Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Agnus Dei


“The next day John [the Baptist] saw Jesus coming toward him and said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’

~John 1:29 (NIV, 2010).

The Lamb of God is fundamental to the Christian redemptive condition and tradition. Jesus, the Lamb of God, is the everlasting atoning sacrifice for the sin of the world, whether a person believes in Jesus or not. It, the event and the promise before it, is a theological fact.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Scene emblazoned on the cross,

Upon which the Saviour died,

Bled did he to purge our dross,

Sanctified making for us to abide.

Sinless and demure became him filth,

Embroiled in the stain of grief,

Knew back to the start but trod like stealth,

All so we could turn a new leaf.

Speckled and bedraggled looks were his,

The Prince of Glory forlorn in death,

Satan may’ve looked on in bliss,

Praise God for the fact of Spiritual breath.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Agnus Dei, a.k.a. the Lamb of God, is symbolic of the resurrection fact that we can and do live today, those called by the holy strength of a Saviour who bought us and won us by his blood and broken body on a sinless cross.

This Lamb of God reveals what C.S. Lewis called the “deeper magic,” which is the theological miracle that overthrew the ‘wisdom’ of Satan. That is, the wisdom of God was, and needed to be, tantamount to foolishness from the eyes of a most shrewd devil. But such a wisdom was the nexus of a trick outwitting the outwitter.

Such is it we have a cosmically poised paradox on the most eternal of stages.

All glory goes to this Lamb of God for saving us when all seemed abjectly hopeless—to us—from the theological frame. To us only it seemed a victory against all odds. God always knew differently.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah for this ‘foolish’ unparalleled wisdom of God’s.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

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