Do you know that there is not one place, anywhere, in the entire Tanakh where the Messiah is referred to as either “The Lamb of God” or “The Passover Lamb”?
Do you know that the Passover lamb is not a sin sacrifice?
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Do you know that according to the Torah, a goat is required as sin sacrifice?
We are told that Yeshua is the “Lamb of God” and that his sacrifice is what takes away our sin, but those statements are contradictory! Only a goat was acceptable as a sin sacrifice, and Yeshua’s sacrifice was a sin sacrifice, so how can he be a lamb?
And to make it even more confusing, I don’t think you will find the Messiah referred to as a goat, anywhere in the Bible, so… is Yeshua a lamb or a goat?
The answer is: he is both.
The Torah, in Leviticus 1-7, stipulates there are 5 different forms of sacrifices: burnt, grain, peace, sin, and trespass (different Bible versions may have different names).
According to Leviticus 4, where the sin sacrifice rules are given, sins of the high priest require the offering of a young, unblemished bull; sins of the leaders require the offering of an unblemished male goat, and the sins of members of the Israelite community required a female goat as an offering.
Now, there is an exception, where an individual can bring a lamb as their sacrifice for sin, but that is only in the case of an individual- sins of the leaders and sins of the community must be a bull or a goat.
Yeshua’s sacrifice was not for himself, but for all people, so according to God’s rules, he could not be the “Lamb of God”.
The answer to this conundrum is that his sacrifice was not just for sin, but actually is both the sin sacrifice and the Thanksgiving sacrifice.
The way the sacrificial system worked is that you start with a sin sacrifice, which cleanses you of the stain of sin and makes it possible for you to come into God’s presence, then you offer a wholly burnt sacrifice, which represents your commitment to wholly following God, and finally you offer the Thanksgiving sacrifice which reestablishes your communion with God, and in his presence you eat part of that sacrifice (which is how we know that the Passover sacrifice is a Thanksgiving sacrifice- it is the only one where the one bringing the animal gets to share of the meat of that animal).
When Yeshua died, he was the goat (sin sacrifice) and the lamb (thanksgiving sacrifice) because it allowed us to receive forgiveness of sin, and once forgiven we could come into communion with God.
We won’t see the complete fulfillment of this dual sacrifice until the End Days arrive.
In the meantime, Yeshua never referred to himself as God’s lamb, did he? And no messianic prophecy in the Tanakh referred to the Messiah as a lamb.
TIME OUT: If you are thinking of Isaiah 53, where he prophesied that the Messiah would be led like a lamb to slaughter, that is not saying the Messiah is the “Lamb of God”. It is a merely a reference to how he remained silent: it was John who misused it to identify Yeshua as the “Lamb of God”.
In fact, my research shows that the only person in the entire Bible to refer to Yeshua as the “Lamb of God” is the Apostle John.
Now, as far as I am concerned, if all the prophets and all the other Apostles, and every other reference to God’s Messiah never call him the “Lamb of God”, but just this one guy does, well…then that’s just his thing, and certainly not hermeneutically, historically, reasonably, or in any other way validated by the Bible.
If Yeshua’s sacrifice was ONLY for sin, he would then have to be called “The Yom Kippur Goat”, or maybe the “Goat of God”, but not the Passover Lamb. However, because his sacrifice takes away our sins, we are able to come into the presence of the Lord and commune with him, which was done through the Thanksgiving sacrifice- the same one that we do on Passover- so Yeshua certainly is similar to a lamb.
The blood of the Passover sacrifice saved us from death by marking us as God’s people, and the blood of the sin sacrifice saves us from death by taking away our sin. The sacrificial system had our sin taken away (goat sacrifice) so that we could then come back into communion with God (thanksgiving sacrifice).
What Yeshua did was to accomplish both of these sacrifices at the same time, but in the opposite order.
Why this way? I don’t know! But I can say this- I am grateful for what he did, no matter in which order he decided to do it.
He may be referred to as the Lamb of God, but if you ask me, he is the G.O.A.T.
(If you’re not familiar with that acronym, it means Greatest Of All Time).
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That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Chag Pesach Sameach!
