Article December 2, 1933 Issue

Beholding the Lamb of God

CLARA SCHRADER STREETER

One of the pleasing and momentous scenes in the life of Christ Jesus is that which is described in each of the four Gospels relative to his baptism. In the fourth Gospel it is recorded that John the Baptist recognized so clearly the promised Messiah that he "saw the Spirit ... like a dove" resting upon Jesus. And of the mighty purport of that which Spirit revealed, he exclaimed, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world."

Possibly not all of those who stood on the shore of the Jordan and witnessed the baptism of Jesus saw in the Man of Galilee the same evidence of the Messiah as did John the Baptist. The first to testify was Andrew, usually referred to as Simon Peter's brother. On the day following the baptism it is recorded that Andrew, with another of John's disciples, was standing with the Baptist as Jesus passed by. When John said, "Behold the Lamb of God," these disciples turned and followed Jesus, but Andrew first went to his brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messias, ... the Christ." Nathanael, who was told of Jesus by Philip, and the woman of Samaria also, were among the first to indicate that they too beheld in Jesus the Lamb of God, the Christ the Saviour of the world.

In the Glossary to "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 590) Mrs. Eddy defines "Lamb of God" as "the spiritual idea of Love; self-immolation; innocence and purity; sacrifice." Accepting this interpretation, we see that it is "the spiritual idea of Love" which takes away the sin of the world, not the vicarious sufferings of the man Jesus, as an inoffensive victim offered as a propitiation for sin. This similitude of the Christ as the Lamb of God becomes, under the Gospel teachings, a more spiritual concept, for in the epistle to the Hebrews we read that if the old sacrificial rites under the Mosaic law were necessary to "the purifying of the flesh," how much more shall the self-immolation of Jesus the Christ "purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God." Our Leader also makes clear (Science and Health, p. 334) that while "the human, material concept, or Jesus," disappeared, "the spiritual self, or Christ, continues to exist in the eternal order of divine Science, taking away the sins of the world, as the Christ has always done, even before the human Jesus was incarnate to mortal eyes."

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