The Lamb of God? Reflections on John 1:29-42, Second Sunday after Epiphany, Year A

by John C. Holbert on Friday, November 14, 2025

         Let me begin with confession, a most Christian thing to do. It is a confession I have made before, but it bears repeating: I have a very hard time with the Gospel of John. I think I recognize its unique poetic theology, and heaven knows it has played an outsized role in the formation of Christian belief. “In the beginning was the word;” I am the vine, you are the branches;” No one comes to the Father except by me;” perhaps most quoted of all, “For God so loved the world.” I could go on; there are numerous lines from this Gospel that have found their way onto the lips of countless believers through the centuries. Still, for me, John’s work remains too often nearly impenetrable, demanding more of me than I can seem to muster. But I am asked to think through the piece on any number of occasions, and today’s lectionary presents a passage from John for us to examine.

         It is a lengthy text, and I cannot in one short essay do any real justice to its complexities, so I have chosen to focus my attention on that enigmatic phrase, now a central part of Christian doctrine, “Lamb of God.” In what way is Jesus the Lamb of God? What does that phrase mean? Of course, I have only drawn attention to the first part of the locution; Jesus, says John the Baptist, is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). It is a commonplace throughout the ages to assign Jesus that task, that is, the one who takes away the world’s sin. We should note here that John (both the Baptist and the Gospel’s author) employs the singular—it is the sin of the world, not a catalogue of sins, that the Lamb of God takes away. Exactly what that may mean, we will reserve for another day.

         For now, though, just what is this Lamb of God? It seems obvious that only God can “take away” sin, that is, forgive sin. The Greek verb suggests both “removing” and “forgiving.” But now it will not be God, but Jesus, who will take away sin. But for John’s Gospel, since Jesus has, we have just been told, come from God (John 1:1-18 is a long disquisition on that fact—Jesus is nothing less than “the Word,” “in the beginning with God,” “through whom all things came into being.”). It is clear that Jesus can and will remove the world’s sin, since he is co-existent with God, and serves as God’s agent to perform that very act. 

         But how and why is he Lamb? Several possibilities present themselves. The Suffering Servant of 2-Isaiah 53:7 might serve as backdrop: “like a lamb led to the slaughter,” says Isaiah of the mysterious servant. That would imply that Jesus’s death may have functioned as a way to remove the world’s sin. On the other hand, we might look to the triumphant lamb of Revelation 7:17; 17:14, that lamb standing at the very center of the throne room of God. The Revelator looked earlier for the lion of the tribe of Judah, one worthy to open the scroll of God that contains the meaning of the Christian community’s future, but instead he sees “a lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered” (Rev. 5:6), surely one of the great unexpected metaphorical reversals that our scripture provides. Or the factor lying below this image might be the Passover lamb (see John 19:14); it is the Passover celebration that is the time of Jesus’s rejection and crucifixion. Once again, it is the lamb that has been sacrificed.

         However, despite any or all of these, I wonder if rather the image of the lamb is not rooted firmly in the ritual practice of Israel. Israel consistently employed the lamb for sacrificial rites of communion, for reconciliation with God after sin. In this way, Israel renewed their union with God and began their renewed communion among themselves. In the same way, Jesus is not a cultic victim, but since he is “Lamb of God,” he becomes the one through whom God enters the human story, offering that story, that world, reconciliation with him. Thus, the old symbol of the cultic lamb becomes for John the new symbol in Jesus as the way toward communion between God and the world, rather than the cultic lamb, as the required way of constant sacrifice needed for that communion. John regularly takes old symbols and makes them new, and in this figure of the Lamb of God, he has done so again.

         I suggest that John has offered us here a fresh way of seeing the crucial nature of the old image of the cultic lamb. It is now Jesus who is the Lamb of God, the Human One who takes away the sin of the world on behalf of God, doing the work of God. Little wonder that later theologians found in John’s Gospel the seeds of the doctrine of the Trinity, and spoke readily of Jesus as “coexistent” with God, though what that meant was the source of centuries of debate and fury that led to more than a few armed conflicts! But for John, it may at least be said that Jesus is God’s living word, and as such, and as Lamb of God “takes away the sin of the world.”

         This is indeed poetic theology, rich in import, and filled with complexity. I have long wondered just who John’s audience was; who was it that enjoyed diving into this delectable stew of imagery and came up celebrating the literary genius who composed it all? What would Mark’s audience make of it? Very little, I imagine. But that may be fine, since the tale of Jesus demands more than one sort of telling. As I have said before, I much prefer Mark, but I have a friend or two who revel in John. So be it. Chacun a son gout, as the French say; each to his/her own taste. Precisely how this Lamb removes the world’s sin is a subject for another day, one equally complex, and one I am perhaps less equipped to tackle than some of you reading this. I wish you very good luck!