All the way from Abel to John the Baptist, Scripture uses the figure of the lamb. This was the verse which the Ethiopian eunuch was reading when Philip climbed into his chariot:

"He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before the shearer, so opened he not his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment was taken away, and who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth." (Acts 8:32,33)

The Ethiopian asked Philip: "WHO IS HE TALKING ABOUT? HIMSELF OR ANOTHER?" Philip said it was another who was yet to come, and he told him about Jesus who had come as the Lamb led to the slaughter.

When Abel, you recall, brought that sacrifice to the Lord, it was a lamb. Abel was no caveman, but an intelligent human being. I think that he could meet anyone living today on an intellectual basis. After all, we too are descended from Adam's line, and what we have is inherited from him. If you had said to Abel, "ABEL, I SEE YOU ARE OFFERING A LITTLE LAMB. DO YOU THINK A LITTLE LAMB WILL TAKE AWAY YOUR SIN?" He would have answered, "NO." "THEN WHY ARE YOU DOING IT?"

His reason would have been something like this: "GOD HAS ASKED US TO DO IT. HE PROMISED MY MOTHER THAT THERE IS COMING ONE WHO WILL BE OUR SAVIOR. THIS LITTLE LAMB IS DEPICTING HIM, AND I OFFER IT AS A SUBSTITUTE. BUT THERE IS COMING ONE WHO WILL GIVE HIMSELF IN VOLUNTARY, VICARIOUS DEATH. I DONT KNOW MUCH ABOUT IT YET, BUT I TRUST GOD THAT HE IS COMING."

Centuries passed, and at last one day John the Baptist marked out Jesus and said, "BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD, WHO TAKETH AWAY THE SIN OF THE WORLD." (John 1:29) This is God's Lamb. This is the One to pay the penalty for the sins of the world - your sin and my sin. With the apostle Paul we can look at that cross and say, "HE LOVED ME, AND GAVE HIMSELF FOR ME."

Jesus didn't die to win your sympathy. His was not a martyrs' death. He did not die as did the martyrs' who died singing praises, conscious of God's presence with them. Rather, Jesus cried out in that awful moment, "MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?" He was forsaken of God!

He died because all we like sheep have gone astray. . . and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. That's the reason He died. He had to do it to save you, my friend!

This wonderful fifty-third chapter of Isaiah does not stop there. It opens with suffering, but it closes with satisfaction. Note verse 11:

He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied; by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

Satisfaction.
Dont feel sorry for Him. If you think He was caught between the upper millstone of Roman power and the nether millstone of religious cupidity, forget it. He was not. He says:

No man taketh it (my life) from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father. (John 10:18)

And in Hebrews it says:

Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

He made adequate provision for the sin of the world. He is satisfied.

The cross is not an ambulance sent to a wreck. It is not first aid. It is not a temporary arrangement. The Lord Jesus is "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." And when you look into eternity, you see what John describes,"And I beheld and, lo, in the midst of the throne. . .stood a Lamb as though it had been slain. . ." (Revelation 5:6) Scripture tells us that He sat down at God's right hand, and do you know why? For the same reason it says that God rested on the seventh day after He had created the heavens and the earth. He wasn't tired. He sat down because He had finished the job. And I am sorry to have to report that I don't seem to finish anything - I always leave my desk covered with work to be done. But when Jesus went back to heaven, He had finished everything that was necessary for your salvation and mine. Everything.

God in our day is satisfied with what Jesus did for you. Are you satisfied? "He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied." Oh, the restlessness today! How busy people are! My friend, rest in Him. He paid a tremendous price for you. He paid an awful price for you.

How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? Do you have the answer to that? Are you going to try to escape by neglecting that salvation? My friend, I do not know who is the worst sinner in your town, but if you are rejecting God's salvation for you, you are as guilty as the worst sinner in your town.

God has a remedy for every sin, except the sin of rejecting the Remedy. The Remedy is His Son.

"It is one of the great principles of Christianity," says Pascal, "that everything which happened to Jesus Christ should come to pass in the soul and in the body of each Christian."

If by faith I am one with my Redeemer, then that term, "Christ crucified," involves another. "I, crucified with Christ." Hence, we by no means reach the true measure of our inheritance in the cross when we regard the death of Christ as a formal transaction, by which One, two thousand years ago, paid a debt that belonged to us, and thus secured our release from its obligation, we having no other connection with the event than that of recipients of its blessings.

Paul saw a richer heritage for the saints than this. For with that key, in Christ, which opens for the believer all the worlds of Christian doctrine and life, he lets us into "the fellowship of His sufferings."

