John the Baptist’s role in God’s scheme was to bear witness to the Messiah, to Jesus. The first recorded declaration that John the Baptist makes about Jesus (according to John’s Gospel) is the declaration that Jesus is the ‘Lamb of God’. In other words, the most crucial aspect of Jesus’ role, as seen by John the Baptist, was to be the sacrificial lamb of the annual Passover festival. On the original Passover night, on the eve of the exodus of Israel from Egypt, the Israelites sacrificed lambs as God had directed them through Moses, and they placed the blood over the doors of their homes. When the judgement of God came upon Egypt it ‘passed over’ the homes of these people. If you belong to Christ, then his blood is placed over your life as a sign of God’s eternal love and favour upon you. This is what John saw in Jesus. He saw him as the one who exhausts the fires of condemnation; the one who would satisfy the demands of eternal justice in order that God might love and remain just in loving the guilty. This is who Jesus is for you. He is the one who appeals for you at the right hand of God declaring that no stain of sin remains on your record. You have a clean slate right now and upon it you can begin a new life, make new choices, and become the person God made you to be. You can close the door behind you now to whatever you might be ashamed of in your distant or immediate past.
Thank God for his grace and favour upon you.
Read John 1:29-34
