In the previous article, we stood at the altars of the Old Testament and watched fifteen centuries of sacrifice — thousands upon thousands of animals slain, their blood poured out, their lives offered up — all of it real, all of it God-ordained, and all of it, ultimately, not enough.
The books were deferred, never settled. The veil remained. The High Priest kept standing, because his work was never done. The system itself, by its very structure, was saying: wait. Someone is coming. What you see here is the preview. The reality has not arrived yet.
And then one day, on the bank of the Jordan River, the last prophet of the old order looked up, saw a man walking toward him, and said something that no one had ever said before — and that changed the history of the world:
“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” — John 1:29 (KJV)
Behold. Stop. Look. Pay attention to this. What you are about to see is what everything before was pointing toward.
The Lamb of God. Not a lamb brought by a worshipper. Not a lamb provided by the Temple system. God’s own Lamb — the One God Himself prepared, the One the Father sent, the One the eternal plan had always been moving toward.
Which taketh away the sin of the world. Not covers it. Not defers it. Not provides a temporary holding account for it. Takes it away. Removes it. Deals with it permanently, finally, for ever.
In those twelve words, John the Baptist announced the end of the old order and the arrival of everything the old order had been waiting for.
“Behold” — The Most Loaded Word at the Jordan
To feel the full weight of John’s announcement, you need to understand who John was and what moment he was living in.
John the Baptist was the last of the Old Testament prophets — the final voice in a prophetic tradition stretching back to Moses. He was the one spoken of by Isaiah: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” — Matthew 3:3 (KJV)
His entire ministry — the baptism, the preaching of repentance, the call of Israel back to God — had one purpose: to prepare the nation for the arrival of the One who was coming. John himself said he was not worthy to loose the sandals of the One coming after him.
And then one day Jesus walked toward him at the Jordan.
After four hundred years of prophetic silence — after fifteen centuries of the sacrificial system — after generation after generation of Israelites who brought their lambs to the altar and went home knowing the debt was only deferred — John looked up and said:
Behold.
This is the moment. This is the One. This is what it was all for. Every lamb that ever bled on an Israelite altar was a rough sketch. The original has arrived. Look at Him. The Lamb of God.
The Lamb — Everything the Type Was Pointing To
When John called Jesus the Lamb of God, every Jew who heard him would have heard a cascade of associations rooted deep in their history and their Scripture.
The Passover Lamb — Exodus 12. On the night of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, every household killed a lamb without blemish and applied its blood to the doorposts. When the angel of death passed through Egypt, it passed over every house marked with the blood. The lamb died so the firstborn lived. The picture was precise: an innocent substitute, its blood applied, standing between the destroyer and the people it protected.
“For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.” — 1 Corinthians 5:7 (KJV)
The Suffering Servant of Isaiah — written seven hundred years before Christ, Isaiah 53 describes the coming servant of God in language that could only be understood as fulfilled in Christ:
“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief… Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows… he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed… he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter.” — Isaiah 53:3–5, 7 (KJV)
A lamb to the slaughter — silent, without complaint, bearing a weight that was not its own. Seven hundred years before Calvary, God described exactly what would happen there.
The Daily Burnt Offering — every morning and every evening, a lamb was offered on the altar of Israel. The nation began each day and ended each day under the cover of a substitute’s blood. The daily rhythm of sacrifice was Israel’s daily reminder: you live under covering. You do not stand before God on your own merit. The lamb stands in your place.
Jesus is all of these — and more than all of these. He is not another type. He is the reality to which all the types were pointing. He is not a better version of the system — He is the end of the system, its completion, its fulfilment, its obsolescence.
The Greek Word That Changes Everything: Airo
When John said Jesus takes away the sin of the world, the Greek word he used was airo — and it is the most precise and deliberate word he could have chosen.
Airo means to lift up, to carry away, to remove entirely. It is not a word for covering or deferring or setting aside temporarily. It is a word for permanent removal. When something is airoed, it is gone.
This is the exact opposite of kaphar — the Hebrew word for the Old Testament atonement, which means to cover. For fifteen centuries, the sacrificial system was doing kaphar — covering sin, holding it in account, deferring its penalty. The best the system could do was cover.
Jesus does airo. He does not cover your sin — He removes it. He does not defer the penalty — He pays it in full. He does not place a covering over your guilt — He takes the guilt away, as completely as the scapegoat walking into the wilderness carrying the sins of Israel on its head, never to return.
“As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” — Psalm 103:12 (KJV)
Not covered. Removed. The distance between east and west — in a world where east and west never meet — is the distance between you and your sin when the blood of the Lamb has been applied.
What the Cross Actually Accomplished — Three Dimensions
The cross of Christ was not merely a payment transaction — as important as the payment was. It was a multi-dimensional event that accomplished things no Old Testament sacrifice could touch.
First Dimension: The Penalty Was Paid
“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.” — 1 Corinthians 15:3 (KJV)
“Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” — Romans 4:25 (KJV)
Christ died for our sins. The wages of sin is death — and He died. Every sin of every human being who would ever believe was laid upon Him. The full legal penalty was extracted — not waived, not overlooked, but paid in full, in His own body, on the tree.
