Name and Titles of Jesus

 

Lamb of God

To get a real understanding of the title Lamb of God we need to return to the time of the Passover and the escape of the Chosen People from the clutches of the Egyptians. We recall how the Israelites were instructed to sacrifice a lamb in a particular way. In the story of the Passover, the Angel of Death spared only those houses that were marked with the blood of a slain lamb, the Paschal Lamb. 

Later the Prophet Isaiah paints a picture of the coming Messiah as one who was led like a lamb to the slaughter, an innocent victim who would endure his sufferings to redeem his people.

Later still in the gospels we find John the Baptist proclaiming at the river Jordan, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.' I myself did not know him; but I came baptising with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel." John 1:29

So for us, there is now a new symbol of liberation, a new Lamb. Jesus is both the offerer of the sacrifice and its victim who by his death and resurrection inaugurate a New Covenant between God and his people. It is perhaps significant that in all the gospel accounts of the Last Supper there is no mention of a lamb being eaten during the Passover meal in the Upper Room. Is it because there was, of course, a new Lamb, who told his companions to take and eat, take and drink the bread and wine “handed over for you”. And it is through the blood of this Lamb that we find salvation and liberation.

Charles Wesley makes a number of references to the Lamb of God in his hymns. Here are just a three that we can prayerfully read today.

Lamb of God, I look to Thee:

Thou shalt my example be;

Thou art gentle, meek, and mild;

thou wast once a little child.

Lamb of God, whose bleeding love

We now recall to mind,

Send the answer from above,

And let us mercy find.

Think on us who think on Thee,

Every burdened soul release;

O remember Calvary,

And bid us go in peace.

In the final verse of his hymn, Jesus! “The Name High Over All”: he sings,

Happy, if with my latest breath

I may but gasp His Name,

Preach Him to all and cry in death,

"Behold, behold the Lamb!"