Preached on October 25, 1840, at Milton Church, Glasgow, Scotland

"Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world!" John 1:29. This is the voice of one crying in the wilderness, "Prepare ye the way of Jehovah, make straight in the desert a highway for our God." The Hope of Israel had come at last. "When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law." And the voice which had sounded by the mouths of all the holy prophets which had been since the world began, now sounded with more distinctness and more emphasis, whilst with the finger John the precursor pointed and said, "Behold the Lamb of God!"

Look in the first place at that which He takes away — "the sin of the world." It's not here said "sins", but "sin"; sin with which not some individual of the human race, but the whole world is charged. No doubt there are multitudes of sins in the world. None but God can number the sins that have been committed since the world was — that shall be committed while the world lasts. But though the sins be many and the sinners who commit them many, there is a principle of unity binding all the sin of the world, as it were, together. "The sin of the world," of which the various sins are so many branches and manifestations, is the world's apostasy and alienation from the living God; the two great evils connected going into one — that we have forsaken Jehovah, the fountain of living waters, and have hewn out to ourselves broken cisterns that can hold no water. "Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law, for sin is the transgression of the law." And the law of God is one — multitudes of commandments, but one in its principle; its principle being love to God, and love to all created beings for God's sake. It is one, as flowing all from the same essential purity, justice, and universal moral good — the Divine nature. Sin contrary to this, has a unity. But further, the disclosures which Holy Scripture makes to us will enable us to take some view of "the sin of the world." Friends, if we would view this aright, we must begin at the beginning — the beginning if the world's sin.

There is indeed a different phasis [tidings] of the world's sin presented among us, and amongst the nations that know not God by external revelation. But what then? Are we better than they? They are guilty of abominable idolatries, unnatural vices, and horrid cruelties. But in that portion of the world which was favored with the light of Divine truth, the Lord complained, "Even among my people are found wicked men: they overpass the deeds of the wicked." It would be impossible to reckon up even the particular classes of sin — the selfishness, pride, impurity, injustice, impatience, rancor, malice, heedlessness of one another's good; and were we to go and descend into the very sinks of sin, in the places where it gets unbridled sway, to look over if we could the crimes, the iniquities that have been perpetrated since the world began, had we but a sight of Glasgow's sin for one day — O what a terrible sight would it be! All Glasgow would be struck with horror! What's a world's sin? — the sin of a race that for six thousand years has been sinning? What the amount of actual sin? What then the depravity of nature, which is the well-spring of it all?

It's "the sin of the world." The whole world is in the sin. It involves me, it involves thee, it involves each individual. We as individuals have our sins, and as an integral part and portion of Adam's posterity are connected thus with the whole amount of the sin of the world. This looks like exaggeration. "Surely," you will say, "things cannot be so bad as that; for if they be, we are hopeless; there can be nothing for it but to lie down in despair." Nay, some may be tempted to say, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." "If our iniquities be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live?" Let us relinquish hope, and "sell ourselves to work wickedness."

Now if we look through the world we shall not find anything to take away its sin, or even to mitigate and keep in its sin; — nothing there to expiate it in whole or in part, nothing to subdue it: it is only capable of waxing worse and worse, working itself into grosser developments through an endless eternity. Nothing in the world to take away the world's sin. Is not this a pitiable world!

But "Behold the Lamb of God!" "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!" He was in the world, but He was not of the world. He comes into this world from the God against whom this world transgressed. And what may the world expect He comes to do? When God sent His Son into this world, on what other errand could it be but to condemn the world? Ah no! "God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved." O what a Visitor! How rightly might John point to Him, how rightly may we all listen to John's short but pithy declaration, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!"

There is a reference here, no doubt, to the immaculate purity of the Lord Jesus Christ — holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. But there is special reference unto sacrifice — God's sacrificial Lamb. There may be a double reference here, or rather, perhaps, a common reference running through the whole, but exhibited in two cases. First, in the case of Abraham, when God commanded him to offer up his son Isaac. The ram caught in the thicket was sacrificed; Isaac was spared, a type of our salvation by the substitution of the Lord Jesus: so he received Isaac from the dead in a figure. The other reference is to the lamb of the passover. What did God teach there? That Israel deserved the same punishment with the Egyptians, that the destroying angel will not find Goshen better than Egypt, but God would spare His people whom He had set apart for Himself. "Ye see the blood of a spotless lamb testifying that ye are sinners, deserving to die, and that you are spared of my mercy." And so the destroying angel did not destroy the first-born of Israel.

Now here is, by the way of eminence, "God's Lamb" — the Lamb He hath provided for a burnt-offering — not typically but actually, not the shadow but the substance. Jesus is God's Lamb as He is the provided of God. God looked out the Lamb to take away the sin of the world; God looked out a Lamb for Himself. The world had not a lamb to expiate its sin. Not to speak of the necessity of a Divine Person to atone for sin — for infinite evil of it — the world had not an innocent person. But God provided a Lamb. "He laid help upon one that was mighty; he found out David His servant" — the antitypical David. 'Twas Jehovah's own finding. He provided a Lamb for a burnt-offering, and what, what was His provision? We read in this chapter that He who is called the Lamb of God is the Word of God, which in the beginning was with God and was God — the Life and the Light of men — the Creator of all things, by whom all things were made — God's own Son, the only begotten of the Father, the Fellow of the Lord of Hosts, the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of His Person. He laid help upon One mighty to save.

But when we consider the Lamb of God, we consider Him as God-man, Immanuel, which He was from all eternity by covenant designation and covenant engagement, but in the fullness of times by actual manifestation. We are sent then to Bethlehem to see this great thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known to us, to see the Child born, the Son given, whose name is the Mighty God! Forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, it was necessary that He should Himself also take part of the same, that He might be a "Goël," a kinsman Redeemer; that satisfaction might be given to Divine justice in the same nature the had offended, whilst He was the Son of God, whose Deity gave infinite value and efficacy to His obedience and atonement. He is the Lamb of God, pure and spotless — for such alone could bear away sin; meek and gentle, led to the slaughter, willing, resigned, acquiescing, adoring that pure and holy justice which burst upon His head.

He is the Lamb of God now accepted. The Lord has accepted His burnt-offering. It has been offered up, and the fire from heaven did descend, the Lord's fire coming down to consume, as it were, showed that the Lord was pleased with the Victim, that it was holy and acceptable to Him — such as could stand.

He's the Lamb of God, the Lamb whom God, having provided and accepted, now exhibits, exhibits to us sinners. He says of Him, for we have greater testimony than that of John, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Wherever this Gospel is preached, the Father exhibits Him as His Lamb.

Go to the next installment:
Behold the Lamb of God: Part II