SAVED
BY THE FLEECE

Topics: Adoption; Atonement; Blood of Christ; Gift of Righteousness; Rescue; Salvation

References: John 1:29; Romans 8:15–17; Galatians 3:27; Ephesians 4:22–24; Colossians 3:9–10; 1 Peter 1:18–21

If you go to Scotland or anywhere there are a lot of sheep, sooner or later you will see a little lamb running around the field with what looks like an extra fleece tied onto its back. There are little holes in the fleece for its four legs and usually a hole for its head. If you see a little lamb running around like that, that usually means its mother has died.

Without the protection and nourishment of a mother, an orphaned lamb will die. If you try to introduce the orphaned lamb to another mother, the new mother will butt it away. She won’t recognize the lamb’s scent and will know the new baby is not one of her own lambs.

But thankfully, most flocks are large enough to have a ewe that recently lost a lamb. The shepherd skins the dead lamb and makes its fleece into a covering for the orphaned lamb. Then he takes the orphaned lamb to the mother whose baby just died. Now, when she sniffs the orphaned lamb, she smells her own lamb. Instead of butting the lamb away, she accepts it as one of her own.

In a similar way, we have become acceptable to God by being clothed with Christ.

—Peter Grant, in the sermon “In What Way Is Jesus Christ Different?”