Biblion Bible Commentary
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Behold, the Lamb of God
John 1:29-34
29 The next day, he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! · WEB
The forerunner points and gives him a title nobody had used — one that ends in a sacrifice.
The next day, he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" John 1:29.
This Gospel does not narrate the baptism. It gives the witness's testimony about it instead, which is consistent with a book whose first chapter is about who saw what.
The title is startling and it is new. No one in the Scriptures had called an expected deliverer a lamb. What the word carried was the sacrificial system — the lamb of the Passover whose blood on the doorposts turned death aside Exodus 12:13, the lamb offered every morning and evening in the temple, and the servant of Isaiah led like a lamb to the slaughter Isaiah 53:7.
The first thing said about him in the body of this Gospel is that he is going to die, and that his death will do something.
Who takes away the sin of the world. Three things in one clause. The verb means to lift and carry off, so it is removal rather than pardon at a distance. The noun is singular — sin, the condition, not the list of offenses. And the world is the word this Gospel uses for the whole human order in its opposition to God, which makes the scope of the sentence as wide as the problem.
"This is he of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who is preferred before me, for he was before me'" John 1:30. The paradox is chronological and deliberate. He comes after, he ranks before, and the reason given is priority in time — he was, which is the prologue's verb from verse one. John is roughly six months the elder, so the claim cannot be about birthdays.
"I didn't know him" John 1:31, and again "I didn't recognize him" John 1:33.
Twice, and it is worth pausing on. They were relatives Luke 1:36 and must have known of each other. What he is denying is knowledge of his identity — the man himself was not the evidence, and family connection gave him nothing. Everything he says rests on something he was shown.
"I have seen the Spirit descending like a dove out of heaven, and it remained on him" John 1:32.
The word to hold is remained. This Gospel will use that verb more than fifty times — abide, stay, dwell — and this is its first appearance. The Spirit came on the judges and the prophets and departed again; here it settles and stays, which is the sign he had been told to watch for.
"He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, 'On whomever you will see the Spirit descending and remaining on him is he who baptizes in the Holy Spirit'" John 1:33. So the whole ministry at the river existed for one purpose: to be standing in the right place on the day the sign was given.
"I have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God" John 1:34. Seen, and then testified, in that order — which is the pattern this book will ask of every witness in it, including the one writing.
settled What this mark means