Who Is Jesus For You? Sample

Jesus is the sacrifice for my sins

“The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

At the outset of his ministry, John the Baptist understood who Jesus was. John understood that Jesus came to this earth as the Lamb of God to die on a cross and take away the sin of the world.

This simple title, Lamb of God, has a rich background in the Old Testament. In Genesis 22, Isaac asks his father Abraham, “Where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 

Abraham, knowing that Isaac would be sacrificed, simply replies, “God will provide.” Little did Abraham know that God would provide a lamb for sacrifice to spare Isaac, and that both Isaac and the slain lamb would foretell of the Lamb of God, who would one day die for our sins.

In Exodus 12, we come to the Passover in Egypt, when the blood of lambs was smeared on the doorposts of Israelite homes so that their firstborn children would not die. The blood of these lambs again pointed to the blood shed by the future Lamb of God. God passes over our sins because he sees the blood of Jesus shed for us.

In Exodus 29, we read that every morning and every evening, a lamb is to be sacrificed as an offering. Every one of these lambs, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, century after century—every one of these lambs would point to the Lamb of God who would one day come and be a sacrifice.

In Isaiah 53, we see that the suffering servant will be like a lamb led to slaughter. This is, of course, a picture of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who would in fact be led to slaughter for our sakes.

With all of this rich background in his mind, as well as his knowledge of the entire sacrificial system of the Old Testament, John says upon seeing Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Jesus is the fulfillment of all these countless sacrifices for sin. Jesus’s death on the cross was not a mistake or an accident; rather, it was the whole purpose of Jesus’s coming. He died as a substitute. He died as a substitute to atone for, or to pay for, your sins and mine. All of our sin was placed upon Jesus on the cross, and he paid for it. All that we do is to receive the incredible, outlandish gift of forgiveness by trusting Christ as our savior.

No wonder that the biblical story comes to a crescendo in Revelation 5, when all of creation will sing to Jesus: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.”

John had it just right: Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.