THE LAMB OF GOD
A. J. E. Welch
God loves to have Christ called attention to. There was that special time when the Father, in a most distinctive manner, Himself called attention to Christ, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight” (Matthew 3: 17). “Delight” is a strong word, in a positive sense. It is expressive of great depth of feeling. How the Father, God the Father, feels about His Son is a matter of the deepest, richest, affectionate feeling. I say this because there is much in our time that is admired by men, much to which men pay a certain tribute, much which may be rightly commended; but men’s admiration is a very shallow matter in comparison with God’s feelings as to Christ; they run very, very deep.
What are our feelings therefore as to Christ? What place has He with us? I do not just say, ‘What place has He in our affections?’—that must be the root of the matter—but what place has He in the fullest sense in what we speak of as our lives? The one would follow the other.
If in truth we love Jesus, if in truth we love God’s beloved Son, that very fact of itself will lead us to give Him a pre-eminent place in our lives; it must be so if in truth we love Him. If that shallowness which, alas, is in many respects a mark of the time in which we live amongst men, tends to mark ourselves, it might be that our lives are not yet lived with Christ in view.
If it is so it is to our great loss. What is said here as to a Lamb is to impress us with Christ in His absolute pre-eminence according to the place that God has given Him in His realm.
What John begins with in the first passage read introduces a stupendous statement, “Behold the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world”. It is the “sin of the world”; this is inclusive of my sin and yours. It is a part of this immense matter, “the sin of the world”.
Think of One being called attention to of whom it is said that He takes it away—There is one glorious Person to whom this stupendous matter is accredited. Would you leave such a Person out of your knowledge when He presents Himself to you, or maybe when someone else a little like John presents Him to you? Can you afford to pass by and take no notice of such a person as this? Do you not see your own case as part of the immense issue that is in mind here? “The sin of the world” reminds us of the root, that great power of sin which got hold of men. Does the power of sin, ever get hold of you? Were you able to refuse entrance to the power of sin? Were you able to say, ‘No, I shall not sin’, and follow what you resolved should be? Did the power of sin never get a grip in your soul? Would anyone here, however young, however old, dare to say it? Whatever merit a man might be supposed to have, whatever eminence he may have in the affairs of men, would he dare to say that the power of sin never got hold of him? If he did claim it he would not be right in claiming it. The scripture is plain, “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3: 23).
These remarks are made, not to point an accusing finger at any, but to point to Christ, to point to “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”. Think of that being said of One in manhood who came to John, as it seems in much the same manner that others came to John, to be baptised, just taking His place amongst men. What does that Person mean to you or to me? It is never recorded to be said of any other in the scripture. It could not be said of any other, in the scripture or in any writing or in any assertion of man. It could not be said of any other but Jesus. Therefore what is He to you? Could you forget Him? Could you leave Him out of account? Could you spurn His claims? Could you spurn His authority, spurn the pre-eminence that God has given Him?
This is John’s way of magnifying Christ, of presenting, as he loves to do, the full, immense scope and efficacy of the work of Christ. It is John’s way of appealing to us concerning the need in which we stand; he presents the full extent of the need to which our need belongs, and yet brings out that Jesus is the answer, not just to my need or yours, but to the whole matter of sin as it affects God. What it meant for God as men fell under the power of sin!
What it means to the heart of God to see thousands upon thousands of creatures, created by Him with intelligence above any other creature, carried away under the power of sin, rejecting Christ, refusing God, and going on regardless of what God will yet have to say in respect of this very matter—the sin of the world.
It affects your heart to think of it. How does God feel about it? But we have to come back to just our own responsible part in this matter. The responsibility of men in the widest way to God will yet be brought out when He comes in in judgment, judging the habitable earth in righteousness by the Man whom He has appointed, this same Jesus, who takes away the sin of the world.
Where do I stand in this? God would say to us in the word tonight, You have a responsibility, you are a responsible being, a responsible person; where do you stand as to the guilt of your sins? Where do you stand as to this matter of sin’s power in all its gravity as an offence to God in His rights, His glory? Where do you stand as to Jesus, “The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”? His own work has effected all that was justly necessary in the sight of God, that the taking away should be thoroughly established. It is the taking away that is emphasised here. We rightly speak, as the word is preached, of the responsibility of men to God, but here is One who takes away the sin of the world.
You say, How does God deal with my sins? He comes in to deal with my sin and yours in the provision He has made, in Christ’s death, for the whole of the guilt of my sins and yours to be purged away. There is no doubt about our guilt—the measure of it God knows. So the Lord Jesus went to the cross and suffered death. He suffered for sins, “the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3: 18). That is a beautiful scripture, indicating the extent of the efficacy of the work of Jesus, that He might bring us to God.
But what about the guilt? Shall you be brought to God in your guilt? That is not sufficient for God. One could be forgiven, and yet the guilt still be there. If you do something wrong and offend your parent or your schoolmaster or mistress—your parent will forgive you, the schoolteacher might forgive you, but in any case what has happened to the guilt? It is still there. I can recall things that I did which were wrong things, sinful things, when I was a very young child. You might say, Does the guilt remain? Thank God, no God has purged it away in One who was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification. He went down into death as bearing my guilt. He came out of death. Did He bring my guilt out of death? Never! Did He bring the guilt of any out of death? Not any! It was settled, the whole question of sins and their guilt, finished for those who submit to the Lord, in that precious work of His in suffering and death. He “takes away the sin of the world”.
