The Scapegoat

Good Morning, Ever been a scapegoat for someone else? The Webster’s Dictionary’s Definition of sacrificial lamb is: “someone or something that is deliberately sacrificed to promote a cause or for the benefit of others” Hopper (2018) says “the lamb sacrifice and the scapegoat saved the Jew not because God pronounced him legally “saved” or because of his / her attendance at Yom Kippur, and faith in God, but because he entered into relationship with God to rid his life of sin and God restored to wholeness.”

John the Baptist says this about Jesus in John 1:29 The next day John saw Jesus coming to him, and said, “There is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! As believers it is not our righteousness that saved us, it is Jesus that was the scapegoat for our sin through the grace of His Father.

Hebrews 9:12 When Christ went through the tent and entered once and for all into the Most Holy Place, he did not take the blood of goats and bulls to offer as a sacrifice; rather, he took his own blood and obtained eternal salvation for us. When one is tripped up by sin, something gone wrong, something not meant to be, a mistake, whatever the cause, there was a sacrificial lamb, Jesus Christ, who causes that forgiveness in one moment. Life’s mistakes and sin should be taken to God so that he can rid one of sin and restore the relationship with God, through Christ, to wholeness again.

Dear Father, forgive anything I have done to break the wholeness of our relationship, bring me into the presence of the scapegoat, Jesus, who died for my sin, and assure me of forgiveness through the Holy Spirit, in Jesus’ name, Amen. Dr Cliff Ferguson – Shalom Centurion