John 1:19-34 | What's the lesson for me today?

There are some doctrines throughout Scripture that seem so elementary that we find ourselves moving beyond it rather than diving deeper into it. But some of these elementary doctrines have been lost on us and I find that we do not believe what Scripture says. We can get so caught up on how we have been treated in life that we start to view that in the Lord. We have been damaged by people failing to love us, so God must not love us. We thought we were forgiven but then it comes back in conversations a week later, so the Lord must still be holding on to things. My dad was an angry father so fathers must be angry. That means my Father in heaven must be angry at me too. None of us would ever say this out loud, but our belief systems are largely influenced by our experiences. That is where I find this particular passage so incredible and important.

From the beginning of John, we have that example of who Jesus is. The distinction is already clear here. Jesus is God who is holy. This is one of the most important lessons to begin with when we start to understand how God operates. He is first holy. That means, from the onset, that He is entirely distinct and different from any other being. There is nothing and no one in all of created order that is like God. Understanding this immediately takes Him off the scale by which we judge everyone else and our experiences with everyone else.

Let me share it this way. If I get burned because I was moving a log in a fire, I am not suddenly going to be afraid that shaking someone's hand is going to burn me like that fire did. Why? Because they are not at all the same thing. We lose so much significance in the Lord when we start trying to judge Him by human standards. It means little to me if a friend tells me that all of my sins are forgiven. They do not have the ability to do that. But when the Lord tells me my sins are forgiven? That makes a difference.

We have the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. As one who has received Him, believed on Him, and has been given the right to become a child of God, my sins are removed from me. This is a critical lesson for me to take. I find the accuser often enjoys getting believers to get stuck on the fact that they have sinned and makes them worry about that. But the Lamb of God has taken my sin away from me. It no longer touches me. This is something to rejoice in!

What lesson are you taking form this passage?