«Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.»
The fourth Gospel was written much later and puts on the lips of John the Baptist the Christology developed in the Johannine communities over that time. In today’s text, John presents Jesus as the Lamb of God; as the beloved Son encouraged by his Spirit, but later theology twists the image of the lamb –sacrificial victim to God– to elaborate a horrific doctrine of redemption that has prevailed for a long time (and that still persists).
Jesus, the Good One, bears our sins to offer himself as a vicarious victim to the Father, the Just One, who in this way sees the offense we have inflicted on him resolved and can reconcile himself with the human race. But this interpretation even contradicts the very Gospel of John, which later tells us that in Jesus we have seen the Father: *“Whoever has seen me…*”. If Jesus is merciful, it is because the Father is, and that if he is able to commit himself to the end with the Kingdom, it is because God is also committed to the end with the human race… In Jesus we have seen that God is our ally against evil, and that he, Jesus, is his instrument to deliver us from sin: he is *“the one who takes away the sin of the world.”*
But this expression raises several important questions for us. The first, what is the essence of sin?… Today we tend to reject the notion of guilt and believe that sin, evil, is basically error and weakness. We crave what we do not deserve: we are fascinated by what harms us… But the fact of not considering sin as an offense to God does not diminish its entity, because it remains our worst scourge, because it enslaves us, undermines coexistence, and destroys our life.
The second question is, what is the origin of evil; of sin? Because if evil does not proceed from God, the creator of all things, where does it proceed?… Arguments like Epicurus’s linking the existence of evil to the non-existence of God are very convincing, but lacking in rigor, because, as J. Antonio Estrada says, all they demonstrate is that the problem of evil is inaccessible to our reason. And nothing more.
The third question is perhaps the most important for us: How can Jesus remove the sin of the world? How can he free us from sin?…
Firstly, by apologizing. Throughout the gospel, Jesus does not treat the “sinners” as guilty, but as those in need of God and loved by Him. Jesus does not consider us evil for being subject to the law of sin, but its victims, because sin, more than being committed, is suffered. Secondly, Jesus frees us from sin by lighting his light so that we do not stumble in the traps of life. Human beings are prone to making mistakes; to stumbling, and Jesus lends us his light to show us the way.
Finally, Jesus proposes to us a way of life comparable to a treasure, and tells us that whoever finds it sells everything to buy it; that everything else loses value for him… including the attraction that sin exerts on us.
Miguel Ángel Munárriz Casajús
To read an article by José E. Galarreta on a similar topic, click here
English version translated with AI