Lamb Of God
Painted in Beit Sahour, Judean hills, Israel, April 2011
“Who is He who's the mightiest of all?
Who is He, creation trembles at His call?
Who is He, the lowly sacrifice,
Who paid a victim's price
His name is Jesus
“Jesus, from the Father's own right hand
Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man
Jesus, who died and rose again
Jesus, He's the Lion and the Lamb.” Crystal Lewis
Who is He, creation trembles at His call?
Who is He, the lowly sacrifice,
Who paid a victim's price
His name is Jesus
“Jesus, from the Father's own right hand
Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man
Jesus, who died and rose again
Jesus, He's the Lion and the Lamb.” Crystal Lewis
In the last weeks of 2010, I finished the painting, Lion of Judah. Months passed, bringing me to the season of Passover in Israel, and the whole culture I am so much a part of there called me to contemplate the Lamb of God.
Passover is understandably a big deal in Jerusalem and is truly a cornerstone festival for Christians and Jewish people alike, one to be commemorated as a lasting ordinance unto the Lord for all generations. As the season unfolded around me, I was praying about what reflecting on the Lamb of God might produce artistically. The ensuing reflections led to a most profound and moving experience in worship; I pray the following invites a similar enlargement to your considerations of Jesus as the Lamb of God.
To start my creative process, I began with a study of the references in scripture that used this phrase: the Lamb of God. Surprisingly, I found that this title only shows up in two books, both written by John the Beloved. In those books it is a title only used by two men, both named John—the first being the Baptizer and the second being the Beloved Disciple. The context of the first use is the day when John the Baptist first publicly presents/introduces /announces the arrival of Jesus to those who had been coming to John in repentance. It is recorded that this John uses a particular word in referring to Jesus: he calls Him the Amnos of God. Amnos is a Greek word that means simply, lamb. It is an obvious reference here, and in Acts (8:32) and 1 Peter (1:18) to the sacrificial lamb, a miraculous substitute (for the life of Abraham’s son, Isaac) provided by God (see Genesis 22). That lamb pointed to the Passover lambs that would surrender their life-blood to be painted over the doorposts of those Israelites waiting that one historic night for the Angel of Death to pass over their homes and leave them in peace, opening the doorway to their liberation from slavery ( see Exodus 12). Those lambs, in a prophetic manner, would point to the final substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus, the Amnos of God, whose death paid for the sin of the whole world and opened the doorway for our liberation from spiritual imprisonment.
In the book of Revelation, we find another John referring to Jesus with a similar title. In many places in this mysterious book, John the Beloved Disciple refers to Jesus as an Arnion. This is a different Greek term than the one used by the Baptist. Arnion not only means Lamb, like Amnos means; Arnion means Little Lamb, like a newborn. Wow. The one disciple nearest to the heart of the Savior calls Him not just the lamb, but the little lamb.
Profound. All the characteristics that came to my mind when I first thought of Jesus as a lamb— quiet, innocent, loveable, etc.—these are only magnified by thinking of him as a little lamb. And to that list now, new adjectives presented themselves to me: words like wobbly legged, awkward, delicate, fragile, dangerously vulnerable.
With these findings as the foundations for my considerations, some initial thoughts came together for a painting. In the same way as I had painted a life-sized head of a lion for my painting of the Lion of Judah, I felt from the start that this painting would be a life-sized lamb; I began studying photos of lambs and actually calculated out the dimensions of a “little lamb” and sketched it out on my canvas. But I had no idea of the setting, the background for the painting. I was initially thinking this would be a happy painting, focused simply on innocence, perhaps of a little lamb in a field of green grass, skipping his little heals up in the air. But as i sketched a felt the Spirit communicate that I had it wrong—something was not right about the concept. So I put my pencil down and went out on a long walk through the Judean Hills where thousands of years ago the young shepherd, David, had roamed his grandfather, Boaz’, fields caring for little lambs. As I walked I was asking Holy Spirit for the visual context for this painting of the little lamb of God. His answer surprised me.
It came in one word: Gethsemane. And in hearing that one word, I felt immediately that Gethsemane was the one place where the little lamb-ness of Jesus was most vivid. No green grass. No sunny sky. No skipping heels. That was not what this title of Jesus is all about.
As my heart shifted into this understanding, I felt the delight of the Holy Spirit arrive. Still out in the hills under the Middle Eastern sun, my pace doubled as I spun around and returned the several miles to my easel. Once back, I found I had to scrap my earlier sketch; I felt like the Holy Spirit was saying, “Make Him smaller; this is about Him being little. He is not little enough in your sketch”.
