In our last post we looked at how PSA construes Jesus’ death as a sacrifice made to God. Indeed, Jesus’ death is a sacrifice. It’s just that how we think about sacrifice is not how the Bible thinks about sacrifice.

So take, as an example, how John the Baptist describes Jesus in the gospel of John:

“Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! (Jn. 1:29 NRSVue)

When we hear something like this we unconsciously make a whole host of assumptions about what this means:

1. We first connect “the Lamb of God” with animal sacrifice in the Old Testament (which is the right move to make).
2. Then we assume that animals, like lambs, are sacrificed in the Old Testament in order to appease God’s wrath.
3. We then connect God’s wrath to the “sin of the world.” Our sin must be taken away in order for God to no longer be angry at us.
4. And so Jesus, the Lamb of God, must die because his death satisfies God’s anger and so makes it possible for God to forgive us.

The Lamb of God

To be clear, “the lamb of God” is rightly understood in sacrificial terms. In particular, it has to do with Passover. As we are told in Exodus, the Passover Lamb served two purposes.

The first was that its blood was used to mark the doorpost of every Israelite home. This mark made it so the Angel of Death would “pass over” that household. But notice, that the blood of the lamb does not serve the purpose of appeasing God’s anger.

God is not angry.

Well, God is angry, just not with Israel.

God is angry with Pharaoh.

In the Passover story, God is acting to deliver Israel. He is not mad at them. Rather he has compassion on them and so comes to their rescue and saves them from their bondage under the unjust and ruthless rule of Pharaoh. God does this because God heard their cry. God saw their oppression and acted to free them.

Second, the lamb was sacrificed so the Israelites could share in a celebratory meal anticipating their coming deliverance from Egypt. Later on, the Passover Lamb would become a symbol reminding Israel of their “Independence Day,” so to speak. It isn’t that Israel celebrated the fact that a lamb died as a substitute for them. Rather, the Passover Lamb is a reminder of what God did to liberate them.

The important thing to note is that the sacrifice of the lamb is not the cause of God’s desire to deliver Israel. God has already determined to act. Meaning, as we have mentioned, that God is not mad at Israel and therefore, needs a sacrifice to change his mind. The point of the sacrificial lamb was so that the people could share a meal as a way of commemorating or celebrating the deliverance God has done or intends to do apart from the sacrifice.

Taking Away Sin

So what about “who takes away the sin of the world”?

This phrase is best understood as a figure of speech. That is, the sin of the world is not thought to be taken somewhere. Even in the PSA way of understanding this verse, what is taken away is not sin, but God’s wrath. God’s anger is somehow satisfied by the death of the lamb. But nothing actually happens to the sin.

In the Old Testament, when Israel’s sins are said to be “taken away”, it simply means that God has let go of them (their sins, that is). In other words, God forgives their sins. And this forgiveness happens in the same way it happens for us. Just as we do not require the death of the person we have beef with in order to forgive them, God is said to be able to do the same.

We might think of Psalm 103:12 — “as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us.” I guess we can assume this happens because some animal sacrifice is made, but that would be doing some pretty “creative” interpretation to put it kindly. Plus, that’s just not what sacrifice is about. Rather, God just “removes” our sins. God forgives our transgressions without needing some kind of sacrifice.

All in all, the phrase “taking away sin” is rare in the Old Testament. One instance can be found in Isaiah 27:9, which the Apostle Paul loosely references in Romans 11:27. In it we read, “and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin.” In Romans 11:27, it reads, “And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins.”

What is being referenced is God’s act to deliver Israel (once again) from those who oppress them. If you read Isaiah 27 in its entirety, it is saying that God will remove Israel’s sin and the fruit of this will be God’s judgment over the nation of Assyria and its foreign gods. It is a passage that takes place on “that day” which indicates the day of God’s ultimate victory over evil and Israel’s final restoration.

Again God does this not because some perfect sacrifice has been made. Rather, God acts because “it is time.” God takes away or removes the sin of Israel — God forgives them — and the sign (or fruit) that his has happened is their liberation.

The Lamb of God Who Takes Away the Sin of the World

So back to John 1:29. When John calls Jesus “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” what he is saying is that in Jesus God is on the move to perform one more Exodus.

That Jesus is linked to the Lamb of God harkens back to the original Exodus story where God delivered Israel from Egypt. But Jesus is also the one who takes away, or removes, not just the sin of Israel, but the sin of the whole world. What we are supposed to hear in what John is saying about Jesus is “that day” foretold in Isaiah 27:9 has finally come. In Jesus, God is on the move to bring about the final Exodus for the whole world.

It is not about Jesus satisfying God’s wrath. It is simply that “the time of forgiveness” has come and “that day” is now being proclaimed in and through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.