A sign you could see
The Passover Blood
On the night God delivered Israel from Egypt, blood on the doorframe was the difference between life and death. It is the clearest picture in the Old Testament of what the cross would do.
“And 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
The sign
The sign. On the last night of Israel's slavery, God commanded every household to take a lamb without blemish, to kill it at evening, and to strike its blood on the two side posts and the upper door post of their houses (Exod 12:5-7). That blood was the sign. "And 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" (Exod 12:13). The judgment that fell on Egypt that night, the death of the firstborn, would pass over every house marked by the blood of the lamb. Inside, the family ate the roasted lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, dressed and ready to leave. God appointed the night to be kept forever: "this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations" (Exod 12:14). Year after year the sign was rehearsed, a lamb slain and its blood remembered, so that Israel would never forget the night that death passed over them.
What it sealed
What it sealed. The Passover blood sealed Israel's deliverance and the birth of the nation as God's redeemed people. It was the hinge of the exodus, the act that broke Egypt's grip and set the covenant people on the road to Sinai and the land. The lesson pressed into it was that redemption comes by substitution: the firstborn lived because the lamb died in his place, and the family sheltered under blood they had not shed themselves. It was not their worthiness that spared them but the token on the door. God bound the memory of it into their calendar so that each generation would tell its children, "It is the sacrifice of the LORD'S passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt" (Exod 12:27). The feast sealed a people who owed their very existence to a lamb's blood, taught to look back to that rescue and to trust the God who had judged their oppressors and covered them.
How it points to Christ
How it points to Christ. Here the New Testament is explicit. Paul writes, "For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us" (1 Cor 5:7). John the Baptist announced Jesus as "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). Jesus died at the Passover season, and John notes that not a bone of Him was broken, just as the Passover lamb was to have no bone broken (John 19:36; Exod 12:46). Peter says we were redeemed "with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" (1 Pet 1:19). Every detail converges: the spotless lamb, the shed blood, the judgment that passes over those it covers. The Passover was the sign; Christ is the substance. Where the blood of a lamb once turned aside death for a night, the blood of Jesus turns aside the wrath of God forever for all who shelter in Him.
Questions people ask
What did the blood on the door actually do?
It marked the house as one where a lamb had died in the place of the firstborn, so that the destroyer passed over it (Exod 12:13, 23). Safety came not from anything inside the family but from the blood on the door, a substitute's death standing between them and judgment.
Does the New Testament link Passover to Jesus?
Directly and repeatedly. Paul calls Christ "our passover" sacrificed for us (1 Cor 5:7); John calls Him the Lamb of God (John 1:29); Peter speaks of redemption by the blood of a lamb without blemish (1 Pet 1:19). John even notes no bone of Jesus was broken, as with the Passover lamb (John 19:36).
Why does God's people still remember Passover?
God commanded it as a perpetual memorial (Exod 12:14) so each generation would recall the night of deliverance. For Christians it finds its fulfillment in Christ, and its meaning carries into the Lord's Supper, which Jesus instituted at a Passover meal.