The Lamb of God, the Good Shepherd

By Daniel Bobinski

Throughout the New Testament, Jesus and the gospel writers used various metaphors to help us understand the nature of Jesus and His mission on Earth. Two popular metaphors refer to Jesus as the Lamb of God and the Good Shepherd. Let’s consider both of these analogies.

The Lamb of God

The Lamb of God is a phrase used to describe Jesus’ role as the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of humanity. One of the greatest symbolic precursors of Christ is found in the book of Exodus, where the Israelites were instructed to sacrifice a lamb and smear its blood on their doorposts to protect themselves from the Angel of Death. Specifically, in Exodus 12:13 we read, “The blood will be a sign for you where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.”

The blood being smeared on the doorposts happens to be symbolic all by itself. Scripture says when God saw the blood of the lamb on the door then the angel of death would pass over the house and death would not come to that home. The same concept applies to the door of our hearts. When, by faith, you and I receive the blood of Jesus on the door of our hearts, then God will pass over at the point of our physical death and not send us to the second death.

• Revelation 2:11b: “The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death.”

• Revelation 20:6a: “Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them …”

• Revelation 20:14: “Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.”

The blood shed by Jesus on the cross is the blood we are to receive – by faith – on the doorposts of our hearts.

Throughout the Old Testament, God directed that lambs be used as sacrifices to atone for the sins of a family and even the sins of the nation. Several of the key attributes necessary for a lamb to be considered worthy as a sacrificial animal were:

• A male free from defects or blemishes

• No broken bones

• Freely given in an act of obedience

Jesus’ role as the Lamb of God is first mentioned in John 1:29, where John the Baptist sees Jesus and proclaims, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Other New Testament books that refer to Jesus as a Lamb are 1 Corinthians, Hebrews, and Revelation.

And Jesus qualified as a sacrificial lamb. In 1 Peter 1:19 we’re told that Jesus was “without blemish or defect.”

He also never had any broken bones, even when on the cross. Roman soldiers would break the legs of people hanging on crosses to hasten their death by causing suffocation, as a person could no longer push himself up to catch his breath. The soldiers did not break Jesus’ legs because they saw He was already dead.

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Mission