John 1:29

‘On the morrow he sees Jesus coming to him and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”.'

‘The morrow, the next day'. This whole passage links a number of events over a period of days. The writer, who was present and saw what took place, could never forget those never to be forgotten days when he first saw Jesus. And prominent among those memories was the way in which John the Baptiser, when he saw Jesus coming towards him, turned to the people and declared to them, Who Jesus was. ‘See', he says, ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world'. Here John is connecting Jesus with the suffering servant and prophet spoken of in Isaiah 53, the lamb (amnos, as here) who was led to the slaughter, who was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities, and who bore our sins and carried our sorrows (Isaiah 53:7 with John 1:4 in context). He would suffer for the sins of his people, as He Himself would later confirm (Luke 22:37; Mark 10:45). By this time the Servant was seen by some as a Messianic figure. Thus the Targum of Jonathan speaks of a ‘Servant Messish'.

The writer will also often later centre on the Passover, and although he nowhere in fact mentions the Passover lamb, it is possible he also has the Passover lamb in mind when he refers to the Passover. Indeed it might be argued that it was because he saw Jesus as replacing the Passover lamb that he never mentions it. The Passover Lamb was Himself visiting Jerusalem. Certainly it is difficult to avoid the implication that the One Who died at the Passover was the Passover lamb (made explicit in 1 Corinthians 5:7). And while that lamb was initially not specifically propitiatory, it now had to be offered in the Temple through the priests, and therefore included propitiatory elements.

Nor should we overlook the daily sacrifice, which was propitiatory and was an important part of the Passover. But whatever was most directly in John's mind it is clear that he was thinking in terms of a sacrificial offering. Thus he saw Jesus as One Who would in some way be a sacrifice for the sins of the world, and this could only link back to Isaiah 53:10, with its emphasis on the guilt offering, while indirectly including the Passover lamb and the daily offering.

It should be noted that in the Septuagint (LXX - an important Greek version of the Old Testament) the Passover lamb is not ‘amnos' but ‘probaton', however, LXX does see it as taken from among the ‘amnoi' (e.g. Exodus 12:5), and the words are paralleled in Isaiah 53:7. (And John the Baptiser is thinking in Hebrew and Aramaic not Greek).