Christ Our Passover Lamb

For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.   (1 Corinthians 5:7)

 

Christ Our Passover Lamb

 

About the time Christians attend Good Friday services, Jewish families engage in their observance of the Passover. The dramatic story of the Passover in Exodus, chapter 12, instructs each family to take a one-year-old male lamb without defect and slaughter it for a special meal. The drained blood of the lamb was smeared along the top and sides of the doorjamb as a sign to the Death Angel to pass over the home of a faithful family. Today, in observant Jewish households, the Passover Seder continues to serve as a reminder of how the God of Israel delivered His people from the plague of death that ultimately ravaged Egypt.

 

It was not a coincidence that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ took place on the day of preparation for the Jewish Passover. God chose that moment to make an unmistakable connection between the slaughter of the lamb of Passover and His Son’s death on the Cross. In Christ, the world received the fulfillment of what was achieved only in a ceremonial way by the Passover lamb. God’s ancient promise of deliverance from death has now been extended to all. James Denney, in his book The Death of Christ, celebrates God’s love demonstrated in the Lamb by writing, “The highest revelation of love is made in the death of Christ.”

 

A proper preparation for Passover begins with the removal of all yeast from the Jewish home (Ex. 12:15). In this context, the yeast represents spiritual corruption. Just a little sin affects the whole household just as a little yeast affects the whole loaf of bread. Likewise, Paul calls us to get rid of the yeast of sin in our own lives so that we may receive the full benefit of Christ’s cleansing work; for “the blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin.”

—Frank Robinson