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Who Is Jesus Christ, so that We All Need Him?The Watchtower—1976 | April 15
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22. How did John’s words and those of Jesus in prayer to God indicate that Jesus had been a Son of God in heaven?
22 All of that is true, but was Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem-Judah the start of his existence as a Son of God? No! John the Baptist, who was born about six months before Jesus, said publicly regarding the Jesus whom he had baptized: “See, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world! This is the one about whom I said, Behind me there comes a man who has advanced in front of me, because he existed before me.” (John 1:29, 30) Now, since Jesus did not exist as a man on earth before John the Baptist, where had he existed before John? It was up in heaven. There he had existed as a Son of God. There he had personal contact and association with his heavenly Father. This accounts for it that, on the night before he suffered death as a martyr outside the walls of Jerusalem, he said in prayer to his heavenly Father: “I have glorified you on the earth, having finished the work you have given me to do. So now you, Father, glorify me alongside yourself with the glory that I had alongside you before the world was.”—John 17:4, 5.
23. From where was it that God sent his Son into the world, and how?
23 So, the one who became Jesus Christ, “the Lamb of God,” had existed as a Son of God alongside his heavenly Father in the invisible spirit realm. Hence, in order to become the human Son of God under the name Jesus Christ, he had to let Almighty God transfer his life from heaven to the human ovum in the body of the Jewish virgin. In this way God continued to be his Father at his birth in Bethlehem. It could be only from heaven that God transferred the life of his Son miraculously and thereby “sent” his Son, just as Jesus Christ told the Jewish ruler Nicodemus: “God loved the world [of mankind] so much that he gave his only-begotten Son, in order that everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life. For God sent forth his Son into the world, not for him to judge the world, but for the world to be saved through him.”—John 3:16, 17.
24. Why do we need God’s Son as “the Lamb”?
24 In this way we see how God provided the one man whom we needed for our everlasting salvation, the one man who was the equal of Adam during his perfection and sinlessness in the Garden of Eden. This man alone was able to offer himself to God to be sacrificed as “the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29) Because this includes our sin, we need him.
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Why We Need the Kingdom of Jesus ChristThe Watchtower—1976 | April 15
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2. Why did Jesus not have to be born of the tribe of Levi and of the family of Aaron in order to be the sacrificial Lamb, and on what day did he die?
2 In ancient Israel, King David’s tribe was that of Judah, a tribe from which no priests were taken to offer sacrifice. Nonetheless, Jesus Christ could be born as “the seed of David” of the tribe of Judah and still become “the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29) He did not need to be of the tribe of Levi and of the priestly family of Aaron, from which family the priests of Israel were taken. He could be born in David’s tribe of Judah and still be a perfect, sinless man suitable for sacrifice acceptable to God because of being perfect and unblemished by sin. The perfection and sinlessness that he had maintained as the Son of God in heaven continued with him when he was sent to earth to become the man absolutely equal to the perfect, sinless Adam at the day of his creation in the Garden of Eden. Jesus Christ needed to be such in order to ‘give himself as a corresponding ransom for all.’ (1 Tim. 2:5, 6; Matt. 20:28) He poured out his blood as a sin-atoning sacrifice on Passover Day of 33 C.E., the day when the Jews sacrificed the Passover lamb and ate its roast flesh in celebration of their nation’s deliverance from ancient Egypt.
3. What did Leviticus 17:11, 12 say about blood, and so what benefit is it that we get from Jesus’ blood, and how?
3 In God’s covenant with ancient Israel he said the following words, as found in Leviticus 17:11, 12: “The soul [or, life] of the flesh is in the blood, and I myself have put it upon the altar for you to make atonement for your souls, because it is the blood that makes atonement by the soul [life] in it. . . . ‘No soul of you must eat blood and no alien resident who is residing as an alien in your midst should eat blood.’” So, in pouring out his blood in sacrifice to God, Jesus Christ was pouring out his life as an atonement sacrifice for all of us descendants of the sinful Adam. He presented the lifeblood of his perfect human sacrifice to God in heaven, and so we cannot eat or drink Jesus’ blood in order to get the benefit of it. We must exercise faith in it as fully atoning for our death-dealing sins to benefit from Jesus’ lifeblood.—Heb. 9:11-14, 24.
4. How do Simon Peter’s words about Christ’s blood make it fitting that Revelation features him as a Lamb?
4 One of the first-century Jews who believed in the atoning value of Jesus’ blood was Simon Peter, once a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee. When writing to his fellow believers, Simon Peter said: “It was not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, that you were delivered from your fruitless form of conduct received by tradition from your forefathers. But it was with precious blood, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb, even Christ’s.” (1 Pet. 1:18, 19) So, now, we can appreciate the fitness of the book of Revelation in continually featuring Jesus Christ as “the lamb,” the one that was “slaughtered.” (Rev. 5:6) All we of mankind certainly need such an atoning Lamb who, with his blood, can cleanse us from our sins and lift from us the condemnation of death. Without life through the sacrifice of this Lamb none of us could enjoy anything in the future with a clean conscience before God. For a fact, then, we cannot do without this Lamb!
5. In offering himself as a sacrifice, Jesus Christ served as the antitype of whom on Israel’s Day of Atonement?
5 In offering himself up as a sacrificial Lamb, Jesus Christ served as God’s High Priest who was foreshadowed by Israel’s first high priest, namely, Aaron of the tribe of Levi. All the further sacrificial high priests of ancient Israel descended from this Aaron the brother of Moses. That is another reason why all mankind needs Jesus Christ, for him to serve as the antitype of Israel’s high priests in taking the blood of the sacrifices into the Most Holy of the temple on the annual Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.
6. To whom were the Christianized Jews told to look for atonement for sins, and why?
6 The resurrected Jesus Christ carried out this Atonement Day picture when he ascended from earth back to heaven, to appear in God’s presence and offer the merit or value of his perfect human sacrifice in atonement for the sins of all mankind. That is why the Christianized Jews were told to look no longer to the Aaronic high priests but to the antitype thereof, in these words recorded in Hebrews 3:1, 2: “Consequently, holy brothers, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the apostle and high priest whom we confess—Jesus. He was faithful to the One that made him such, as Moses was also in all the house of that One.”
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