When John the Baptist saw Jesus approaching him, before the Master was baptized by him in Jordan, he said, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world," words which will never be erased from the annals of time. Did John mean by these words that it was the human Jesus who should do this wonderful thing—take away the sin of the world? No; only the Christ, which Jesus declared and demonstrated, could do that. The fact that the Baptist was able to discern, with such clarity and certainty, the spiritual potentiality in Christ Jesus showed the purity of his own thought, and how well fitted he was to be the forerunner of the great Nazarene Prophet.
One of the most remarkable statements recorded of Jesus in the New Testament is that in which he declares "the devil," or evil, to be a lie or falsity. His actual words, according to the eighth chapter of John's Gospel, are: "He [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." Here, in plainest language, we have him whom the Baptist so greatly honored declaring unequivocally, through his understanding of the perfection of God, that evil is unreal.
When Jesus spoke as he did of evil, declaring it to be a lie—the Christ, Truth, was literally taking away the sin of the world. For what were men believing then, as many are believing today? That evil is real. Moreover, they were practicing evil—committing sin—in numerous ways, to their own discomfiture. Had Jesus not understood that evil is a lie, and lived accordingly, it could not have been said of him that he gave all glory and power to God, the Father. But because he knew evil to be a lie and good alone to be real, he could resist every suggestion of evil belief that presented itself to him, in this manner healing disease and overcoming sin.
