NT Text: John 1:29
OT Source(s):
Source: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Typology
Anchor Text: Lev 16 — The Day of Atonement
Significance: The verb in John 1:29 — the Lamb "who takes away the sin of the world" — resonates with the Day of Atonement scapegoat, over whose head Aaron "confessed all the iniquities and rebellious acts of the Israelites... and sent it away into the wilderness," so that "the goat will carry on itself all their iniquities into a solitary place" (Lev 16:21-22). Here the Levitical ritual supplies the imagery of sin actually removed and borne away, not merely covered. The connection is typological: the live goat is a historical, divinely-instituted type whose function — bearing the people's guilt out of the camp into a land cut off — finds its escalated antitype in Christ, who "suffered outside the gate" bearing the sin of the world, not of one nation for one year (cf. Heb 13:11-12). The Day of Atonement required two goats — one slain for blood-propitiation, one driven out for removal — and Christ fulfills both: He is the Lamb whose blood propitiates and the Scapegoat who carries sin away forever. The telos is liberty of conscience: because the true Sin-Bearer has carried our guilt into a solitary place from which it never returns, the believer beholds in Him an irreversible cleansing that frees the heart to delight in God.