Lambs of the Lamb

 

 

“All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; like a lamb led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth” (Isaiah 53:6 – 7).

 

“For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered. But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:36 – 37).

 

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

 

Are we lambs of the Lamb?

 

More precisely, are we sacrificial lambs of the Sacrificial Lamb?

 

Is it enough to read Isaiah 53 and say, “Here is evidence that Jesus is Messiah?” Is it enough to read Isaiah 53 and preach it as an evidentiary text?

 

Are we not called to believe into the Christ of the passage and surrender ourselves to Him, allowing Him to enter into us, living in us and through us to others?

 

If this is so, then what is this to look like? How is Christ Jesus to be manifested?

 

Are we not to lay down our lives for others, just as Jesus Christ laid down His life for us?

 

“This is my commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12 – 13).

 

“We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16).

 

And here is the thing dear friends, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us! Jesus teaches us that we are to love our enemies, blessing those who are opposed to us (Matthew 5:43 – 48), so that we may be the sons and daughters of the Living God. As the sacrificial life and death of Jesus Christ redeemed us, reconciling us to God when we were enemies of God (Rom. 5:10), so we are called to lay down our lives so that others may be reconciled. After all, we are the organic Body of Christ, are we not?

 

Note the emphasis on “He did not open His mouth,” in Isaiah 53:6 – 7. Consider that “Our griefs He bore and our sorrows He carried” (53:4), ponder “the anguish of His soul” (53:11), “He poured out His soul to death” (53:12), and “He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors” (53:12).

 

And then let us ask ourselves, “Is this a description of my life? Is this a portrayal of my local congregation? Is this how the professing church in America looks today?”

 

Dear, dear friends, what matters to the world…and I think to our Lord Jesus Christ, is not so much the evidence we have in linking the events of Isaiah 53 to those of Good Friday and Easter, but rather the evidence the world sees in our lives as we embody the sacrificial Lamb of Isaiah 53 – for this is indeed our calling. To have the former without the latter is to have a body without a soul.

 

In Romans 8:36 Paul brings his readers to the glorious fruit of the Gospel in our lives, the result of justification and sanctification, the glory of all that he has taught leading up to his quotation of Psalm 44:22, and that glory is that we follow the Lamb wherever He goes…and He goes to the Cross. The glory we lost in Romans 3:23 is eclipsed (if we can use such a term) in 8:28 – 39, for we enter into the koinonia of His sufferings (Phil. 3:10).

 

“To the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation” (1 Peter 4:13).

 

“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Colossians 1:24).

"Death works in us, but life in you" (2 Cor. 4:12).

 

Is Isaiah 53 a portrait of our lives?

O Jesus, please make it so.