Behold the Lamb of God

The Fourth Gospel does not narrate the baptism of Christ but gives instead the witness of the Forerunner — the testimony for which John exists. Before a delegation from Jerusalem he denies that he is the Christ, or Elijah, or the prophet, and names himself only “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” (John 1:19–23); then, seeing Jesus, he cries, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). He confesses the pre-existence of the One who comes after him, the descending and abiding Spirit as the sign by which he knows Him, and at last hands over his own disciples to follow Christ (John 1:35–37). This file follows John’s witness in the Fourth Gospel and the patristic reading of it.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Forerunner)

The Delegation from Jerusalem and the Three Denials

The Fourth Gospel introduces the Baptist not by his preaching of repentance but by his testimony, and it does so under interrogation. “And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’” (John 1:19). John’s first word is a refusal of the highest claim that might be made for him: “He confessed, he did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ’” (John 1:20). The Evangelist’s emphatic doubling — he confessed and did not deny — underlines that John’s whole greatness lies in this self-denial. The delegation presses with the two next-greatest titles. “‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ And he answered, ‘No’” (John 1:21).

The denial of Elijah is read by the tradition without contradiction to the Synoptic word that John comes “in the spirit and power of Elijah” (Luke 1:17) and is “Elijah who is to come” (Matt. 11:14). The Fathers harmonize the two: John is Elijah in office and spirit — the forerunner of the Lord’s first coming — but he is not the Elijah of the flesh who is expected before the second coming, and it is to that bodily return of Elijah, in the popular expectation, that he answers “I am not” (cf. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John 16–17; NPNF I/14). Pressed to give some positive account of himself, John reaches for the prophet who had already named him: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said” (John 1:23; quoting Isa. 40:3). He identifies himself only as a voice — not the Word, but the voice that announces the Word — and so refuses every honor except that of pointing away from himself (on the prophetic self-understanding, see The Friend of the Bridegroom).

“Behold, the Lamb of God”

The next day the witness becomes proclamation. “The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’” (John 1:29). The title is John’s own coinage in the Gospel, and it gathers up the whole Old Covenant. It evokes the Paschal lamb whose blood spared Israel (Exod. 12:3–13), now the true Passover whose blood takes away not the destroyer but sin itself; and it evokes the suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, “led like a lamb to the slaughter” (Isa. 53:7), who “bore the sin of many” (Isa. 53:12) and on whom “the Lord has laid the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6). What the lambs of the Law could only signify — the bearing away of sin — the Lamb of God accomplishes in reality. The Forerunner, last of the prophets, names the Lamb that all the sacrifices had foreshadowed.

The Church has kept this confession at the very heart of her worship. The Eucharistic Bread offered at the Liturgy is called the Lamb (Amnos), cut at the Proskomedia with the words of Isaiah’s prophecy, “He was led as a lamb to the slaughter”; and the faithful are summoned to communion with the cry, “Behold the Lamb of God,” so that the Baptist’s word at the Jordan becomes the Church’s word at the altar (on the worship and feasts in which this confession is kept, see The Great Feasts). The bearing-away of the world’s sin which John proclaims is the very work of the incarnate Son, His self-offering once for all (see Christology).

“He Was Before Me”: The Pre-existence

John’s testimony reaches beyond the work of the Lamb to the dignity of His Person. “This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, for he was before me’” (John 1:30). The saying is a deliberate paradox: the one who comes after John in time ranks before him in dignity, and the reason given is that He was before — He existed prior to John, who was nonetheless born some six months earlier. The only sense in which the later-born can have been before the earlier-born is that of His eternal pre-existence as the Word who “was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1–2). The Forerunner, then, confesses not merely a greater man but the eternal Son. Chrysostom reads the verse precisely so, as John’s witness to the divine pre-existence of Christ, the same truth the Evangelist has set in the Prologue (Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John 17.1–2; NPNF I/14).

The Spirit Descending and Remaining

How John came to know the One he proclaimed is the burden of the next verses, and it ties the Fourth Gospel’s witness to the Theophany the Synoptics narrate (see The Theophany). “I myself did not know him; but for this I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel” (John 1:31). John’s whole baptizing had this revelation as its purpose: to provide the occasion on which the Messiah would be made known. Then John recounts the sign he was given: “I saw the Spirit descend as a dove from heaven, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him; but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit’” (John 1:32–33).

Two things are stressed. First, the Spirit not only descended but remained (emeinen) — the abiding distinguishes Christ, on whom the Spirit rests permanently and in fullness, from the prophets on whom the Spirit had come and departed; the Fathers note that the remaining marks the One who possesses the Spirit by nature, not by measure (cf. Chrysostom, Hom. John 17; NPNF I/14; and John 3:34, “for it is not by measure that he gives the Spirit”). Second, the contrast of the two baptisms: John baptizes “with water,” but the One revealed “baptizes with the Holy Spirit” (John 1:33) — the baptism of repentance pointing forward to the Spirit-baptism of the Church (see The Baptism of John). On the strength of the sign John reaches his fullest confession: “And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God” (John 1:34).

The Handing Over of the Disciples

The witness of the Forerunner ends where it ought — in his own self-effacement, as his disciples leave him for the One he has named. “The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked, and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God!’” (John 1:35–36). He repeats the confession a second time, now not to a crowd but to his own followers, and the effect is to send them away from himself: “The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus” (John 1:37). One of the two is named — “Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard John speak, and followed him” (John 1:40) — and he in turn brings his brother Simon to Christ. The Baptist thus performs in act what he has confessed in word: he decreases that the Lord may increase (cf. John 3:30). To point men past himself to the Lamb, and to surrender even his own disciples to follow Him, is the whole office of the Forerunner brought to its perfection (see The Friend of the Bridegroom).

References

The Gospel According to John 1:19–37, 40. Revised Standard Version. (The delegation from Jerusalem and the three denials, 1:19–23; “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” 1:29, 36; the pre-existence saying, 1:30; the Spirit descending and remaining, 1:31–34; “this is the Son of God,” 1:34; the handing over of the disciples and Andrew, 1:35–40.) With Isaiah 40:3; 53:6–7, 12; Exodus 12:3–13.
John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies 16–18 (on John 1:19–34). Trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 14. (John’s denials and the Elijah question; the pre-existence confessed in “he was before me”; the abiding of the Spirit as the sign distinguishing Christ; the Lamb and the bearing-away of sin.)