The Meaning of the Christian Passover
On the night before Jesus was crucified, He washed His disciple’s feet and said, “I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you” (John 13:15).
The same night, He took a piece of unleavened bread, broke it, and said,
“‘Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’” (1 Corinthians 11:24-25).
These were His instructions for how His disciples should celebrate the Passover every year, “on the same night as He was betrayed” (1 Corinthians 11:23).
Most churches have disconnected these instructions from the Passover, and have turned them into a weekly or quarterly “communion” service. Some have even created a festival called “Maundy Thursday.” But the original Church of God kept the Passover once a year, on the 14 th day of the first month of the Hebrew Calendar.The Meaning of the Passover
When the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, God told them to select a perfect lamb and kill it at twilight on the 14 th day of the first month. After that, they had to wipe the blood of the lamb around the door of their houses (Exodus 12:1-7).That night, when God killed the firstborn sons in Egypt, He passed over the houses that were marked with blood (Exodus 12:23, 29).
Those Passover lambs represented “Christ, our Passover,” who “was sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7) on Passover day. We must accept this sacrifice if we want God to pass over our sins.
Christ’s sacrifice should also “cleanse your conscience from dead work to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:14). In other words, it should cause us to recognize that sin produces death, and it should motivate us to live a life of obedience to God.
The Bible says we must each “examine ourselves” before we keep the Passover, so we will not keep it “in an unworthy manner” (1 Corinthians 11:27-28). So we should use these days before the Passover to examine ourselves and repent of sin.
Who Should Keep the Passover?
Jesus said that the piece of unleavened bread He broke at the Passover represented His body. This has two meanings. First, it represented His physical body, which He allowed to be beaten and scourged for our physical and spiritual healing (Isaiah 53:5-6; 1 Peter 2:24).
The piece of bread also represents the spiritual “body of Christ,” which is the Church of God (1 Corinthians 12:27; Colossians 1:18). Paul explained that those in God’s Church, “though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one breads” at the Passover (1 Corinthians 10:17).
This means that only those who have been “baptized into one body” (the Church) and have received God’s spirit (1 Corinthians 12:12-13) should eat the bread at the Passover.
So the question you need to ask is, “Did I receive God’s spirit when I was baptized?” How can you know?
The Bible says we must repent before we are baptized (Acts 2:38), and “bear fruits worthy of repentance” (Matthew 3:8).
Many churches baptize babies. Others teach that you just need to believe. A few teach that repentance is necessary, but most people don’t realize that means they need to actually start obeying God’s commandments.
The Bible says that God gives His spirit “to those who obey Him” (Acts 5:32). So to receive God’s spirit you need to really believe (Mark 16:16), really repent (Acts 2:38), and really start to obey God (Matthew 3:8; Acts 5:32) before you are baptized.
(If you aren’t sure if you repented before you were baptized, carefully read the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20. Did you understand them when you were baptized? Had you begun to actually obey them? If not, then you need to repent and be baptized in order to receive the holy spirit.)
Only those who have made the New Covenant with God at baptism and received God’s spirit should eat the bread and drink the wine at Passover.
Wine?
We know that Jesus didn’t drink grape juice at the Passover, because the method to preserve grape juice wasn’t invented until 1869. In the land of Israel, the grape harvest ends in October, so there wasn’t any grape juice at the time of the Passover. Just wine.
The wine represents the blood of Jesus, which He gave to ratify the New Covenant and to redeem us from death.
How to Keep the Passover
Those who have been baptized into the body of Christ should “come together” (1 Corinthians 11:20) to celebrate the Passover with the rest of the Church. God’s Church follows the instructions Christ gave for celebrating the Passover in Matthew 25:26-30, Mark 14:22-26, Luke 22:14-23, John 13-17, and 1 Corinthians 11:17-34.