The Lamb of God # 1

The Lamb of God # 1

"The next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said: Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29).

"The sin of the world!" Sin? What is sin? Do you see that holy law? Radiant with God's own purity and bright with a divine benignity, it stands on earth a pillar of light and glory, a specimen of God to tell us that He Himself is holy, just and good. Sin defaces that monument, dilapidates it, and cast filth on what it cannot destroy.

Do you see that God of love? Bending over the earth fresh fashioned and beaming on it those looks of delight which hallow while they bless; and behold Him concentrating those regards of love and joy on His own image, man, which was hailed, "Very good" - and presently see man shaking the fist of defiance and darting the glance of estrangement and hostility at the God of love, and you see another aspect of sin.

Look at this man - made up of divers lusts and passions! Pride, ambition, envy, vanity, resentment, anger, covetousness, license, cruelty - these and many evil appetites and emotions besides, flow through all his nature in fierce and malignant currents, and are his very being's poisoned blood and fevered pulse! They break out in oaths and curses, in fightings and violence, in debauchery and orgy; in spoken falsehood and acted lies, in words of lewdness and deeds of shame; in the sanctuary forsaken, the Bible tossed aside, and prayer neglected or shammed over.

When, goaded by conscience, he makes an effort to amend - when, to clear the cloud from affection's brow or reconcile him to himself, he makes a desperate struggle and seeks to rend off some besetting sin - he finds he cannot. This evil habit, he cannot tear away; for like the poisoned mantle, it has grown into himself, and to tear it off is to tear fibers and nerves asunder and to lacerate the quivering flesh. This guilty affection he cannot pluck out, for his heart is at its roots, and nature could not stand the self-mortification. In this pervasive canker, this virulent and festering plague - you see sin in its malignity!

And look to this pure region, this holy paradise of radiant Heaven. And what is this blot on the brightness, this shadow on the splendor? What is it which attracts so many eyes in wonder, and repels them again in horror? What is it that they are expelling in amazement and disgust? Rather, what is it which, from under Jehovah's burning eye, dark and dastardly, slinks away to its own place? What is it which, when confronted with infinite sanctity, would gladly seek refuge in the deepest cavern of the pit - and from a region of light and elevation would gladly flee to hide its hideousness and pollution in the dungeon of despair? Words cannot paint it. It is only in the light of the great white throne or by the flames of hell or in the revealing light of the Holy Spirit - that anyone can see the real character of sin. Sin is the enemy of God, the transgressor of His law, the great soul-poison and heart-plague, the only thing which really defiles man, pollution, misery, guilt, incipient hell, the only thing to which we can give, in its fullest sense, the emphatic name of EVIL!

But just as sin is earth's great burden and humanity's deforming blot, the design of the incarnation was to do away with this mighty evil for a goodly number. For this end the Son of God was manifest, that He might destroy the works of the devil; and in the case of a multitude whom no man can number, the Saviour finished transgression and made an end of sin. And though here He is called the Lamb of God, there is one aspect in which the Lamb was wrathful and His strength was lion-like. There was one vindictive feeling which, like an oven. burned in His holy bosom, and one object toward which He was filled with exterminating fury. On sin He could not look without abhorrence, and the sight of that cursed thing which had insulted His heavenly Father and filled a happy world with woe and horror kindled His zeal and revenge; and while the Lamb's gentleness encouraged the sinner, the Lion's fury still flashed upon the sin.

~James Hamilton~

(continued with # 2)