NOTES for Joh 1:29-34
This is what the gift of prophecy consists in first of all: not predicting the future, but seeing through to the meaning of what is already happening. Jesus will later call John the Baptist the greatest of all prophets, and now we read how this greatest prophet sees, in the carpenter from Nazareth who had been unknown until that day, the central purpose for which the Son of God became incarnate on earth. John uses the language and concepts of the Old Testament, thereby bearing witness once again that the New Testament is the continuation and fulfillment of what was promised in the Old Testament, and that both Testaments show us one and the same Revelation unfolding in time, in history.
"The Lamb of God." Of God means belonging to God, not to the world, "kadosh" (holy), intended to be given to God. A lamb is not simply an animal from the flock, but the traditional sacrifice to God, beginning with the sacrifices of Abel (Gen. 4) and Abraham (Gen. 22). The sacrifice of an innocent and spotless lamb was offered for the sake of restoring peace with God, peace broken by human sin. But, of course, no lamb can redeem human guilt by its death. Only a human being, the Son of Man, is able to become the Redeemer; yet because God does not desire the death of any of the people He has created, only the Son of God, eternally begotten yet become man, pure, innocent, and blameless, yet taking upon Himself the payment for the sin of the world, reconciles us to God by His death on the cross.
John, filled with the Holy Spirit, reveals to people this truth beyond human imagining, and we see how some of those who hear him accept this testimony and become disciples of Christ, apostles. If we too accept this testimony, then all our life from then on will be a following after the Teacher and Savior, through death into resurrection and eternal life.