The Passover Lamb

1 Corinthians 5: 7b, ESV.

For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

Today a fresh ‘lens for understanding salvation comes from the Bible story of the Exodus.

Picture the scene… It’s the night of the final plague in Egypt. Rivers of blood, heavenly hailstones and three-day darkness have led to this moment. In the shadow of the Pyramids, huddled inside ramshackle houses in townships built for slaves, the Israelites trust one thing to keep them safe: the blood of a lamb, painted across their doorframes. 

Ever since, and to this day, in Jewish communities the events of that night are celebrated as the ‘Passover’, when God freed captive Israel. God asked Israel to always remember Passover by taking a lamb – one ‘without blemish’ (Exodus 12: 5) – and sacrificing it. 

To Israel, the blood of the lamb was a sign that God’s wrath would ‘pass over’ them, rather than punish them – and it was a reminder that they had been freed. So, when John the Baptist called Jesus the ‘Lamb of God’, who had come to ‘take away the sin of the world’ (John 1: 29), he wasn’t just giving Jesus a nickname… after all, lambs were sacrificial animals.

But how could it be that God, the Lord of all creation, would choose his own human self, Jesus, to be sacrificed as the Passover lamb? 

The answer is that nobody apart from Jesus is, or ever was, ‘without blemish’. He alone qualifies, through his unspoiled perfection, to be our Passover Lamb, once and for all. Because of Christ’s sacrifice, the judgment which God’s holiness requires will forever ‘pass over’ those who are painted, like the Israelite doorframes, with his blood. The eternal Passover has been initiated, where God’s people, under the blood of the Lamb, can move from captivity in death, to freedom in life.

Prayer — Thank you, Jesus, for being the sacrifice that I could never provide. Today, please lead me to live in the freedom of the eternal Passover which you won for us.