John 1:29

SECOND testimony of the Baptist to Jesus That before the people, John 1:29-34.

29. The next day There were three days of testimony of John to Jesus, John 1:19; John 1:29; John 1:35. The last two were testimonies to the present Jesus.

Seeth Jesus coming unto him He who had been standing among them now singles himself out. To others’ eyes he is but an ordinary man; to the divinely-opened eyes of the Baptist there is a dignity in his person above all earthly dignity. And in Jesus there is a silence, at once elevated and meek, by which he waits to be attested, but must not say to the world, I am he, until his official introducer says, “

This is he.” Behold the Lamb of God The Lamb by God supplied for the sacrifice. Genesis 22:8. The term Lamb here used must have been full of meaning to the men of Jerusalem, who were accustomed every day to see two lambs taken to the great altar and sacrificed, one in the morning and one at evening. Dr. Gill tells us that “the Jewish doctors say that the morning daily sacrifice made atonement for the iniquities done in the night; and the evening sacrifice made atonement for the iniquities done by day.” Josephus tells us that “the Jews say that they offer sacrifice twice a day for Caesar and the people of the Romans.” And in his Antiquities, he says, “The law is, that at public expiations a lamb of a year old shall be sacrificed at the opening and closing of each day.” It may indeed be true, that John alludes to Isaiah 53:7, making Jesus to be the lamb of prophecy. But prophecy is but the spoken prediction, of which the sacrifice is the visible sign. The lamb of the daily sacrifice, though not specifically a sin-offering, doubtless had an expiatory force. This lamb of God, not of man, takes away sin in reality; as the lamb of man’s providing did in symbol.

Taketh away the sin On the great day of the atonement the priest, confessing the sins of the people, laid them upon the scape-goat, who both bore them as substitute for the people, and took them away, being sent into the unknown depths of the desert. As the innocence of Jesus is prefigured by the Lamb, so his taking away the sin of the world is borrowed from this act, though not from the animal, on the day of atonement. The lamb is selected to symbolize the personal innocence of the Redeemer; the goat to signify his symbolical or representative guilt as substitute for the sinner. This taking away of sin is, first, by expiation; second, by forgiveness; and third, by sanctification through the Holy Spirit.

Of the world Many of the Jewish doctors limited the atoning power of sacrifice to Israel, but John extends it to the world. Such is the divine design. Christ died for every man alike. No plan or decree excludes any man from its blessed results; nothing but man’s own will; a will fully able to accept when it refuses.

Strauss and others wonder how it is that John should understand the doctrine of the atonement, of which even the apostles at the time of Christ’s resurrection had but little conception. Our reply is, that John at this time was living in inspired communication from God, as is repeatedly declared. He understood it as Isaiah announced it centuries beforehand. We do not doubt that there were numbers of the more spiritual Jews who understood the prophetic and typical doctrines of the atonement; but of all persons in the nation, none should have a more clear view (even if it had to be obtained by immediate prophetic revelation) of the true nature of the Messiah’s office than he, the harbinger himself. His clearness of view, in this the bright morning of his mission, may not only have been clearer than that of the apostles during the Saviour’s sojourn; but clearer than even he possessed, when in the day of darkness and trial he sent his message from prison to Jesus. Nor is it true that the Baptist is represented by our Evangelist as expressing views of the dignity and future history of Jesus in advance of any thing he is made to utter in the first three Gospels. The Baptist is clearly made to declare that the personage whose forerunner he is, is LORD, that is, Jehovah, in Matthew 3:3; he indicates the call of the Gentiles in Matthew 3:9; he ascribes the sending of the Holy Ghost to Christ, Matthew 3:11; and he pronounces Christ the judge and executor of final and eternal retribution, Matthew 3:12. Our present Evangelist is indeed, as he purposes to be, more diffuse and extended in representing the Baptist’s testimony to the high personality of Jesus; but he is not more decisive. The Baptist’s Christ is just as divine a being in the first Evangelist as in the last.