So instead of my original idea of a large canvas mostly taken up with a life-sized little lamb, now I was redrawing the scene wherein the little lamb of God was actually going to take up only a small part of the setting--still central, but reduced in stature, as the dark night of Gethsemane itself took over the canvas and evil enfolded Him menacingly.
To represent the villains in this scene I turned to Psalm 22:16 for inspiration: “. . . wild dogs surround me, a gang of evil men crowds around me . . .”
Behold, the brave little lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.
Passover is understandably a big deal in Jerusalem and is truly a cornerstone festival for Christians and Jewish people alike, one to be commemorated as a lasting ordinance unto the Lord for all generations. As the season unfolded around me, I was praying about what reflecting on the Lamb of God might produce artistically. The ensuing reflections led to a most profound and moving experience in worship; I pray the following invites a similar enlargement to your considerations of Jesus as the Lamb of God.
To start my creative process, I began with a study of the references in scripture that used this phrase: the Lamb of God. Surprisingly, I found that this title only shows up in two books, both written by John the Beloved. In those books it is a title only used by two men, both named John—the first being the Baptizer and the second being the Beloved Disciple. The context of the first use is the day when John the Baptist first publicly presents/introduces /announces the arrival of Jesus to those who had been coming to John in repentance. It is recorded that this John uses a particular word in referring to Jesus: he calls Him the Amnos of God. Amnos is a Greek word that means simply, lamb. It is an obvious reference here, and in Acts (8:32) and 1 Peter (1:18) to the sacrificial lamb, a miraculous substitute (for the life of Abraham’s son, Isaac) provided by God (see Genesis 22). That lamb pointed to the Passover lambs that would surrender their life-blood to be painted over the doorposts of those Israelites waiting that one historic night for the Angel of Death to pass over their homes and leave them in peace, opening the doorway to their liberation from slavery ( see Exodus 12). Those lambs, in a prophetic manner, would point to the final substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus, the Amnos of God, whose death paid for the sin of the whole world and opened the doorway for our liberation from spiritual imprisonment.
In the book of Revelation, we find another John referring to Jesus with a similar title. In many places in this mysterious book, John the Beloved Disciple refers to Jesus as an Arnion. This is a different Greek term than the one used by the Baptist. Arnion not only means Lamb, like Amnos means; Arnion means Little Lamb, like a newborn. Wow. The one disciple nearest to the heart of the Savior calls Him not just the lamb, but the little lamb.
Profound. All the characteristics that came to my mind when I first thought of Jesus as a lamb— quiet, innocent, loveable, etc.—these are only magnified by thinking of him as a little lamb. And to that list now, new adjectives presented themselves to me: words like wobbly legged, awkward, delicate, fragile, dangerously vulnerable.
With these findings as the foundations for my considerations, some initial thoughts came together for a painting. In the same way as I had painted a life-sized head of a lion for my painting of the Lion of Judah, I felt from the start that this painting would be a life-sized lamb; I began studying photos of lambs and actually calculated out the dimensions of a “little lamb” and sketched it out on my canvas. But I had no idea of the setting, the background for the painting. I was initially thinking this would be a happy painting, focused simply on innocence, perhaps of a little lamb in a field of green grass, skipping his little heals up in the air. But as i sketched a felt the Spirit communicate that I had it wrong—something was not right about the concept. So I put my pencil down and went out on a long walk through the Judean Hills where thousands of years ago the young shepherd, David, had roamed his grandfather, Boaz’, fields caring for little lambs. As I walked I was asking Holy Spirit for the visual context for this painting of the little lamb of God. His answer surprised me.
It came in one word: Gethsemane. And in hearing that one word, I felt immediately that Gethsemane was the one place where the little lamb-ness of Jesus was most vivid. No green grass. No sunny sky. No skipping heels. That was not what this title of Jesus is all about.
As my heart shifted into this understanding, I felt the delight of the Holy Spirit arrive. Still out in the hills under the Middle Eastern sun, my pace doubled as I spun around and returned the several miles to my easel. Once back, I found I had to scrap my earlier sketch; I felt like the Holy Spirit was saying, “Make Him smaller; this is about Him being little. He is not little enough in your sketch”.
So instead of my original idea of a large canvas mostly taken up with a life-sized little lamb, now I was redrawing the scene wherein the little lamb of God was actually going to take up only a small part of the setting--still central, but reduced in stature, as the dark night of Gethsemane itself took over the canvas and evil enfolded Him menacingly.
To represent the villains in this scene I turned to Psalm 22:16 for inspiration: “. . . wild dogs surround me, a gang of evil men crowds around me . . .”
Behold, the brave little lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.