Sacrificing the Perfect Lamb

We discard broken and flawed things, and seek to retain that which is perfect and valuable to us. We burn the cheap wood, but make fine furniture from mahogany.

Man is sinful and broken, and has fallen short of the glory and perfection of God. God's requirement for perfection is first shown in His commandment that only perfect lambs be slain as sacrifices for sin.

The first such commandment was given at Passover, when the blood of a perfect slain lamb would guard against God's wrath during that dreadful night of judgment against Egypt.

This sacrifice pointed to our Lord Jesus, who was a lamb without spot or blemish. He was perfect, holy and undefiled, and thus He was an acceptable Lamb to be offered up for broken sinners.

Here is a strange thing, that God would require that the perfect be destroyed so that the defective might be redeemed! It goes completely against the normal desires of man. Instead of destroying the sinner, God redeemed him by the sacrifice of a perfect substitute.

Man's objection to that inversion of valuation is best seen in Malachi, where it transpired that the Jewish people were sacrificing blemished lambs to God, and keeping the perfect back for themselves. How foolish, they must have thought, to destroy the perfect ones as sacrifices, when the lame and defective would do just fine!

It is not surprising that when the perfect Lamb of God came forth, wicked men saw no beauty or perfection in Him! Rather, He was despised and rejected of men! They thought that He must be a sinner, because God's judgment fell upon Him.

But God used their evil to enduce them to offer up, against their own purposes, the perfect spotless Lamb of God!