What does Agnus Dei mean?
Agnus Dei is Latin for "Lamb of God" — the title John the Baptist gave to Jesus when he saw Him coming and told the crowd to look at Him. The phrase survives today mostly as a line in church music and liturgy, but its meaning is fixed by Scripture: it names who provided the sacrifice, what the sacrifice was for, and how far its effect reaches.
A title used only twice in the Gospels
The words are rare. Outside the opening chapter of John's Gospel, no one in the four Gospels calls Jesus by this name.
F. A. HughesJohn the Baptist looked at Jesus as He walked, and said, "Behold the Lamb of God" (John 1:36). This, and verse 29 of the same chapter, are the only references to the Lamb of God in the Gospels, but His every step — in Galilee, in Judea, in the Garden, at the Judgment Hall, and supremely on the road to the cross as the precious holy Lamb of God moved toward it — would express the hidden depth of this unique expression: the Lamb of God.
God's Lamb, not man's
The genitive matters. The Lamb belongs to God — He is the One who supplied it, and He is the One it was supplied for.
The Bible TreasuryGod has provided a lamb, a victim for sin — a lamb for our need, but it is God's Lamb for Himself. We do not have to find a lamb; God has found it and set it before us. It is not now that we have to bring a lamb to God, but that He brings His to us. What grace!
The answer to a question asked centuries earlier
John's words were not the first mention of this Lamb. Isaac, walking up the mountain with his father Abraham and no animal in sight, had asked where the lamb was.
Hamilton SmithAbel tells us there must be a lamb for a burnt offering; Isaac raises the question, "WHERE IS THE LAMB?" And Abraham gives the only possible answer, "GOD WILL PROVIDE HIMSELF A LAMB FOR A BURNT OFFERING." No lamb of man's providing could meet the holiness of God or the sin of man. God must provide the Lamb.
"Sin," not "sins"
Commentators press hard on the singular noun in John's announcement. It is not a list of offences that is in view here, but the whole condition of the world.
J. N. DarbyHe takes away the sin of the world — not here the sinner's sins, but the sin of the whole world. This will be the new heaven and new earth, where there will be no sign or trace of sin. We have had an innocent world, and a sinful world; then we shall have a righteous world, resting on God's Lamb.
The consequence is that the phrase points forward as well as back. The work is finished; the visible result is still coming.
Hamilton SmithThe words "takes away the sin of the world" tell us what the Lord Jesus will do in the future as the result of the work that He has done, as the Lamb of God, in the past.
Where the liturgical version goes wrong
Because the singular is deliberate, one writer objects to the familiar chanted form of the Agnus Dei, which puts the word in the plural.
Edward DennettThe liturgical expression, "O Lamb of God, that takes away the sins of the world," is unscriptural and mistaken. It implies nothing less than that the whole world must necessarily be saved. This shows how important it is to guard the truth of God carefully against human additions.
From the world's sin to my own
The scale of the title does not push the individual out. It invites him in, through a personal question.
A. J. PollockJust as the Procurator General said to young Martin Luther, "You believe the creed, when it says, I believe in the forgiveness of sins: whose sins do you 'believe' are forgiven?" In a moment Luther saw the personal application implied in the question. The light broke into his soul, and he replied, "I believe in the forgiveness of my sins." So if the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world, He may well take away my sins.
The Lamb at the centre of heaven
The title does not stop at the cross. In the Bible's last book the same figure appears in glory, still bearing the marks of what He suffered.
Hamilton SmithNow, carried to heaven, crowded with the vast host of the redeemed and ten thousand times ten thousand angels — in the very centre of heavenly glory — he sees "in the midst of the throne … a Lamb as it had been slain." He sees the Lamb in His glories: Jesus with the wound marks in His hands and feet, the only Man in all that eternal glory who will bear any trace of the sorrows of time.
Summary
- Provided — Agnus Dei means "Lamb of God": God supplied the sacrifice Himself, and supplied it for Himself. No lamb of man's providing would do.
- Promised — Isaac's question, "Where is the lamb?", waited centuries for an answer; John the Baptist gave it by pointing at a Person.
- Precise — the word is sin, singular. It covers the whole ruined condition of the world, not only a tally of wrongs, which is why one writer calls the plural form used in liturgy an error.
- Personal — the widest claim narrows to you: if He takes away the sin of the world, He can take away mine.
- Permanent — the work is done; the full clearing of sin waits for the new heaven and new earth, where the slain Lamb stands at the centre of heaven's worship.