And He took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:19–20).
It was the first day of the Jewish Feast of Unleavened Bread: a remembrance of the removal of sin from the lives of God’s children. Jesus and His disciples, in order to keep the feast, had made the journey to Jerusalem. The celebration of the Passover meal was the order of events for the evening. Christ and His small band of followers were observing this meal in an upper room which the disciples had secured for the evening. There was the bread, the bitter herbs, the lamb had been killed and the meal prepared. This same meal was being observed all over Jerusalem that evening. It was the meal of the covenant. It was a time for the Jewish people to remember and give thanks to Jehovah for His mighty hand of deliverance.
The celebration of the Passover dated back to the time of Moses. It had been 1,500 years since God brought the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt; and the events of that first Passover were the means God used for this mighty deliverance. God was to bring a plague on the land of Egypt so terrible that it would live forever in the hearts of the Jewish people.
For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD (Exodus 12:12).
Nine plagues preceded this one, but they had served only to harden the heart of Pharaoh. Now, in this final plague, divine judgment was to fall over the entire land of Egypt. No firstborn would be exempt, not even the firstborn of the Israelite slaves in Goshen. The angel of death would not discriminate, for all were equally guilty before the eyes of a holy God. And such holiness demanded perfect justice as the angel would come to do his work. Therefore, every household had death waiting at its door. How ironic that the final plague of deliverance would itself be an inescapable sentence of death for many of those it was sent to deliver.
But God was not finished. The miraculous truth about this first Passover is that it was to be a dual deliverance; a deliverance not only from Egyptian bondage, but also from Divine judgment. And just as it was during the flood centuries before, God’s deliverance would come by way of the judgment that was to be executed. In this deliverance, God would provide a way, not for the Israelites to escape Divine judgment, but for that judgment to be satisfied on their behalf. The satisfaction of that judgment was the ultimate purpose of the Passover meal. God gave Moses explicit instructions concerning the preparation of this meal:
On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household . . . Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 6 Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. 7 And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it. 8 Then they shall eat the flesh on that night; roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs . . . And thus you shall eat it: with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. So you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD’s Passover (Exodus 12:3–11).
The Passover lamb was the central element of this meal. The life of that lamb would be Israel’s deliverance. They were to kill it in the place of their firstborn. They were to take its blood and mark the doors of their homes. The angel of death would see its blood and pass over the home which bore its mark, sparing a life from every generation. After the lamb was roasted, the children of Israel were to eat it with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, in haste, ready to travel at a moment’s notice.
Since that night of deliverance long before, the Passover was to be perpetually celebrated by the Jewish people. Every year it was to be observed in the way Jesus and His disciples were observing it that evening in the upper room. To the average Israelite, this Passover was another celebration in a long line of yearly ceremonies to remember the mercy of God in His covenant faithfulness to the children of Abraham.
But this was no ordinary celebration for Jesus. All His life had been moving toward this specific Passover. Jesus knew His hour had come, and He knew He was about to be betrayed. This meal was to be His final meal, His last supper. Judas had already met with the Jewish leaders and was now seeking for the right opportunity to make his betrayal complete. The Jewish leaders thought they were putting an end to the menace Jesus had become. But little did they know, instead of putting an end to the menace, they were instrumental in accomplishing Jesus’ purpose for coming into this world. Jesus was fulfilling God’s ultimate covenant faithfulness to His chosen family, and the happenings that would transpire over the next three days would not only turn Israel, but the entire world, upside down. On the night before His death, these events weighed heavy on the heart of Jesus.
And when the hour came, He reclined at table, and the apostles with Him. And He said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:14–16).
It was no coincidence that the events of the Passion week were transpiring during the Passover season. They were, in effect, the fulfillment of that first Passover. Fifteen hundred years before this night a lamb took the place of the firstborn of Israel. The mercy and grace of God provided an innocent victim upon which no blemish was to be found. It was slain and its protective blood delivered the children of Israel. In this, God symbolically satisfied His perfect justice by a perfect sinless substitute. The death of this lamb made appeasement with a Holy God, and its blood staved the hand of the angel. The result of this first Passover was deliverance from bondage . . . from 400 years of bondage. Now, on this night, in the upper room, that symbolic shadow (the Passover lamb) was coming into contact with its reality. Jesus, the innocent Son of God, was about to be sacrificed, not to release Israel from human bondage, but to release all His children from the greater spiritual bondage which brings the angel of death to all our doors. Jesus was going to die in our place, and in that death, appease God’s holy wrath toward us. He was going to paint His blood upon the doorways of our sinful hearts and lives; thus, releasing us from the bondage of sin to bring us into the freedom of His redemption.
Jesus needed to prepare his disciples for what was about to take place. So, during the Passover meal, He institutes a new meal, a meal that the Passover celebration foreshadowed, a meal of communion.
And He took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:19–20).
This communion supper was a visible display of the salvation Jesus was about to accomplish. His body and His blood were to take the place of the Passover lamb. His body was to be broken and His blood poured out. On this evening, Jesus was changing the old covenant meal into the new covenant meal; for by His death, He was leading His children out of the old covenant shadows into the bright realities of the new covenant in His blood. By His perfect sacrifice, He was fulfilling the Passover forever. Now, instead of partaking of a yearly meal of a lamb to remember an old deliverance, Jesus said we are to let the bread and the cup be “a remembrance of Him,” for He is the greater and true deliverance.
What significance does the Lord’s Supper have to each of us? Is our deliverance from sin and the judgment of God brought to our remembrance as we partake of this holy meal we call Communion? Let us taste the goodness of Christ when we taste the bread and the wine. For when we observe this sacrament in faith, we are brought into a deeper communion with our Savior by the powerful work of His Spirit.
For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (I Corinthians 5:7–8).
