Question: Paul teaches that Jesus died for our sins. But the sin offering in the Old Testament wasn’t a lamb, it was a goat. And it wasn’t killed for people’s sins, it was slaughtered to cleanse the impurity of the sanctuary. There was a second goat that carried the people’s sins, but it was not killed. It was abandoned in the wilderness.

So where does Paul get this connection? It appears John, who wrote after Paul, has a better understanding when he equates Jesus with the Passover lamb. I can see John’s connection but not Paul’s.

Rich

Answer: Dear Rich,

The sin offerings of the Old Testament and covenant include both lamb and goat (among other animals). See Leviticus 1 and 3. The lamb was a far more common symbol and oft used animal in the old covenant than the goat. You may have reference to one specific holy day of the Jews – Atonement, today called Yom Kippur – reference here is Leviticus 16.

The connection to Jesus as the lamb of God is not simply John’s in his Gospel and the book of Revelation (many references). But Isaiah 53 also has such a reference, and Isaiah of course, wrote before both Paul and John. We can safely assume (and know from their quotations and allusions to Isaiah) that both Paul and John would have been intimately familiar with Isaiah. The passage in Isaiah 53 is but one of many Messianic references in Isaiah to the suffering servant – a study in and of itself – with much teaching about the nature and work of our Lord and Savior.

The Lord’s Supper is not focused on the emblems of the paschal lamb, for those emblems were changed by Jesus, who forever, once and for all (Hebrews 9:26) did away with sin "by the sacrifice of himself." Jesus was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, God in the flesh who humbled himself and went to the cross without complaint, so that his work on the cross might do for us what we could never do for ourselves. He conquered sin at that time – and made the offerings of no relevance.

The New Testament and Christ’s teachings themselves, use a number of symbols and word pictures to convey the reality and significance of the saving work of Christ – including placing Christ at the other end of the picture – as the Shepherd, the door (gate) of the sheep and the Chief Shepherd of our souls (1 Peter).

It took some time for the early church to realize what a watershed event the cross represented – that the old covenant, all of it – was no longer necessary or relevant to the new life in Christ. Paul tells us about this in Galatians and Romans – as do John and Peter later. Perhaps the full impact of who and what Jesus was and is will never be fully realized by humans on this side of eternity – but we can know for a certainty that he fulfilled all of the sin offerings, goat, lamb and bull – and the book of Hebrews is a great place for such a study.

Hope this helps, Rich,

In Christ,

Greg Albrecht