How many times is Jesus Christ portrayed as a lion in the New Testament? How many times is he portrayed as a lamb? Numerous.
Imagine, a seemingly subordinate and inconsequential animal, as a lamb, harmless, with God drawing great meaning from a metaphor displaying his likeness to it in the nature of his acts and being.
He is the Lamb of God. Of infinite worth, of infinite sacrifice. He is the innocent one who bears the fall for our sins, the one who knew no sin, innocent as a lamb that was slain. This is God’s metaphor of choice. Not a raging lion only, but more so finding great power in the lamb, in its innocence, its value, and its saving sacrifice. The lamb stands as an image of the divine to humanity more so than a lion, fixed in the heavens not as a meaningless subordinate or inconsequential creature, but as a symbol of Jesus Christ to all creation.
And in heaven when the prophesy of Isaiah is fulfilled that the lion and the lamb may dwell together in peace, it is not only the absence of the lion’s violent nature that brings heaven but the bow of his head to the infinite value and worth and innocence of the innocent lamb, the lamb that is the symbol of God.