The great thought which filled his mind was his oneness with his Lord - a oneness not only of the present and the future, but equally of the past. And so he utters those grand but awful words, "I HAVE BEEN CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST," in which he carries himself back to the cross, and conceives of himself as so identified with the Redeemer that he was with Him in his passion and obedience unto death, sharing by a mysterious fellowship not only the virtue but the endurance of the divine penalty. And what was true for him is true for all who have come into that condition expressed by the words, "IN CHRIST JESUS."

That the crucifixion took place centuries ago does not separate us from it at all. While, as a historical event, we assign it to a specific time and place, as a moral event it belongs to all time, and is just as near to us as it was to John or the Marys. "GOD MANIFESTED IN THE FLESH," says Coleridge "IS ETERNITY IN THE FORM OF TIME." Christ crucified is an eternal fact realized at a certain date, but touching all time with equal closeness. He is "THE LAMB SLAIN FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD." In the eye of the I am, to Whom all time is an ever-present now, this central fact of the ages, the crucifixion, is an ever-present reality, and all souls that stand in moral relationship to it, stand so, and have stood so, forever.

Hence, it can matter little to have "known Christ after the flesh." Spiritual union is entirely independent of all conditions of time and space.

And in depth of intimacy there can be no difference between the believer of today and those who knew our Lord on earth, since "BY ONE SPIRIT ARE WE ALL BAPTIZED INTO ONE BODY." (1 Cor. 12:13), and therefore into one death., since so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death" (Rom. 6:3), sharing His death.

How deeply through the kindred ship of the flesh, one could share Christ’s crucifixion. We know that the mother, watching beneath the cross the agonies of her suffering Son, endured in her own heart all the sharpness of His death; that as the soldiers thrust the spear into his side, she knew in her own experience the bitter meaning of the aged Simeon’s prophecy, "YEA, A SWORD SHALL PIERCE THROUGH THY OWN SOUL ALSO." We can easily believe. But since we have learned how near akin Christ now is to all His brethren by the Spirit, shall there seem to be anything less real in the words of one who, by faith, clasped to his heart the same cross of redemption, saying, "I AM CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST"?

The mystery of that fellowship by which we become sharers in Christ’s death, we may not presume to fathom. And yet it seems clear how it must grow out of the terms of the incarnation, Christ, in becoming man, took our humanity into partnership in His sacrificial work.

So Christ’s death is not something merely made over to mankind as a legacy of love; it is something accruing to it in this partnership of being. But as surely as He must be one with us by incarnation in order to give us part in His dying so surely must we be one with Him by faith, that we may take part in His dying.

There are an inner circle and an outer circle of redemption, if we may say so, both having a common center in the cross. The larger describes the limits of a possible and provisional salvation; the smaller, those of an actual and realized salvation. The whole world is comprehended in the one; only those who believe are included in the other: "GOD WHO IS THE SAVIOR OF ALL MEN, ESPECIALLY OF THOSE THAT BELIEVE" (Timothy 4:10).

To some church members, religion is a rite or a ritual or a legalistic and lifeless form, a liturgical system marked by meaningless and wearisome verbiage. There is a lot of religious garbage in our so-called conservative and evangelical churches also. There is a ceaseless quoting of tired adjectives and a jumble of pious platitudes. We so often hear people say, "WE WANT TO SHARE OUR FAITH." My friend, most people don’t have enough faith to share. It’s not your faith that you are sharing when you talk about how wonderful you are or what wonderful things God did for you. You are to witness to Jesus Christ, who He is and what He did for you on the cross.

In talking about salvation, people say, "COMMIT YOUR LIFE TO HIM." If you ask them what they mean, they say, "YIELD YOUR LIFE TO HIM." Do you really think He wants your life? He says that our righteousness and even our so-called good deeds are filthy rags in His sight (see ISAIAH 64-6). God doesn’t want your dirty laundry, my friend.

I am afraid that we have gotten into the habit of using words that take away the real meaning of the gospel. There is one word that is surely being worn out and whose tread is really becoming thin. LOVE is a high word of Scripture, but it has been worn out on the freeway of present-day usage. It has been emasculated of its rich, vital, virile, and vigorous Bible meaning. It’s been degraded to the level of a bumper sticker that says, "HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS!" If you love Jesus, you don’t honk your horn to show it. If you love Jesus, you’re going to live a life of obedience to Him.

My point is that today there is a great deal of "churchianity" that is bland and bloodless, tasteless and colorless. It is devoid of warmth and feeling. There is no personal relationship with Christ that is meaningful and productive. One liberal pastor wrote that it made him sick to hear people talk of a personal relationship with Christ. I would surely make him sick if he would listen to me because the thing you have to have, my friend, is a personal relationship with Christ. Your ritual and your liturgy are not worth the snap of your fingers unless you have a life that is related to Jesus Christ. (Excerpt from Edited Messages on Zechariah by J. Vernon McGee)