[AI translation] Somewhere on the banks of the Jordan River, where John the Baptist was preaching the nearness of his coming kingdom of God before a great multitude, it happened that suddenly, among the multitude of people, he caught sight of Someone, a man approaching him, and his heart leapt at the sight, and he raised his hand involuntarily, pointed to him, and with great, grateful amazement, he cried out: Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!
So we read this scene, "John saw Jesus coming to him." This is the right vision of Christ: we see Him rightly, truly, when we see Him as coming to us, approaching us, on His way to us. And the point of our present service, of the table laid for us, is precisely to see in it the coming Jesus coming to us from eternity. Yes: He comes to us now just as He came to John the Baptist, and let my service be a pointing to the invisible but real person of Jesus, this brief creed, this most ancient and yet complete Creed: Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!
The Lamb of God: this phrase then struck a hundred and one hundred chords in the soul of every Jewish believer. It reminded them of Abraham's sacrifice on Mount Moriah, the Passover lamb that was repeated every morning and every evening on the temple altar as a symbol of deliverance from Egypt, the protective miracle of the blood-stained doorpost, the bloody sacrifices of a thousand years, the mysterious and moving song of Isaiah about the blessed Lamb on whom the Lord had laid the guilt of us all,
who opened not His mouth to them that shewed Him,-the solemn feast of the great Day of Atonement, when the Old Testament high priest laid his hands on a lamb, confessing the sins of the people, as it were laying on the animal all the sins of the people, and then sent it out into the wilderness to bear the weight of the confessed sins into the desert. All this memory was in the minds of the multitudes when John cried out, "Behold the Lamb of God! Behold, here is the perfect sacrifice, the One who actually accomplishes what the sacrifices ordained in the Old Testament Law were only tokens, because they could not be fulfilled once and for all.
Thus says the prophetic word, "He who takes away the sins of the world!" God could have taken away the sins of the world by taking away the sinner, by wiping out the sinful man from the world, as the sin of the old world was wiped out by the flood - but He does not do this, but God has found a way to render sin harmless, to cut off the root of the rampant tree of sin, to take away the sin of the world, but by saving the sinner through it: Behold, this redemptive idea of God is incarnate in Jesus, the Lamb on whom the Lord will pass the sin of us all. Just as the Lamb of the Old Testament bore the sins of the people out into the wilderness, to destruction, so the Lamb of God bears the sins of the world to the place where sin belongs: to damnation. This is the work of the high priestly office of Jesus: in Him, as the atoning sacrifice, all the sins of the world were lifted up to heaven, and in Him, as the atoning sacrifice, the full severity of God's wrath was poured out on earth.
In Him as the sacrificial Lamb, divine justice reached and judged human sin. Judgment and mercy are together in the sacrifice of the divine Lamb: He judges, condemns sin, but pardons the sinner, because he dies for him, in his place and on his account! In this way it takes away, it removes sin, sin made into a sinful debt, from the relationship between God and man; it wipes away sin so that it no longer separates man from God.
What does this mean now for us, for you? It means that Jesus also is coming to you as the Lamb of God, who takes away your sins. I do not know who has come here now with the burden of sins, with the memory of sins, but I do know that in the eyes of God there is no servant in desperate debt, no man in desperate depths. Therefore look not now to yourself, but to Him - not to what you can do for Him, but to what He has done for you! And He loves you - the great, compassionate witness of His love made flesh is Jesus Christ! If He had not pity on you, if He had not been angry with you, what would have been the point of blessing the Lamb of God?! It is not your repentance and your supplication that move God, it is not your repentance and your supplication that move Him to mercy for you, but the fact that the Lamb of God has taken away the sins of the world! It is not in our hearts that something must first take place to awaken pity in the heart of God, any more than the crowing of the cock awakens the sun, but in the heart of God love, forgiveness of sins, is already ready and waiting, just as the prodigal son was already waiting with a love of full reconciliation in his father. God offers complete forgiveness to everyone, unconditionally, not because you ask for it or repent of your sins, but for Jesus Christ! For the atoning sacrifice of the Lamb! He is able to receive you into His grace, to love you, without limit, in an undeserved way!
So God is again announcing grace, forgiveness for all - including you! But beware: it is one thing to proclaim grace and another to accept it! One is God's business, the other is ours! The fact that forgiveness is ready for you does not mean that you have received it! Only grace accepted by faith will be yours! See that the gulf you feel between yourself and God; the gulf of your own selfishness, of your own impure thoughts, of your own deeds, of your own sins of all kinds, that separates you from the holy and righteous God: it has been bridged by the sacrifice of the Lamb, it has been buried by His obedience, it has been covered by His perfect merit.
