Passover and the Lord’s Supper

There is an integral correspondence between the Christian Lord’s Supper and the Israelite Passover. Like the Passover, the Lord’s Supper is a joyful reaffirmation of the covenant. And like Passover, it recalls the Lord’s great act in the deliverance of a people. But the Lord’s Supper also points ahead to the ultimate destiny of Christians: freedom in the presence of God.

The Last Supper

The tradition that Paul received and put down in writing belongs to the earliest accounts of what took place the night Jesus was betrayed (1 Cor. 11:23–25). This account states that it was at night, that there was a meal, that he took bread and broke it and said, “This is my body which is [broken] for you; do this in remembrance of me.” The same with the cup: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” There is no mention of Passover in Paul’s account, except in a circumstantial way: the breaking of bread in a solemn manner, the drinking of the cup of wine, the reference to the covenant, and above all the paschal overtones. The synoptic account does not differ in essence from the Pauline tradition, except that it represents the Last Supper as a Passover meal (cf. Matt. 26:17; Mark 14:12; Luke 22:7).

The Memorial Meal

Remembrance is the keynote of Passover: Israel is to call to memory what God has done for his people. The whole festival is a remembrance (Exod. 12:14). Jesus followed custom but reinterpreted the Passover in terms of the messianic event: the Messiah took the role of the paschal lamb. It is therefore correct to say that the Last Supper provides Passover with a new content. Henceforth the bread and the wine of the seder become the signs of the Messiah’s sacrifice on the cross. The paschal meal becomes a messianic meal.

The Last Supper and Passover

In the time of the temple, the paschal meal consisted not only of the lamb but also of the special festive sacrifice of which everyone partook (cf. 2 Chron. 35:13). Such eating of the sacrifice was a joyous occasion that gave cohesion to community life. This is to be distinguished from the sin offering that was totally burned and never consumed. For the Israelite, eating the sacrifice never meant eating his God. Participation in the body and blood of the Messiah creates a problem if the Last Supper is conceived in purely sacrificial terms. For this reason, the emphasis in the Lord’s Supper must be placed as much on the covenant as on the sin offering, if not more so. The blood that sealed the covenant is not the blood poured on the altar but the blood sprinkled on the people. There is a correspondence between the Last Supper and Exodus 24:11, which records that the elders of Israel on Mount Sinai beheld God and ate and drank.

The covenant is at the core of the Passover account. On the eve of the Exodus, God revealed himself as the God of the fathers who remembered his covenant (Exod. 2:24; 3:15). On the eve of the Crucifixion, this covenant was reaffirmed by the Messiah’s willingness to shed his blood. The paschal lamb is therefore not sufficient to explain the full meaning of the Last Supper; the covenant intrudes as the overarching theme.

This raises the problem of the meaning of the new covenant: in what sense is it a new covenant? The writer of Hebrews, and sometimes Paul, gives the impression of a radical break: the former commandment is set aside “because it was weak and useless” (Heb. 7:18); had the first covenant been faultless there would have been no need for a second (Heb. 8:7); “by calling this covenant, ‘new’ he has made the first one obsolete” (Heb. 8:13). Those who are in Christ are new creations; “the old has gone; the new has come!” (2 Cor. 5:17).

Since Marcion, a second-century theologian held to be heretical, there has persisted a tendency to separate the two Testaments and to understand the “new” in the radical sense. From Paul’s exposition of Israel’s destiny (Rom. 9–11), such a break becomes impossible. The Logos doctrine allows no such break; the preexistent Christ spoke already in the Old Testament (cf. 1 Pet. 1:11). The writer of Hebrews bases his argument on the premise that the preincarnate Christ was present in Israel’s history. The new therefore must be understood in connection with the messianic event. The new covenant brings the old covenant to the brink of eschatological fulfillment, but the people of God are one continuum from Abel to this day. Christ as the telos (fulfillment) of the Law (Rom. 10:4) brings in the new era but does not change God’s promises. The new covenant is called “better” than the old (Heb. 8:6) because God in Christ fulfills his promise to write his law on the believer’s heart (Heb. 8:8–13).

The Lord’s Supper therefore continues the Passover theme in the new messianic context: (1) It is a memorial feast of the person and work of the Messiah. The remembrance goes beyond the historical events and becomes a proclamation and confession of faith (cf. 1 Cor. 11:26). (2) It is an avowal of loyalty between master and disciples, expressing the cohesion and the mutual interdependence of the Christian brotherhood. (3) It reaffirms the covenant of old and seals it in the blood of the Messiah. (4) It expresses the joy of salvation and the eschatological hope of the Messiah’s ultimate triumph.

The Christian Exodus

The keynote of the New Testament message is messianic fulfillment; Jesus was the One of whom Moses and the prophets had written (John 1:45). The Messiah, by his life, work, death, and resurrection, accomplished “eternal salvation” (Heb. 5:9). This the law had been unable to do, for the Law had made nothing perfect (Heb. 7:19); it only served as a schoolmaster until Christ came (Gal. 3:24). The salvation of Yahweh as demonstrated in the story of the Exodus (cf. Exod. 14:13) was thus only a foreshadowing of what was to come. All God’s acts in the Old Testament point to an ultimate future. A day will come when the Lord will reveal himself as the “warrior who gives victory” (Zeph. 3:17 rsv). The difference between the redemption from Egypt and messianic salvation is not that the one is in time and the other beyond it. Biblical salvation is always rooted in time and in history; this is its most peculiar feature. Also, the distinction is not that the one is physical (or political) and the other spiritual. The distinction rather lies in the area of eschatology; messianic salvation is ultimate. The rabbis regarded redemption from Egypt as foreshadowing final redemption; the New Testament claims it an accomplished fact. Passover is the beginning of the journey the Messiah completes by reaching the goal.

“Eternal salvation” means there can be no other salvation after the messianic event, which is the ultimate salvation. The eternal covenant that God promised to the fathers (Jer. 32:40; 50:5; cf. Isa. 55:3; Ezek. 16:60) has now been established and sealed in the blood of the Messiah (Heb. 13:20). In Hebrews the dissolution of the cult, the change of the priesthood, and the removal of the Law are the consequences of the messianic event. Christ has become the living way (Heb. 10:20) to the inner sanctuary (Heb. 6:19), the new High Priest who by his sacrifice has made possible for humans to draw near into the presence of God himself (Heb. 10:20ff.).

Jesus completes what Moses began but could never accomplish ultimately. True freedom is freedom from sin. No one is truly free who is a slave to sin. Only the one whom the Son makes free is free indeed (John 8:34–36). Paul arrives at a similar conclusion; the fathers were all under the cloud, passed through the sea, were baptized into Moses, ate spiritual food, and drank spiritual drink, yet they perished in the wilderness (1 Cor. 10:1–5). The Exodus had a limited goal that was not reached until a new generation grew up. It is therefore only a parable of humankind’s journey to its ultimate destiny—the promised land. This journey the human cannot make on his or her own strength. The slave has to become the freedman of the Lord (1 Cor. 7:22), and the emancipation takes place at the cross of Jesus Christ. In him, people become sons of God (Gal. 4:4–6) and enjoy the freedom of the children of God (Rom. 8:2–4). The Exodus from Egypt to the land of Canaan leads beyond history to the “city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10). Whereas the historic Exodus was limited to the experience of one people, the Christian exodus is open to the nations of the world. Humankind’s ultimate destiny is the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the freed (Gal. 4:26).