Chapter # 1 Paragraph # 5 Study # 2
March 5, 2023
Broadlands, Louisiana
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Thesis: The sacrifice of The Lamb of The God is no small matter.
Introduction: In our study last week, we considered the witness of John regarding Jesus as The Lamb of The God Who lifted the consequences of "The Sin" of the world off of the shoulders of those who believe his message of forgiveness through repentance. We saw that the thesis of Jesus as the sacrificial lamb was the explanation of how God can extend forgiveness to men on the basis of "repentance": "Justice" with God is an immutable necessity so that the extension of "Grace", which is not a necessity by its own definition, cannot be extended to men on the basis of repentance unless "Justice" is/has been satisfied.
This morning, we are going to look further into this reality of how "Jesus", "The Lamb of The God", actually met the immutable demands of the "Justice of God".
- I. John's Repetition Of His Identification Of The One Coming After Him.
- A. When we read in 1:30 that Witness-John said, "This is He on behalf of whom I said, 'After me comes a man Who has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me'", we are reading the third time that he said something about "The One Coming After Me".
- 1. Because it is the third time, we, obviously, need to give it our careful attention.
- 2. Because it is the third time, we need to look back at the prior two times.
- a. In 1:15, he said, "...The One coming after me has become before me, because He was before me".
- 1) The translators of the NASB translate a Greek phrase in this verse as "...[He] has a higher rank than I...": this is an interpretation, not a translation.
- 2) The phrase is literally, "...[He] has become before me...".
- a) At issue is how The One coming after John "has become" before John.
- i. That He "has become" means that something has happened that has moved "the One coming after" to being "the One who has become before".
- ii. The "something" that has happened is the thing that moved Jesus from behind John to being before Him.
- iii. The being "after" is the temporal, historical, reality of Jesus appearing on the scene "after" John in respect to the "timing" (both in birth and in entering into His ministry).
- iv. But the "becoming before" is the issue of prominence in the eyes of those who, having heard John's message, have turned to Jesus as the one to follow (no longer a "timing" issue, but a "prominence" issue -- i.e., the interpretation by the translators of the NASB).
- b) Then, John gives his reason for the prominence of Jesus: He "was" "first of me": (the words indicating prior realities are not the same word).
- i. This is the same meaning as the "was" in 1:1-2 -- eternal existence (existence in time stretched backwards into infinity).
- ii. Jesus is The Infinite God Who became flesh in time.
- b. The second time John spoke of "the One Coming After me" is in 1:27.
- 1) In this verse, the issue is not Jesus having a superior existence; it is Jesus having a superior morality.
- 2) In this verse, the issue is John's "unworthiness to loose the thongs of Jesus' sandals"; this is a moral issue because "unworthiness" is a moral-fault issue.
- 3) Thus, Witness-John is tying Jesus' "coming after" to His "infinitely greater moral character".
- c. And this third time John spoke of "the One coming after me" is a repeat of the first time except that this time, he inserts a new issue: Jesus is a Man.
- 1) That John says of Jesus that He is "The Lamb of The God" and then immediately returns to his earlier announcement with the addition of the reality that this "Lamb" is a "Man", signals the significance of the question of how God can "forgive" those who repent.
- a) God can "forgive men" because a "Man" satisfied the requirements of "Justice".
- b) But, He was no mere man; He was a "Man" Who "was" before John.
- 2) This means that "Justice" had to be satisfied by a Man because "Sin" had been committed by a "man"; but the satisfaction had to reach beyond time into the infinity of time (eternity).
- B. John's "Point".
- 1. Was it to magnify the infinity of the "Man", Jesus, so that whatever He did/does is so rooted in the "infinity of His knowledge, His wisdom, His power, and His experience" that no one can upset what He has done, or usurp His prerogative for taking that action, or denigrate what He has done by reducing it to "a few hours of time" with no lingering impact throughout infinity.
- a. What happened to Jesus was sufficient to satisfy "Justice" to the "nth" degree of "billions of human sinners" who individually take millions of actions of a sinful nature and, by so doing, stack up the severity of the penalty according to the number and severity of those sins.
- b. And not only that, but the scars of that experience still exist in the body of "The Man", Who, as God, has no diminishing of memory, and the "smoke of the torment of unforgiven sinners ascends up before the angels and The Lamb forever and ever..." (Revelation 14:10-11).
- c. Those who would diminish the sacrifice of the Lamb by denigrating its infinite reality seek to diminish the claim of the Lamb that He loves us.
