Worthy Is The Lamb Of God

By Andrew Murray (1828 – 1917)

    “...Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing” (Rev. 5:12).  Over 24 times in the Book of Revelation, Christ is significantly referred to as the Lamb.

    When our Lord Jesus is called the Lamb of God there are two leading thoughts which are bound up with that name.  One is that He is the Lamb of God because He was slain as a sacrifice for sin.  The other is that He was lamb-like, gentle and patient.  The first emphasizes the work that He as a Lamb had to accomplish; the second emphasizes the gentleness which characterized Him as Lamb.  It is this second which makes His shed blood so precious – it is the blood of the gentle Lamb of God.

    When Jesus was on earth He said: “Come unto Me…learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart:  and ye shall find rest unto your souls” (Matt. 11:28-30).  He did not mention meekness as one of several other virtues that were to be learned from Him, but as the one that was His chief characteristic, the one they must learn if they were to find rest for their souls.

    The Lord came to deliver us from sin.  In what does sin really consist?  In self-exaltation, in pride.  This was the sin of the angels who fell.

    When God created man, Satan came to lead man into the same opposition to God.  The temptation which the serpent presented to the woman was intended to draw man away from subjection to God.  Along with the words which Satan whispered into Eve’s ear, he breathed into her soul the deadly poison of pride.

    Since man listened to Satan, self-exaltation became in his case also the root of all sin and sorrow.  His life is made up of self-love, self-will, and self-pleasing.  Self, “I,” is the idol he serves.  Self is a thousand-headed monster that, as self-seeking, self-pleasing, self-confidence, self-esteem, is the fruitful mother of all the sin and misery which is to be found in the world.

    If the Lord Jesus were to become our true Savior one thing was most necessary – He must deliver us from ourselves.  He must bring about a death to “self,” “I,” to the self-life, and lead us again to live for God so that we may “live no more to ourselves.”  “None of us liveth to himself” (Rom. 14:7).  This is the only way by which man can become truly blessed.

Only the Lamb Could Restore Meekness

    And there is further, no other means by which this way can be prepared for us save by the Lord Jesus in His own Person opening the path for us and obtaining a new life for us and imparting it to us.  Of that life, denial of self, self-humiliation should be the chief characteristic and the inner blessedness.  In this way God might again take up His rightful place and become our All-in-all in that new life.

    This is the reason why the Lord Jesus had to come into the world as the Lamb of God.  He had to bring back again to earth the meekness and lowliness of heart in which true submission to God is manifest.  It was no longer to be found on earth.  He brought it from heaven.

    In heaven He humbled Himself as Son before the Father that He might be sent as a servant into the world.  He humbled Himself to become a man.  As man, He humbled Himself to the death of the Cross.  As “the Lamb of God” He denied Himself with a heavenly meekness that surpasses all our thoughts, to become a servant of God and man, that He might please God.  This was the disposition which inspired Him and constituted the true nature of His sufferings and made Him a complete victor over sin.  It was as the “Lamb of God” that He took away the sin of the world.

The Lamb’s Meekness Bestows Virtue on the Blood

    This is what bestows such virtue upon His blood.  He inflicted a deadly wound on sin, gaining the victory in His own person.  He subjected Himself to the will of God and through His whole life, under the severest temptations, He sacrificed Himself for the glory of God with a lowliness and patience and meekness which were the delight of the Father and of all the holy angels.

    He did all this as “the Lamb of God.” He crowned all this when He shed His blood as “the Lamb of God” for the reconciliation of sin and for the cleansing of our souls.  This is why praise is offered in heaven for His blood, as the blood of “the Lamb of God.”

    This is why the Father has placed Him “in the midst of the throne” as “the Lamb that has been slain.”  This is why believers in tender astonishment and love, glorying in the “blood of the Lamb,” praise His meekness and lowliness as their greatest joy and their one desire.  As “the blood of the Lamb” it possesses virtue and power for complete redemption.

    This is a subject upon which the attention of Christians must be much more fixed than is generally the case.  We must learn that there is no way to heaven save by lowliness, by entirely dying to our pride and by living entirely in the lowliness of Jesus.

The Lamb’s Meekness Reveals the Sin from Which We Must Be Redeemed

    Pride is from hell.  It is the poison of Satan in our blood.  Pride must die or nothing of heaven can live in us.  Under the banner of this truth we must surrender ourselves to the Spirit of the meek and lowly Lamb, to “the Lamb of God,” the victor over all pride.

    We must not only recognize that this meek spirit, which in God’s sight is of great value, must be the object of our desire and effort, but we must believe that it is really possible for us to obtain a share in it.  Jesus Christ is the second Adam, who restores what the first Adam lost.  Our pride and self-seeking, everything that self does or produces, all the sorrow that arises from our self-will and self-love, is only a continuation of that first turning away from God when Adam fell under the authority of Satan.

