The Baptist recognized Jesus from amongst the people around him by the divinely given sign (l: 32). Instead of an account of Jesus' Baptism, such as we find in the synoptic gospels, the Baptist's testimony of what he saw, is given, 1: 32-33. 'I have seen it,' said John, 'and I tell you that he is the Son of God.' (1:34) The Baptist proclaims that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (i.e. by his sacrificial death), 1:29. In the Jewish sacrificial system it was not a lamb which was sacrificed as a sin-offering but a bull, so John's saying is best understood as linking together two important ideas. The suffering Servant of God, described in Isaiah 52-53, was to go to his death like a lamb about to be slaughtered (Isaiah 53: 7); the Servant accepted death so that others might be saved. Paul refers to Christ as the Christian Passover lamb, in 1 Corinthians 5:7. Christ's sacrificial death did what the whole Jewish system of sacrifices could not do, in bringing reconciliation between man and God. The Baptist witnessed that the one on whom the Holy Spirit rested was the same one whose coming he had prophesied (l: 15). John gave the answer to the question asked earlier in 1:26. When John was baptizing, he was waiting for the revelation of God which would identify God's Son from amongst the crowd around him, 1:31.

·