The Father’s justice was completely satisfied. There is nothing left to pay. The account is closed.
Second Dimension: The Enemy Was Defeated
This is the dimension that almost no treatment of the cross addresses — and it is staggering.
“And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.” — Colossians 2:15 (KJV)
The cross was not only a payment — it was a conquest. At the cross, Christ stripped the principalities and powers — the enemy forces that had held the human race in bondage since the Fall — of their authority over redeemed humanity. He made a public spectacle of them. He triumphed over them in the cross itself.
The enemy had a legal claim on the human race: sin had given him access, and death was his domain. When Christ took the sin and paid the death, the legal basis for the enemy’s claim was removed. The Lamb that was slain was simultaneously the Lion that conquered — not in spite of the cross, but through it.
Third Dimension: Resurrection — The Father’s Receipt
The cross was not the end. It was the payment. The resurrection was the Father’s confirmation that the payment was accepted.
“And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” — 1 Corinthians 15:17 (KJV)
If Christ had died and remained dead, the payment would have been insufficient — swallowed up by the very death it was meant to defeat. But He rose. The grave could not hold Him. Death could not keep its claim on the One who had no personal sin of His own — and who had now paid the sin of everyone else.
The empty tomb is God’s public declaration: the sacrifice was accepted. The debt is paid. The account is settled. The Lamb that was slain is alive — and His aliveness is the guarantee of the aliveness of everyone who is in Him.
The Whole Body Was in Him — The Identification Truth
Here is the truth that transforms the cross from an event in history into a personal reality for every believer — and it is the truth that the Apostle Paul builds the entire theology of the new creation upon.
When Christ died, He did not die alone. Every person who would ever believe in Him was in Him in that death. When He was buried, they were buried with Him. When He rose, they rose with Him. When He ascended, they ascended with Him. When He was seated at the right hand of the Father, they were seated with Him.
“But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ… And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” — Ephesians 2:4–6 (KJV)
This is not metaphor. This is positional reality. The Lamb of God did not merely die on behalf of His people — He died as their representative, their head, their last Adam, carrying them in Himself through death and out the other side into resurrection life.
This means that for the believer, the old man — the Adamic man, the spiritually dead man, the slave to sin — is not merely forgiven. He is dead. He died with Christ. And a new man has been raised in his place, seated in heavenly places, far above every principality and power that ever held him in bondage.
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” — Galatians 2:20 (KJV)
The Paradox of the Lamb: Weakness and Omnipotence in One Person
There is a paradox at the heart of the Lamb of God that the book of Revelation celebrates with extraordinary force.
He came as a lamb — gentle, meek, led to the slaughter without opening His mouth. He submitted to arrest, to false accusation, to flogging, to a crown of thorns, to a cross. The One who had made the universe allowed the creatures He had made to nail Him to a piece of wood.
And in that apparent defeat — in that moment of maximum weakness — He accomplished the greatest victory in the history of creation.
“And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.” — Revelation 5:9 (KJV)
In Revelation, the Lamb is the central figure of the throne room of heaven. He is the One worthy to open the scroll. He is the One before whom the elders fall down. He is the One whose blood has redeemed a people from every nation on earth. The Lamb that was slain is now the Lamb that reigns — and the slaying is precisely the reason for the reigning.
The weakness was the weapon. The death was the victory. The cross was the throne.
“It Is Finished” — The Most Consequential Three Words Ever Spoken
“When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.” — John 19:30 (KJV)
Tetelestai. Paid in full. The Greek word used in commerce when a debt was completely settled — stamped across an invoice to declare: nothing more is owed.
Fifteen centuries of animal blood, of daily offerings, of annual Days of Atonement, of priests who could never sit down because their work was never done — all of it was moving toward this moment. And in this moment, it was over.
The debt of the human race was not merely deferred. It was cancelled — paid in full by the blood of the Lamb of God. Every sin of every person who would ever believe. Every accusation the enemy could bring. Every record of debt that stood against us. Gone.
“Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.” — Colossians 2:14 (KJV)
Nailed to the cross. Done. Finished. The Lamb of God has done what no animal ever could — and what no human effort ever can.
What Comes Next
The Lamb of God has been identified. The cross has been understood. The resurrection has been declared.
Now we need to look closely at what the blood of Christ specifically accomplished — because the New Testament does not speak of the blood of Jesus casually. It speaks of it with precision, with reverence, and with a specificity that tells you exactly what that blood did for every person who believes.
In the next article, we examine the blood of Christ — what it purchased, what it cleansed, what it opened, and why the writer of Hebrews can say with confidence that the blood of Jesus speaks better things than the blood of Abel.
“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” — 1 John 1:7 (KJV)
All sin. Not most. Not the manageable sins. All.
Bible Verses Cited: John 1:29; Matthew 3:3; Exodus 12; Isaiah 53:3–5, 7; 1 Corinthians 5:7; 1 Corinthians 15:3, 15:17; Romans 4:25; Colossians 2:14–15; Ephesians 2:4–6; Galatians 2:20; Psalm 103:12; Revelation 5:9; John 19:30; 1 John 1:7 (KJV)
Series: New Creation in Christ Jesus — Article 7 of 35
Author: Joseph Olarewaju | FaithBibleStudy.org
