The Sacrifice of Christ is not Passover

 St. Gregory the Theologian once asked to whom was the blood of Christ offered and why was it shed? His conclusion was that our lord shed his blood to sanctify and empower our humanity. According to him, it’s the blood of our Lord that gives us power over the evil one, the god of this world, who once had power over us. The saint is clear that this blood was not given for appeasement. Jesus Christ did not shed his blood because we are sinners in the hands of the angry God. His blood was not shed to be a passover.

 

Traditionally amongst many Christians, the Passover in the book of Exodus has been understood as a symbol of appeasement. It is a way to deal with a wrathful God.  In essence, Jesus is the Passover lamb that is killed so that the judgment of God can pass over us.  Aside from the references in the gospels to Jesus being a lamb the Apostle Paul specifically said that “Christ is our Passover” in 1 Corinthians 5:7. When such references are used appeasement is always assumed in the interpretation. However, in the case of the Apostle Paul if you read the whole chapter the emphasis is on a new way of life and of leaving this fallen world behind, which was originally the basis of the Passover in Exodus.

 

In Exodus 12:12 it says that the God of the Hebrews will render justice against all the gods of Egypt. Every plague that Egypt experienced was not based on God being angry with specific people. The judgments were against the gods of this world, the gods in Egypt, and how they manifested themselves in the people, specifically the pharaoh, and in the places and things that represented their dominion. Consequently, the vast majority of Egyptians, Hebrews, or foreigners at that time who suffered from these plagues were more or less experiencing collateral damage because these plagues were not about them.   

 

When it comes to the last plague, the last part of the final judgment against the Egyptian gods, it involved the dominion of the god Khnum. He was the god who had the physical attributes of a lamb. He was also the god who formed babies and placed them inside their mothers’ wombs. He in essence was the source of all the first born in the Land.  In this last act of judgment, God would use his people. They would be the ones to bring about the judgment against this god and its presence in the land. They did so by ritualistically consuming it to bring about its destruction, and by placing its blood on their doorposts.

 

What the Hebrews did was not appeasement. It was a priestly act of defeating the presence of evil in the world. The act of passing over the homes by the destroying angel was not done because the Hebrews were shielded. Rather, the blood that this angel saw was a proclamation that the gods of Egypt no longer had dominion in this place.  The Hebrews inside these places had ritualistically participated in what the destroying angle would eventually finish, which was the beginning of the salvation of the world as we know it.  

 

As I mentioned, the Passover was not about appeasing an angry god’s wrath. Passover was a consecration. It was an action where the Hebrews were given the power to participate in God’s judgment against the gods of this world. It was the foundation for the Hebrews to become a Kingdom of priests and a Holy Nation. In essence, it was an ordination ceremony just like the one we see in the New Testament where the Lord at the Last Supper makes the first priests of the New Covenant.