In my last post I wrote about how the ego is perhaps the real “enemy,” the “devil,” “Satan,” the “scapegoat.” But there is always a flip side. The true “Christic” Self within each person is pure, sinless, stainless, blameless, without defilement, a perfect “Lamb.” And Jesus became a symbol of this symbol. Or perhaps, more precisely, Christ was that symbol.

I was listening to this beautiful song this morning, Agnus Dei.

Alleluia, alleluia
For our Lord God Almighty reigns
Alleluia, alleluia
For our Lord God Almighty reigns

Alleluia
Holy, holy
Are you Lord God Almighty
Worthy is the Lamb
Worthy is the Lamb

You are holy
Holy are You Lord God Almighty
Worthy is the Lamb
Worthy is the Lamb

Amen

The Latin term “agnus dei” comes from John the Baptist’s reference in John 1:29 (& 36) to Jesus as the “Lamb of God.” This title clearly has reference to the sacrificial lambs that were being slaughtered at the temple in Jerusalem as part of the temple liturgy and priestly ritual. Why was Jesus such a lamb?

Obviously Jesus wasn’t literally a lamb. The lamb was a symbol of pure innocence, blamelessness, sinlessness, purity, which vicariously took upon it the sins of the Jewish people and was then killed to atone for those sins, to expiate them, to appease God, to reconcile the people back to God, to extinguish the guilt caused by their “sins,” to remove those sins and that guilt from them. The lamb became the scapegoat. It died, and by so dying relieved the people of their sins. It made them pure again.

Jesus was likewise a symbol of pure innocence, a perfect incarnation of God, but which also manifested sins, defilements, errors, imperfections of the finite limited human ego-personality and body-mind. That ego had to “die” in order for the guilt to be expunged and for the purity of the true Christic Self to be unveiled. The ego or “natural man” was the scapegoat, that which veiled the purity underneath, the one that was sacrificed. Jesus had so sacrificed his own ego, or surrendered it to be sacrificed, and so he was one who could show people how to do the same in themselves, how to surrender ego, allow it to be sacrificed, and so transcend their egos and be redeemed from the guilt that it carried, piercing that veil, and thus realize at-One-ment in God again.

Here is how I translate those verses from John.

29 On the next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Listen up everyone! Pay attention and observe very closely! Jesus is the embodiment of the Pure and Innocent Being of God, even the One, who can teach us how our realization of the One removes all our guilt and the defilements of humanity’s ego.”

36 And when he saw Jesus walk by, he said again, “Pay attention to him! Jesus is truly one who has realized the Pure and Innocent Being in the Oneness of God!”

-John 1, 29, 36, BHT

The painting at the top of the article is the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, which is a part of the Ghent Altarpiece, by Jan van Eyck, oil on oak panel, finished in 1432, currently in St Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium. It is considered “a masterpiece of European art and one of the world’s treasures.”