The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold! 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 is preferred before me, for He was before me.’ I did not know Him; but that He should be revealed to Israel, therefore I came baptizing with water.”
And John bore witness, saying, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and He remained upon Him. I did not know Him, but He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘Upon whom you see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.”
Again, the next day, John stood with two of his disciples. And looking at Jesus as He walked, he said, “Behold the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.
John the baptizer, who was sent to announce the coming of the Messiah, points to Jesus and says, “Behold the lamb of God.” He does this twice, on two consecutive days, as if to emphasize something important. What is it? He is identifying Jesus Christ as the Messiah, the anointed one. But beyond this, the title “lamb of God” ties together the New Testament and the Old Testament.
With John’s words, it dawns on us that all the animal sacrifices ever done, starting shortly after the Fall, pointed forward to Jesus Christ. The whole sacrificial system, the entire sanctuary service, pointed to the sacrifice that Christ was to make on the cross of Calvary.
It also confirms the theory of the atonement known as substitution. The penitent sinner brought his lamb to the courtyard of the sanctuary, placed his hands upon it and confessed his sins, thus transferring his sins in type to the lamb, who was then slain.
The lamb represented Jesus Christ, the “Lamb of God.” He was slain for our sins; “the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” It is perhaps ironic that the clearest statement of the teaching of the substitutionary atonement is found not in the New Testament, but in the Old:
Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire Him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
He was despised, and we held him in low esteem.Surely He took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered Him punished by God,
stricken by Him, and afflicted.
But He was pierced for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on Him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on Him
the iniquity of us all.He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet He did not open His mouth;
He was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so He did not open His mouth.
By oppression and judgment He was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people He was punished.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in His death,
though He had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in His mouth.Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes His life an offering for sin,
He will see his offspring and prolong His days,
and the will of the Lord will prosper in His hand.
After He has suffered,
He will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by the knowledge of Him my righteous servant will justify many,
and He will bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give Him a portion among the great,
and He will divide the spoils with the strong,
because He poured out His life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For He bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors. Isaiah 53
The blood of the lamb was sprinkled on the altar, and thus the sins were transferred in type from the lamb to the sanctuary itself. Over the course of a year, the sins built up in type in the sanctuary; once a year, on the day of atonement, the sins were transferred to the scapegoat, who was not killed but was led out into the wilderness by a fit man.
The annual or typical day of atonement prefigured the investigative judgment in the sanctuary in heaven, the true sanctuary made without human hands. During the investigative judgment, it is determined which of God’s followers have truly and sincerely availed themselves of the atoning blood of Christ—either in prospect through the sacrificial system, or in retrospect looking back upon the cross of Calvary. The record of the sins of those who have are transferred from the sanctuary onto Satan, who is cast into the lake of fire to be punished for those sins.
All our Adventists truths and insights into the sanctuary and the investigative judgment are thus dependent upon the truth of the substitutionary atonement, particularly the portability of sins implied by that doctrine.
Sadly, the substitutionary atonement, although the very heart of the gospel, is one area upon which there is confusion in the SDA Church. It is denied outright by many, typically the medical doctors with which the church is infested, who resent the legal or forensic nature of the doctrine, preferring instead a disease/healing analogy that comports better with their worldview and experience.
But alas, sin is not a disease and disease is not a sin, although it is a fact that we live in a world of disease and death because of Adam’s sin. No, sin is a failure to achieve—in thought, word or deed—the standard of righteousness embodied in God’s law. It is a problem of lawlessness and breaking the law. It is a legal problem. Get over it, sawbones!
We do not understand everything about how Christ’s death on our behalf carrying our sins to the cross, achieved the atonement. In his allegorical series beginning with “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” C.S. Lewis calls this the “deep magic” that is part of the created fabric of the universe. Ellen White says it will be our study throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity, so it must remain partially mysterious for the present.