Chapter 24: The Lamb of God

To understand the death of Jesus, we must follow a single scarlet thread that runs from the first pages of the Bible to the last—the thread of the Lamb. It begins in the garden of Eden and ends before the throne of God, and every strand of it points to Calvary.

The First Covering

When Adam and Eve sinned in Eden and realized they were naked—for the glory of God that had clothed them was gone—God would have been perfectly just to let them die with no hope of restoration. Instead, He gave them a promise: salvation would come through the seed of a woman (Genesis 3:15). And then He did something profoundly significant. He could have covered their nakedness with a mere word, clothing them by simply speaking it into being. But He did not. Instead:

Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them (Genesis 3:21).

Coats of skins—which means that something died. To cover the shame of the first sinners, an innocent creature was slain, and its blood was shed. The Bible does not tell us what kind of animal it was; many believe it was a lamb, though we cannot be certain. But the lesson is unmistakable: sin brings death, and the guilty can only be covered at the cost of an innocent life laid down in their place. This was the first sacrifice, and it was God Himself who made it. Yet it was only a covering—a shadow pointing forward to a greater and more precious blood that would not merely cover sin but take it away, restoring the lost glory and reconciling man to God.²⁶⁴

God Will Provide Himself a Lamb

The thread continues with Abraham. When God commanded him to offer up Isaac, his only son, it too was symbolic and prophetic—a shadow of what God Himself would one day do in offering His only begotten Son. As father and son climbed the mountain together, Isaac asked the aching question:

Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering (Genesis 22:7–8).

“God will provide himself a lamb.” Abraham spoke more truly than he knew. On that occasion God provided a ram caught in a thicket, and Isaac was spared. But the words reached far beyond that day, down through two thousand years, to another hill not far away—Mount Moriah, where Jerusalem would stand—where God would provide Himself as the Lamb, and this time the Son would not be spared. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all” (Romans 8:32).²⁶⁶

The Lamb Without Blemish

As the story of Israel unfolds, the lamb comes into ever sharper focus—and always with one strict requirement: it must be perfect, without spot or blemish. At the first Passover, when the blood on the doorposts turned away the angel of death, the command was exact:

Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year… and they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses (Exodus 12:5–6).

A lamb without blemish; a male in its prime; its blood applied for protection from death. So too in the sacrificial law: “a calf and a lamb, both of the first year, without blemish, for a burnt offering” (Leviticus 9:3). Every spotless lamb slain on every altar for fifteen centuries was preaching the same sermon: God is holy, sin is deadly, and only a perfect, innocent substitute can stand in the sinner’s place. But no animal was truly perfect in a moral sense; each was only a picture, waiting for the reality.²⁶⁸

And so Isaiah, gazing down the centuries, saw the true Lamb—a Person, not an animal—led silently to the slaughter for the sins of His people: “He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter… so he openeth not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7).

Behold the Lamb of God

Then, when the fullness of time had come, the shadow gave way to the substance. John the Baptist, sent to prepare the way, looked up one day and saw Jesus walking toward him—and all the scarlet thread of the ages gathered in his cry:

The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! (John 1:36).

“Behold the Lamb of God.” Here at last was the Lamb that Abel’s offering had pictured, that Abraham had prophesied, that the Passover had foreshadowed, that Isaiah had seen. Not merely a lamb of God, but the Lamb who is God—the spotless One who would not merely cover sin but take it away, carrying it off forever. And notice: not the sin of Israel only, but “the sin of the world.”

Without Shedding of Blood

Why must it be so? Why blood? Because from the beginning God had established that life is in the blood, and that the wages of sin is death. There is no forgiveness on the cheap:

Without shedding of blood is no remission (Hebrews 9:22).

By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all (Hebrews 10:10).

Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold… but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot (1 Peter 1:18–19).

The blood of bulls and goats could never truly take away sins (Hebrews 10:4); it could only cover them, year after year, as a promissory note awaiting payment. But when Christ, the true Lamb, shed His blood, the debt was paid in full—once for all. No further sacrifice would ever be needed. The scarlet thread had reached the cross, and there it was tied off forever.²⁷¹

The First Adam and the Last

There is one more contrast that makes the glory of the Lamb shine all the brighter. In Eden, when the first Adam sinned, he and his wife were covered by the death of an innocent creature—and yet, even covered, they were still driven out of paradise. The lamb’s blood covered their shame, but it could not open the gate back to Eden; the cherubim and the flaming sword still barred the way (Genesis 3:24).

But the Last Adam—Jesus Christ—became the ultimate Lamb; and through His death and resurrection He did what the first covering could never do. Where the first Adam’s sin drove humanity out of paradise, the Last Adam’s sacrifice opened the way back in. He took upon Himself the very punishment the first Adam’s sin deserved, so that all who put their faith in Him could regain access to the fullness of God’s presence—not merely covered, but cleansed; not merely spared, but welcomed home. To the dying thief He could say, “To day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43)—the very word, paradise, that had been lost in Genesis, now reopened by the Lamb. Where the first Adam lost Eden, the Last Adam regained it for us; and that is the transforming power of His life, death, and resurrection.