Feasts of the Bible

The Passover: How It Points to Christ

Spring feast · Leviticus 23:5 · The fourteenth day of the first month (Nisan), at evening

The Passover is the first and foundational feast of Israel, kept in memory of the night in Egypt when the LORD passed over every house marked by the blood of a lamb, and the firstborn under that blood were spared while judgment fell outside. Christians see it fulfilled in Jesus, for as Paul writes, Christ our passover is sacrificed for us. He is the true Lamb without blemish whose blood, put over the door of the heart, turns away the judgment we deserved and sets the captives free.

The institutionAnd the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.Exodus 12:13 (KJV)

The feast God gave Israel

The Passover was born on the last and most terrible night of Israel's slavery in Egypt. After nine plagues Pharaoh would still not let the people go, and so the LORD announced a tenth, the death of every firstborn in the land. But He gave Israel a way of escape. Each household was to take a lamb without blemish, a male of the first year, to keep it up until the fourteenth day of the month, and to kill it at evening. They were to take the blood and strike it on the two side posts and the upper post of the door, and to eat the flesh that night, roasted with fire, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, ready to travel, their loins girded and their staff in hand.

The promise was as simple as it was staggering. Where the blood was seen, death would not enter. When I see the blood, the LORD said, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you. That night the destroyer went through Egypt, and there was a great cry, for there was not a house where there was not one dead, but in every home sheltered under the blood of the lamb, the firstborn lived. Before dawn Pharaoh drove them out, and Israel walked free. God commanded that this night be kept forever, on the fourteenth day of the first month, so that every generation would remember that they were redeemed by the blood of a lamb.

What the feast meant

Passover taught Israel the deepest truth about how God saves. Redemption is by substitution. The firstborn did not live because they were better than the Egyptians, but because an innocent life had died in their place and its blood stood between them and judgment. The lamb had to be without blemish, for only a spotless life could stand in for another. Its blood had to be applied, not merely shed, marked on the door where God would see it. And the family had to shelter under it and feed on it, taking the lamb into themselves.

So the feast held together three truths that Israel would ponder for centuries: that all stand under a just judgment, that God Himself provides the lamb, and that those who take refuge under its blood are passed over and brought out into freedom. Every Passover was a rehearsal, a picture acted out year after year, of a rescue larger than Egypt.

Fulfilled in Christ

Fulfilled in ChristPurge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:1 Corinthians 5:7 (KJV)

When John the Baptist saw Jesus, he did not say, Behold a teacher, or Behold a king, but, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. Jesus was crucified at Passover, at the very hour the lambs were being slain in Jerusalem, and no bone of Him was broken, exactly as the law required of the Passover lamb. Paul draws the truth to its point: Christ our passover is sacrificed for us. He is the Lamb without blemish, the spotless life given in the place of the guilty.

His blood is the blood on the door. Where it is seen, judgment passes over. We are not spared because we are better than anyone, but because an innocent has died in our place, and we have taken shelter under Him. And as Israel fed on the lamb that night, so Jesus gives Himself to us as food, saying, This is my body, which is given for you. The oldest feast of Israel was, all along, a portrait of the cross.

The wonder of it

Consider what this means. Fifteen centuries before Calvary, on a night of terror in Egypt, God set in motion a feast that spelled out, in blood on a doorframe, exactly how He would one day save the world. Every detail held: a lamb without blemish, a firstborn, the blood applied and not merely shed, no bone broken, the freedom that followed. Israel kept this feast for over a thousand years without knowing the whole of what they were rehearsing, and then at one Passover in Jerusalem the shadow met its substance, and the true Lamb was slain.

This is not a coincidence read backward. It is the signature of a God who works across ages, weaving the meaning of the cross into the very calendar of His people so that when the Lamb came, those with eyes to see would know Him. The gospel is not an afterthought. It was written into Israel's spring long before the morning of the resurrection.

The Lamb through the whole story

Once you see the Lamb at Passover, you begin to see Him everywhere. When Abraham climbed the mountain with his son and the boy asked where the lamb was, the father answered, God will provide himself a lamb, and centuries later, on a hill near that same place, He did. The prophet Isaiah saw One who would be brought as a lamb to the slaughter, wounded for our transgressions, and by whose stripes we are healed. The whole of Scripture leans toward a single Lamb.

So when John the Baptist finally pointed and said, Behold the Lamb of God, he was naming the One the whole Bible had been waiting for. The Passover lamb of Egypt saved one nation for one night. This Lamb takes away the sin of the world. And the last book of Scripture shows Him still, a Lamb as it had been slain, now standing at the center of heaven, worshiped by every nation, the marks of His sacrifice forever the reason for the song. The feast that began in a slave's kitchen ends at the throne of God.

How it speaks to us now

The question Passover asks is quiet and personal: is the blood on your door. Not whether you know the story, but whether you have taken shelter under the Lamb. Christ our Passover has already been sacrificed. The work is finished. What remains is to come under His blood, to trust that His death was for you, and to feed on Him as the bread of your life. To all who do, the ancient promise still stands: when God sees the blood, judgment passes over, and the captive walks out free. You do not earn your way past the destroyer; you simply come under the blood of the Lamb, and live.

A note in honesty: Christians read these feasts as shadows whose substance is Christ, in the words of the apostle Paul (Colossians 2:17), and they are cherished across the traditions as one of the clearest windows into the gospel. Faithful Jewish readers understand them differently, and we hold ours with respect and without contempt. The spring feasts were fulfilled at the first coming of Jesus, to the very day; the fall feasts many see as pointing toward His return, though Scripture forbids the setting of dates, for no one knows the day or the hour. We marvel at the pattern without pretending to a calendar God has not given.

Related: The Feast of Unleavened Bread · The Feast of Firstfruits · The Resurrection · All the feasts of the Bible