You see how this great principle of taking away is brought to bear on my case and your case. God has dealt with these things in the work of His Son. The cost in suffering?—stop and think of it! When I have finished and gone home, maybe, still think about the sufferings of Jesus. He suffered as here amongst men, feeling the awful condition through the sin into which men had come. He suffered in the garden, when He faced, in full communion with the Father, the immensity of the cup that He was yet to drink in suffering. He faced it, and was sustained in facing it, and never flinched in facing it, though it meant so much to Him. He suffered the cross itself, entire rejection by man, by Israel, by the rulers; He was just put on a cross. In that sense the world had finished with Him, as they speak. In that sense they have.
But things had not finished with Jesus when He was placed upon the cross. The deepest, the most profound suffering of all, was to follow in the three hours of His utter abandonment.
Why should Jesus be forsaken? Why is it that in the garden the perfection of communion was there, but on the cross He was forsaken? Because He bore just what was due to me as a sinner. And He died. Did men slay Him? No, not in the full, final sense. They put Him on the cross to die. They slew Him, in that sense. He laid down His life. He delivered up His spirit.
That was His matter, and He went into death for me and for you; He went the full length to which love could go, and it was love that went that way. It is a love that reaches right down these twenty centuries to this little company of persons in Bournemouth in 1973. Love was reaching right down as He went into death and met the whole sin question, and was raised out of death in the glory and might of resurrection power—a glorious Man out of death, beyond its power, having borne everything for you on this whole principle of, He “takes away the sin of the world”.
I believe John uses that expression because it embraces a great range of detail as to the work of Christ and what He will yet do in the sense of government and needed judgment; the whole matter is in His hands, but the principle is, He “takes away the sin of the world”. He comes into your history to take away all your guilt, to take away all that sin has done to your damage; to set you before God as God would have you before Him, that He may find His delight in you; to bring you now into the reality of peace towards God, real settled peace of soul. You say, Circumstances are difficult. Yes, they are, and they will be until the Lord comes, but peace of soul, a settled peace right in the depths of your being, is a settled peace governing everything because it is peace towards God. God will have us, so far as it depends upon us (Romans 12: 18), to be at peace with all men. It may not be that we can be—the scripture leaves room for that—but the point is that God would have this settled peace right deep down in our souls towards Him. The basis of it? The work of His Son. You cannot prepare peace; you cannot bring yourself into peace; you cannot work yourself up to a state of peace of soul. Some of us have tried—it is impossible. But God says, ‘I will do it’, on the principle of taking away that which could never allow peace. He has justly settled all in regard of His law, because all that God has done in Christ for your blessing is absolutely just and right, “so that he should be just, and justify him that is of the faith of Jesus” (Romans 3: 26).
So the word is, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”. He is a real, glorious Person. One who has been into death and come out of death, and gone into that place of power and glory. God has exalted Jesus to His right hand, the place of power and supremacy, and it is the place of love too, the place in which the Father delights to have His Son. It is in this place that He calls your attention to Jesus at this time. Can you leave Him out of your life? God will never leave Him out, speaking with the deepest reverence, of His scheme of things. He has committed all things to be in His hand. “The Father loves the Son and has given all things to be in His hand” (John 3: 35), and yet there are still (Oh, the grief of it!) many, many, many souls of men who say, I do not want Him. Is there anyone here like that? Do you not want Him? What place is He to have, then? You might say, ‘Yes, I am not going to say I do not want Him’; but now the point is, what place are you going to give Him?
So the second word comes, “Behold the Lamb of God”; not now what He does, glorious as that is, but the One who does it, Jesus, the lowly Jesus, who went all the way for you in the love that fills His heart towards you still. What place will you give Him? Will you shut Him out? Would you try to give Him part of your life, part of your soul, part of your interest, part of your strength?’ I am impressed, looking back, with the fact that our committals have often been partial, which means in effect that they were not committals at all. “Behold the Lamb of God”—just take account of that Person under that title, that precious title, involving the sacrificial side; what He had gone into in the sacrifice of Himself is kept in view as the essential point of the whole situation. “The Lamb of God”—that is to get right into my heart and yours. He is still presented to us, though so great, so glorious, though in a place so wonderful, under the title “Lamb of God”, because sacrificially He met matters which no other could meet for you. That is always presented to your heart. It may not be stressed in any particular time, but it is always set there before you in Jesus, that He is God’s Lamb, the One who has effected in sacrifice that which meets your case, and no other provision could be made for your case save that which He has effected.
You say, ‘Am I to keep in view a Man in the glory?’ Yes, He is to govern things for you. Therefore God says, I will give you the Spirit; I will give you the gift of the Holy Spirit to sustain your occupation with Christ, to give you a link with the Man up there, the glorious Person of Jesus as He is and where He is He would say, I will give you the Spirit. It is not automatic, it is a matter of divine gift, but it is proposed in the glad tidings and it is normal, as Christ is received into the heart, that the gift of the Holy Spirit be received. It is the wondrous consummation and sustaining power of your link with Him up there.
Then you find yourself in company with others. “The two disciples heard him speaking and followed Jesus”. Not just one, but two. In principle it is a fellowship established, two persons who followed Jesus and walked in the same path, finding themselves in the same precious path, following Jesus. That is how you come into fellowship; you are alongside of others, thoroughly like-minded with you; but what you are first like-minded about is not in the affairs of our lives here, or men’s affairs, but the glory of the Person of God’s beloved Son and the claim that He has upon us, that we should follow Him. May this be the outcome in every one of us here, for His name’s sake.
Bournemouth
25 February 1973