Passover

In Exodus 12 each household killed a lamb, put its blood on the doorframe, and ate in haste. Where the blood was, the destroyer passed over. Israel was not spared because it was better but because it was covered.

The meal was then commanded as an annual remembrance, with the explanation to be given to children each year. It is the founding event of Israel's calendar.

Exodus 12:1-13. God gives Moses and Aaron the instructions for the very first Passover on the night before the exodus itself, before it becomes an annual feast, when the blood on the doorframes protects Israel's households from the final plague.

• Exodus 12:13. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you.
• Exodus 12:26-27. When your children say to you, what do you mean by this service? That you shall say, it is the Passover sacrifice of the LORD.
• Luke 22:15. With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.
• 1 Corinthians 5:7. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.

Background is kept separate from the biblical text, and every claim is labelled by the kind of claim it is.

• Exodus

  The tenth plague, the blood on the door, and the exodus itself.

• Law

  The feast is commanded yearly, with unleavened bread for seven days.

• Kingdom

  Hezekiah and Josiah both restore the Passover as part of reform.

• Gospels

  Jesus keeps the meal with his disciples, and dies at that feast.

• Letters

  Christ is called our Passover, sacrificed for us.

1 Corinthians 5:7 states the connection without qualification: Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. The timing of the crucifixion at the feast underlines it.

The instructions for the first Passover are strikingly specific: a lamb without blemish, killed at twilight, its blood applied to the doorframe, the meat eaten in haste with sandals on and staff in hand. Nothing about this was left to improvisation, because the point was not the meal itself but the sign. The blood on the door was what mattered. Israel was not spared that night because they had done anything to deserve it, but because they were under the blood God had provided a way for them to apply.

The instruction to explain this to the next generation, built into the command itself in Exodus 12:26-27, shows that Passover was designed from its first observance to be more than a historical memory. Each household was to retell the story as their own story, not a distant event that happened to ancestors. That pattern of remembering by re-enacting, of eating the meal as though the escape from Egypt were happening again to you, shaped Israel's whole sense of identity as a people who had been rescued by blood rather than by their own strength.

By the first century, Passover had become the great pilgrimage feast, drawing crowds to Jerusalem and lambs to the temple in numbers large enough to fill the city with the sounds and smells of sacrifice. It is into that setting, at that feast, that Jesus sits down with his disciples and says he has earnestly desired to eat this Passover with them before he suffers. The timing is not incidental. He is keeping the meal that remembers deliverance by a lamb's blood on the very days his own blood would be shed.

Paul draws the line plainly rather than leaving it as suggestion: Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, 1 Corinthians 5:7. Just as the blood on the doorframe, not the character of the household behind it, was what caused the destroyer to pass over, the blood of Christ, not the merit of the person trusting in it, is what Scripture says shelters a believer from judgement. The whole logic of the first Passover night, protection by substitution rather than by personal worthiness, is the same logic the New Testament applies to the cross.

The Passover pattern is worth sitting with honestly: the households under the blood were not spared because they had earned it that night, and neither is anyone sheltered by Christ's blood because of merit accumulated beforehand. If you find yourself trying to feel worthy enough before trusting Christ, Passover corrects that instinct directly. The sign was applied in obedient trust, not achieved by character, and that is still how it works.

The command to explain the meal to the next generation is also a pattern worth keeping alive in ordinary family life. Faith that is only privately held tends to fade; faith that is told again as your own story, and explained plainly to children or to those who ask what it means, tends to take root. Whatever the Lord's Supper is in your own church calendar, treat it the way Exodus 12 treats Passover, as an occasion to retell, not merely to repeat.

People: Moses, Aaron, Pharaoh

Places: Egypt, Jerusalem

Events: The exodus, The last supper, The crucifixion

Themes: Blood, Redemption, Remembrance

Exodus 12, Luke 22

The exodus from Egypt, then kept yearly, and the crucifixion at Passover in Jerusalem.

• Egypt: Where the first Passover was kept, on the night of the exodus.
• Jerusalem: Where the feast was later kept and where Jesus died.