“BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD.”
By George A. Snyder
“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” When we consider Jesus as the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” and try to comprehend the import of the sacrifice which from the very beginning involved the giving up of the bliss and joy of heaven for the agony of Gethsemane, and the exchange of a crown of glory for a crown of thorns, we are ready to exclaim, “Behold the Lamb of God!” The ultimate object of this wonderful manifestation of divine love was to take “away the sin of the world.” “Sin,” says the beloved disciple, “is the transgression of the law.” So the “Lamb of God” was provided for the express purpose of removing from the world all of the transgression of God’s law, which has brought so much sorrow in its train. Through the prophet Isaiah, God has told us that He did not create the earth in vain, but that He formed it to be inhabited. Isa. 45:18. From Rev. 4:11 we learn further that all things were created for God’s pleasure. It is self-evident that God could not derive any pleasure from having the earth inhabited by transgressors of His law, and so He provided a means whereby all transgression will be forever removed from the earth. It is a blessed thought to know that the earth will finally emerge from the shadow of sin, and that God’s purpose in creating it will be fully realized. The Great Shepherd of the heavens left all the shining flock of unfallen worlds on high, to seek after this wanderer from the fold, and in the morning He will bring back, in the arms of His love, the one lost sheep of the universe, and restore it, washed from every stain of sin, to the fold of eternal blessedness. Whether you and I shall join in the rejoicing over the sheep that was lost and is found, will depend on how we “behold the Lamb of God.” It is the work of the adversary “to pervert the right ways of the Lord” (Acts 13:10); and so, instead of openly opposing the “Lamb of God,” he seeks to turn the cross, on which the sacrifice was made, upside down, to serve his own purpose. Calvary stands as a pledge of Christ’s power to take away sin, which “is the transgression of the law.” The enemy tries to make it appear that Jesus died to abolish the law, and release man from all obligation to obey its requirements. In short, he seeks to use the cross as a gravestone on which to write the epitaph of a dead and buried law. But, O, he can never obliterate the motto traced on the cross with the precious blood of the Lamb: “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled [filled full] in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin” not the law, until you are changed into His image, having the law written, “not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.” “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish the law.” When the requisite number of individuals shall have so fully yielded to God that He can empty them of their transgressions of His law, and fill them full of joyful obedience to its5righteous requirements, then God will fulfil His eternal purpose by filling the earth full of such people. Those who will not part with their sins, but continue to transgress God’s law, will be destroyed from off the earth; for the Lamb of God will remove all sin from this earth, even if He has to remove the sinner with the sin. But His heart is yearning to take away the sin, and save the sinner from his sins both here and hereafter. GEORGE A. SNYDER.