Use 1. To press you to behold the Lamb of God ; behold him as a sacrifice for sin, whose blood applied doth quiet the conscience and turn away the curse. These words present the more glorious spectacle and object, not to your sight, but to your faith ; not to your senses, but to your most serious and intimate consideration. The object is Christ crucified, the only true propitiatory sacrifice for sin, the chief point of christian knowledge, and the most powerful means of the creature's good. Oh, behold him ! look not at bread and wine in the Lord's supper, but at the Lamb of God.
Use 2. To press you to take and eat Christ, and receive him out of God's hands by faith. He is the Lamb of God. God designed him for this work, when man had no way to help himself : 1 Peter i. 20, ' Who verily was fore-ordained before the foundation of the world.' God tendereth him to you ; now take and eat. God, the party offended, hath authorised Christ to be a mediator ; say, then, Lord, thou hast appointed thy Son, and sent him into the world to be a ransom for our souls : he is now offered to me ; Lord, I come to eat his flesh and drink his blood. "We must eat him so as to feel the virtue of both, changing our hearts, and comforting our consciences. Changing our hearts ; other food is changed into our substance, this changeth us : 2 Cor. v. 17, ' He that is in Christ is a new creature.' Comforting our consciences : Heb. ix. 14, ' How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God ? ' Is God unwilling to give Christ ? or is Christ unable to do his work ?
486 SERMONS UPON JOHN I. 29.
SEKMON IT.
Behold the Lamb of God, wJiicJi taketJi aiuay the mi of the ivorld.
John i. 29.
DocT. 2. The great work of Christ, the Lamb of God, is to take away the sins of the world.
1. What is meant by 'the world.'
2. In what manner Christ taketh away the sins of the world.
3. That this is the great end, work, and scope of Christ's coming into the world.
1. What is meant by ' the world ' ? Why is there such a capacious and comprehensive word used, since it is clear that all the world have not benefit by Christ, for many of them die in their sins ?
Ans. 1. To show the difference between the Lamb of God and the sacrifices of the law. The old sacrifices were only offered for tlie people of Israel, but Christ's death hath a larger extent, to people of all places, Jews and gentiles : 1 John ii. 2, ' And he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.* And in all ages, from the beginning of the world to the end : Kev. xiii. 8, 'He is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.' The Lamb of God is of an universal and perpetual use.
2. To show the sufficiency of this mediatorial sacrifice, it is of such a full and overflowing merit that it becometh a foundation for a tender of grace to every creature. Here is a groundwork and foundation laid for the truth of this proposition : Mark xvi, 16, that ' whosoever believeth shall be saved.' So that here is a great invitation and encouragement for every oppressed soul; if Christ taketh away the sins of the world, put in for a share ; thou art a member of the world. Paul creepeth in at the back-door of the promise: 1 Tim. i. 15, 'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.' Christ would not have sinners exclude themselves, but attend upon him for this benefit. Therefore he would have his grace set forth in the most comprehensive terms, that all that find themselves sinners may stir up themselves to find benefit by him.
3. Those elect ones, who have actual benefit by this sacrifice, may be called ' the world ; ' partly because of their number ; take them altogether, and they are many, and therefore called ' world ; ' Rev. vii. 9, ' I beheld a great multitude, which no man could- number,' &c. ; and partly in regard of God's estimation ; though they are few, they are as good as all the world to him ; and partly because they will one day be set apart from the rest of mankind and make a peculiar world of themselves.
II. In what manner doth Christ take away the sins of the world ? I shall give my answer in these propositions —
1. The whole world in its natural estate lieth under sin and wrath. The scripture in one place telleth us, 1 John v. 19, ' The whole world lieth in wickedness ; ' and in another, that ' all the world is become guilty before God,' Rom. iii. 19. Both together speak this much, that the sin and misery of the world was such that it groaned for a saviour,