This text deals with the witness of John on the
second day. On this day, he testifies to Jesus who is the light. Though Jesus
appears on the scene on the second day, the focus on this day is on the
testimony of John. In his testimony, he uses four titles to describe who Jesus
is. These are: Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the pre-existent
one, the vehicle of the Spirit and Son of God.
Lamb of God is a symbol used to refer to both the
suffering servant of God and the Passover lamb, the lamb that is led to the
slaughter. By using the singular “sin” John refers to Jesus as the one who will
take away the collective sin of the whole world.
The pre-existent one is already mentioned in the
prologue as the Word who was with God in the beginning.
Jesus is the vehicle of the Spirit, because he had
seen the Spirit descend on Jesus and has been told by God how this event must
be interpreted.
Finally, Jesus is the Son of God because he shares a unique
relationship with God and reveals him as no one has even done before. Since he
is Son, he is competent to reveal God as father.
The reason why John uses so many titles for Jesus is
because Jesus is a mystery that cannot be captured in this or that title. He
means different things to different people. Each comes to him with their
expectations and each encounters him uniquely. However, even after all titles
are used for Jesus, we must remember that he is one of the titles, he is all of
the titles and he remains above all titles. We require openness and receptivity
because God keeps revealing himself in ways we can never imagine. Any kind of
limitation that we may impose on this revelation, any restriction that we set
on it may result in precluding the freshness with which Jesus always comes to
us. To insist only on one or other name for Jesus is to mist the fullness of
his grace, peace and love, indeed it is to miss the fullness of life.
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