PicoBlog

Underneath the surface of twenty-first century America is a deep tribal antagonism between us and them. We most clearly see that in matters of social justice and modern American politics at the federal level but it can also be seen in localized debates over housing, education, youth sports, and public library boards. A divided culture has led to a divided and splintering church. 

One of the ways to heal these divisions and undermine these antagonisms is to turn our attention to Jesus and see him again as the ruling and reigning Lamb of God. Historically the church has used the image of Jesus as the Agnus Dei, Latin for “lamb of God,” in Christian art, worship, and prayer. This image comes to us from the biblical witness. We find three notable examples of Jesus as the Lamb of God in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Let’s start in the Old Testament. 

Perhaps the most important event in the story of Israel is the Exodus from Egypt. The children of Abraham found themselves locked into slavery as the cheap labor force for the Egyptian empire. They cried out to God for help and God sent Moses to lead their liberation. In their deliverance, Moses instructed the people to take a lamb without blemish, one per household, and slaughter it.

Next they were instructed to apply the blood of the lamb to the sides and top of the doorframe of their homes so that when the Destroyer came bringing death, he would pass over the homes with blood applied. The death of the firstborn was God’s judgment on Egypt (Exodus 12:12). The Hebrew people would not fall under the same judgment. The blood of the lamb would rescue them from the Destroyer (Hebrews 11:28).  

In looking back at this crucial event, Paul would identify Jesus as the Passover Lamb who liberates us all from the specter of death. In his first letter to the church in Corinth, Paul wrote:

“Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us. So let us celebrate the festival, not with the old bread of wickedness and evil, but with the new bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:7-8, NLT).

Jesus was the Passover Lamb sacrificed to deliver us from sin, the Devil, and death itself. Peter used similar language in his first letter, noting that we have been redeemed by “the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God” (1 Peter 1:19, NLT). 

We believe God is love and there is nothing we can point to in order to see the love of God more clearly than Jesus who came into the world to show us what God is like. When John the Baptist saw Jesus walking towards him at the Jordan River, John proclaimed, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29, ESV).

It is true that Jesus died to defeat sin and death for us, and he did so as the Lamb of God. And when we see Jesus in all his gloriousness, we do believe. But before we believe in him, first we behold him. 

At the root of our divisions and antagonisms is sin emboldened by the Devil. Jesus came as the Lamb of God to take it all away through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. We trust in all of the redeeming work of Jesus but we don’t want to use Jesus simply to “be saved.” We want to stop and look, beholding Jesus as the Lamb of God, because a moment of wonder inspires a lifetime of worship. Over time as we worship and follow Jesus we find ourselves becoming less like culture war warriors and more like self-giving servants. 

The book of Revelation is not a revelation of the “end times” as much as it is a revelation of Jesus Christ. The primary image of Jesus in Revelation is Jesus as a slain lamb, but a living slain lamb upon a throne. 

One of the heavenly visions John sees is people who have been washed clean by the blood of the Lamb worshiping the Lamb on the throne. One of the elders in this vision says to John,

“They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,  and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 7:16-17 NRSV). 

John’s heavenly vision is an earthly vision for us. All other visions and interpretations of Jesus fail to capture the essence of King Jesus, of how he rules and reigns. Jesus didn’t come to rule in the way of tyrants or warriors. We may prefer a warrior king who humiliates his enemies and imposes his agenda on the world through domination and brute force, but this kind of rule is not the way the kingdom of Jesus comes. 

He rules as the slain Lamb, and we enter his saving rule by rejecting all other kingdoms. We turn to the Lamb who reigns with trust in our hearts and worship on our lips. We live with John’s vision we keep our eyes fixed on the Lamb centered on the throne. And with our focus on the Lamb, the appeal of the elephants and the donkeys begins to fade. We may choose to vote for some iteration of an elephant or a donkey, but when we keep the Lamb front and center, we don’t allow them to capture our hearts. 

Read more in my new book Centering Jesus: How the Lamb of God Transforms our Communities, Ethics, and Spiritual Lives(NavPress) releasing next week, August 22. 

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