Thus see Jesus coming towards you, and then this grace will lead you to true repentance, and you will no longer be pained by your sin because you fear punishment, but because you are ashamed of your sin, you will mourn that you were able to hurt so wickedly the One who loves you so! Then you'll understand that sin, your sin, is something for which there is no excuse, something that deserves God's wrath, which, if you continue to bear it, will push you down to damnation. And then you will willingly open the deepest secret of your heart to a broken confession of sin, and tell Him all that you have wronged, thought and felt, and ask forgiveness. But in fact, you hardly need to ask forgiveness anymore, because at the same time you already know that you have received absolution, and an inexpressible sense of liberation and joy is in your soul! You feel that you have been freed from some infinite burden! And suddenly life begins again for you! God can allow this miracle to happen in you now, so that you can see Jesus coming to you as the Lamb of God who takes away your sins! So that the grace offered in Him may now become a grace happily accepted on your part!
All this had to be said in such detail so that we might understand the further depths of this Word. Jesus Christ is not only the holy sacrifice who takes away your sins, but the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world! It is in His atoning sacrifice that the great mystery of God's love for the whole world is revealed! And with the same love that you yourself have known in Jesus Christ! It is no accident that the word world is used so often in the New Testament. The New Testament is not only about the personal relationship between God and the human soul, not only about the religious questions of narrow circles, but it is about everything in relation to the world. The New Testament does not only envisage that some souls will be saved from the universal sinful condition of mankind, while the rest will be plunged into the night of ungodliness. The New Testament proclaims salvation for the whole world. Christ stands before us as the Saviour of mankind, as the hope of the world, Who by His sacrifice will make the whole world new!
This means for us, on the one hand, that we can see the world, the peoples of the world, the continuation of the history of the world, in hope - a hope that is not groundless optimism, vague intuition, wishful thinking, illusion, but something that is based on absolute certainty, namely, on the works of God for the redemption of the world! That is to say, on the person and work of Jesus Christ, on the great fact that the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world has already come and has been blessed. In the death and resurrection of Jesus the turning point of history has taken place. In Him God has atoned for and redeemed the world, and in Him the kingdom of God makes its way for Himself.
This kingship of God is now only in its infancy, and can only be discerned by faith, but it will one day be completed and made manifest to all, and will create a new heaven and a new earth, from which all the powers of sin and death will be finally removed.
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world! This does not mean that there is now no more sin in the world, but that sin is a power that has been defeated. It can be fought against in the world, it is worth fighting against all the sins of the world, against the forces that corrupt the life of mankind! "Therefore, my beloved brethren, stand firm, steadfast, always zealous in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord." (1 Cor 15:58)
And finally, the fact that Christ as the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world means something else for us: that we must see the world, the human world, the man in the world, with the responsibility of love! What is the world? The world, in the language of Scripture here, is the opposite of the Church, those who are not yet reconciled children of God. So, precisely in view of the sacrifice of Jesus, it is a category of hope who do not yet know that the redeeming blood of the Lamb has fallen for them. But it is our ministry to let them know - perhaps your child, the person closest to you, so that everyone knows!
Church and world: as different as they are, both have Jesus Christ at their centre, both have the love of God's heart revealed to them, both live from it - one consciously, by faith, the other unconsciously.
Jesus Christ does not separate us from the world, but connects us with the world, connecting us by extending our responsibility and love to the world, to the human world outside the Church, which does not know God's grace.
For the Lamb of God has taken away the sins of the world. Let us see that God's love is greater than we have known. Let us not think that God's love is only for the church and that his wrath is towards the world. For God has judgment both for the church and for the world, but he also has mercy both for the church and for the world. And yet if there is a difference between the two, it could be put like this: he approaches his church with a different kind of love from that of the world. He loves those in the church with a harder, more reproving, disciplining love, and those outside with a more tender, inviting love! His love is more demanding towards one, more patient towards another! It is precisely how much of His inviting, forgiving love we bring out into the world, how much we let the world know through our lives, behaviour and actions that the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world, how much we can draw the world to Jesus Christ.
If you believe that Jesus Christ died for you, then you have a duty to live and sacrifice for other people! And do it in such a way that the divine grace offered to them becomes an accepted grace on their part. How will the world know that there is grace for it if it is not communicated to it in every possible way by those who know it?
Let me conclude with two well-known words. The first says: "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)
In the second, the Word says: "We have known love by this, that He gave His life for us: we also ought to lay down our lives for our brethren." (1 John 3:16)
Amen
Date: 26 February 1956.