    There can be no thought of any redemption or approach to God without an entire turning back to a life of decided dependence, humility and submission to God.  The only way for redemption from the condition of pride is by death, dying to the life of self, the surrender of the self-life to death, to make room for the new life.

    And there is nothing in the entire universe that can make that death possible for us and work out new life in us save such a heavenly lowliness as “the Lamb of God” brought from heaven, and which He made transferable to us by His death.  What He was when He died, such as He was when He arose from the dead.  As “the Lamb of God” He is the second Adam, our Head, and He lives to bestow His Spirit upon us.

The Blood of the Lamb Is Assurance of Perfect Salvation

    We would have thought that in calling our Lord, “the Lamb” this name would have been used only in respect to His humiliation in His earthly life.  In Scripture it is most used in reference to His glory in heaven.  John saw Him stand, as a Lamb that has been slain, in the midst of the throne.  The four living creatures and the four and twenty elders, and the hosts of heaven praise Him as the Lamb who purchased us unto God by His blood.

    “Salvation to our God and to the Lamb.”  It is the Lamb who executes judgment, who conquered Satan and all his power.  The Lamb is the Temple and the Lamp of the New Jerusalem.  It is from beneath the throne of God and of the Lamb that the river of the water of life flows.

    In heaven, through eternity, the Lamb is all in all.  He is the glory and joy of heaven.  Eternity will re-echo the song of His praise: “The Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing.”

    And why is all this?  “...Thou art worthy…for Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood...” (Rev. 5:9).  It is the blood of the Lamb that bestows this glory upon Him.  By His own blood He has entered into the Holy of Holies, and is seated at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.  His blood has accomplished this.  Because He humbled Himself to death, therefore God has so highly exalted Him.  As “the Lamb of God,” meek and lowly in heart, He glorified God even to the pouring out of His life.  Therefore He is esteemed to be worthy of being praised for ever by the song of the universe.  “...Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb” (7:10).  The blood has effected this.

    The blood will be effective for us also.  All on whom the precious blood has been sprinkled must come to that place where the Lamb is, and where the blood is, where all those who have been bought and cleansed by the blood will honor and praise the Lamb for ever.  All on whom the precious blood has been sprinkled will come to the place where the Lamb will lead them to the fountains of living water and will perfect the salvation which He began in them as they obtain a share in the marriage supper of the Lamb and for ever worship God where the Lamb is the Temple and the Light.

    Yes, certainly the blood of the Lamb is the only, but the certain, pledge of a perfect salvation, and that not only in eternity, but here on earth, in this life.  The more we meditate upon the glory of eternity and listen with amazement to the worship of the Lamb and contemplate the unspeakable blessedness which He bestows, the more settled will our faith become that the blood which accomplishes such incomprehensible things there is able to effect here also a heavenly and thought-surpassing power to us.

The Lamb’s Meekness Obtained through the Holy Spirit

    By the Holy Spirit the Lamb of God will bestow His meekness and will work it out in the heart of everyone who surrenders his life entirely to the power of the blood.  The shedding of the blood was followed by the shedding forth of the Spirit.  The Spirit and the blood bear witness together.  Where the blood reaches, there also the Spirit is.

    John saw the Lamb in the midst of the throne, standing as if slain, having “seven eyes which are the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth” (Rev. 5:6).  The Spirit works as the Spirit of the Lamb.  He works with a hidden but divine power, breathing into the heart of His own people that which is the divine glory of the Lamb – His meekness.

    Do you desire to understand how these effects of the Blood and the Spirit may be experienced?  Do you complain that you know but little about them?  Do you fear that in you perhaps it may never be possible?  You may learn how it is possible if you are a believer that the Spirit is in you as a seed of God.  That seed appears small and dead.  Its life power is hidden and not yet active.  Begin to esteem that seed of the divine nature.  Keep calm that you may quietly believe that the Spirit is in you.  Believe that the gentleness of the Lamb is also in you as a seed, a hidden power of the Spirit.  Begin in that faith to pray to God to strengthen you by His Spirit in the inner man.

    Take any hour of the day – say nine o’clock – when you will (even if it is but for one moment) send up a prayer for the bestowment upon you of your inheritance, the meekness and gentleness of the Lamb.  Cultivate the disposition of welcoming everything that calls for, or helps you to humility.  You may rely upon it that the hitherto hidden seed, the Spirit of Jesus, will open out and spring up in you, and it will become your experience that the blood of the Lamb has brought you into contact with a lowliness which is powerful and blessed beyond all thought.

    – Arranged from The Blood Of The Cross by Andrew Murray.