make oneself pure and clean. Only when one was clean could one even worship God. And that is still the way. Only when we have been made clean can we worship God. And God takes this so seriously that even the stone tablets were made clean by Moses. The seriously of being holy and pure and clean could not be denied. And how much more is God serious about how we handle the truth of Christ and the fact that He expects our attitudes to be right, not the outside but the inside of us. By faith in His blood, God saves us and Jesus cleans us (Romans 3:25). And we must realize that the tabernacle that Jesus enters into is not an earthly tabernacle but a heavenly one. (Hebrews 9:24) and because of this, He only died once (Hebrews 9:26 and 28). Because His blood cleanses us once and for all, He does need to sacrifice Himself continuously, nor do we need to offer yearly sacrifices, because we are becoming Him and our cross is taken up daily. That is, once we have been baptized we are committed to being like Him, to sacrificing ourselves and becoming holy and pure. We are committed to live a life of love in Jesus (Ephesians 5:2). Only the Lord can wash us clean and forgive us of our sins. (Psalms 51:2, 65:3). In a beautiful analogy, Zechariah describes a fountain that will save and cleanse and purify all of us (Zec 13:1).

Who is Jesus, the Lamb of God?

What is a lamb? Besides being a baby sheep, and dependant upon mom ewe for nourishment, what is a lamb? In biblical times it was used to sacrifice so that one’s sins could be forgiven. For that year. And sacrifices were continual. So that forgiveness was an afterthought. No one discounted that fact that humans would sin. (Romans 3:23). But the fact that loomed large was the fact that the sacrifice made one year didn’t take past sins away nor did it cleanse the conscience. Only Christ could do that. That’s what the Scriptures teach. In Hebrews 9:12-14 for instance Christ is shown as the only sacrifice that was a living sacrifice and with which we could enter the Holiest of Holies. We meaning the common man, me, you, John down the block, Peter in the boat. Because of Christ, we can “enter His gates with praise” as the song says. Those verses go on to say that the blood of goats and bulls and heifers could only change one from being ceremonially unclean to ceremonially clean. Later passages in Hebrews say that the blood of goats and bulls cannot cleanse us (Hebrews 10:4). Only Jesus can cleanse the conscience. He does so through the operation of baptism, not to cleanse the body but the conscience. (1 Peter 3:21)

When I am out of Synch (part 30)

And then again, nowhere in scripture can I see how mistreatment of people is as mistreatment of Christ than in John 8:1-11, the story of the woman caught in adultery.

The woman was obviously set up, the Pharisees knew where to find her, and where was the man. Scripture says nothing of the man that was with the woman, only that the Pharisees dragged her out and presented her to Christ. The words Christ then said are so familiar to all, “Those without sin, cast the first stone”. The Pharisees were using that woman to get to Christ, and so their sin was doubled. They wanted to hurt Christ’s reputation and popularity and they cared nothing for what happened to the woman and so they hurt her both physically and emotionally. And that happens every time I lie, cheat, or use other deceitful means for personal gain. And when I am as deceitful as Jezebel in 2 Kings 9:30-37, how Jesus and God weep! How I truly hurt them because I hurt others.