Isaiah 49.1-7; Psalm 40.1-12; 1 Corinthians 1.19; John 1.29-42

ALL four Gospels record John the Baptist’s declaration: “Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me” (John 1.26). Unique to this Gospel, though, are two further testimonies from the Baptist: “Here is the Lamb of God,” and “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.”

These sayings point to fundamental beliefs of our faith: the saving nature of Christ’s sacrificial death, and his pre-existence. The reference to Christ’s pre-existence is an especially important fragment of information, because it picks up a theme from John’s prologue (1.1-14). There is perpetual debate about how John’s prologue relates to the rest of his Gospel. In the minds of some ultra-sceptics, there is even a question whether it relates to the rest at all. So the testimony of 1.29-30 to the pre-existence of the Word is evidence that tells against the prologue’s being disconnected from the rest of the Gospel — perhaps even written by someone else, and then tacked on to the front of the text.

For John, the Word’s pre-existence was such an important teaching that he mentions it repeatedly, both before (1.1-3, 15, 18) and after today’s Gospel. My favourite reference, John 8.58 (“before Abraham was, I am”), combines perfect clarity with ineffable mystery in five electrically charged words. They tie humanity (represented by Abraham) to the being of God: “I am who I am” (Exodus 3.14).

What is less clear in John’s account of the Baptist’s reaction to Jesus is the element of surprise. From Matthew (11.3) and Luke (7.19-20) we discover that Jesus does not meet John the Baptist’s expectations, because John sends his own disciples to make enquiries about Jesus, to check out his true identity. Himself a prophet in the old tradition, he is expecting a typically fiery prophetic judgement: Amos 7.4, Isaiah 4.4, and Malachi 3.2 are characteristic examples. But where is that fiery judgement evident in Jesus of Nazareth? Perhaps this is why John’s Gospel refers only to judgement with the Holy Spirit, and omits judgement by fire, unlike Matthew’s (3.11) or Luke’s (3.16).

Of all the titles attributed to Jesus, “Lamb of God” is the most enigmatic. Thinking in modern terms, I discern in the lamb a symbol of new life, joy, gentleness, purity, and vulnerability. Picturing the historical context, in which lambs were food, currency, and a means of connecting with God, I concentrate on that last factor: a lamb is a God-given, divinely endorsed catalyst for bringing God’s people close to him and enabling them to honour him. The first lamb-sacrifice divinely commanded in the Bible is the Passover lamb (Exodus 12.1-2). So, from the beginning, lambs, like the Lamb of God, not only bring people close to God, but are also his chosen means of rescuing them.

Hidden from us, because it belongs to that pre-Christian “wood between worlds” which is the period between the Old and New Testaments, is a third way of interpreting the symbolism of the Lamb. This may be the meaning that is uppermost in the Baptist’s mind when he makes that prophetic declaration: “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world!” (John 1.29, AV). The Dead Sea Scrolls have given us knowledge of a document from this intertestamental period called the Testament of Joseph. It is a pre-Christian prophecy that “from Judah will go forth a Lamb, and all the beasts will rush against him, and the Lamb will overcome them, and destroy them, and tread them under foot.”

I used to think that Christian cringeworthiness could sink no lower than the song “Drop-kick me, Jesus, through the goal-posts of life”; but a 2022 cartoon film, The Lion of Judah, may come close. It tells the story of a lamb, Judah, whose friends rescue him from being sacrificed at the time of Christ’s Passion. A zero-per-cent rating on the review website Rotten Tomatoes is not encouraging. But such are the random ways in which the human mind makes connections that (without reading the Testament of Joseph, or watching The Lion of Judah), the Lion and the Lamb had already connected themselves in my spiritual imagination. We can surely say with confidence that the Lion of Judah rescues us in power by conquering death, but the Lamb of God rescues us in gentleness by sacrificing himself for us.