The Passover, the new meaning Christ gave it, and our relationship to it

“It shall greatly help ye to understand the Scriptures if thou mark not only what is spoken or written, but of whom and to whom, with what words, at what time, where, to what intent, with what circumstances, considering what goeth before and what followeth after.”—Myles Coverdale (1488-1569), from the Introduction to his 1535 translation of the Bible.

“This do in remembrance of Me,” Jesus commanded His disciples at His last Passover, two days before the official Passover preparation that was concurrent with His passion. (He probably elected to follow Moses’ calendar.)

The antecedent of “this” is the Passover, given by God to the Israelites in Egypt and performed every year since until the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. Henceforth, as often as His disciples would perform that ceremony, that is, annually, they were to contemplate not their ancestors’ miraculous escape from bondage, but Him, whose body, whose very Life, would soon be given for them.

Most Christians, from Roman Catholics to Plymouth Brethren, believe that Christ instituted an “ordinance” or “sacrament” at His last  Passover. The evidence for that belief, however, lies in tradition, not Scripture.

The Lord had expressed His desire to eat the Passover with his disciples. He also promised that He will do so again—”drink this fruit of the vine” (Matthew 26:29)—when, enthroned as His viceregents, they are resurrected in the Kingdom. In that time of “the renewal of all things,” they will judge the twelve tribes of Israel (Matthew 19:28).

Let’s put aside for the moment whether Christ intended His disciples to understand “This is my Body” and “This is my Blood” metaphorically or not. If the ceremony in question was the Passover, the point is moot.

The bread and the wine He distributed to His disciples were elements of ceremony that could no longer be performed halachically (in accordance with the Law of Moses) after Titus’s legions razed the Temple.

No Temple means no lamb sacrificed therein, which makes the observance of Passover impossible. For the next forty or so Passovers, however, believers in Him would do “this,” that is, perform the Passover with Him in mind.

“Take, eat; this is My body” (Matthew 26:26, Mark 14:22, Luke 22:19). The word “is” (ἐστιν, estin) signifies a metaphor, because those words came out of Jesus’ nonmetaphorical body that sat with the men who heard them (with their own bodily organs).

The antecedent of “this” is the unleavened bread of the Passover. It had symbolized (not transubstantiated) the Exodus from time immemorial. Henceforth, however, it must represent His body to them. There is neither the “institution” of a new ceremony nor the addition of a new element.

As for eating His flesh and drinking His blood, to which Jesus rather emphatically refers in the latter verses of John 6, consider the interpretation of Otis Q. Sellers who drew upon notes in the Companion Bible written (from Genesis 1 through John 10) by E. W. Bullinger:

The words of the Lord Jesus in John 6:51-58 [Sellers writes] have nothing whatsoever to do with any ceremonial eating of bread or drinking wine. In regard to this the Companion Bible says concerning “eating and drinking.”

The Hebrews used this expression with reference to knowledge by the Fig. Metonymy (of the subject), Ap. 6, as in Ex. 24:11, where it is put for being alive; so eating and drinking denoted the operation of the mind in receiving and “inwardly digesting” truth or the words of God. See Deut. 8:3 and compare Jer. 15:16, Ezek. 2:8. No idiom was more common in the days of our Lord. With them as with us, eating included the meaning of enjoyment, as in Ecc. 5:19; 6:2: for “riches” cannot be eaten, and the Talmud actually speaks of eating (i.e. enjoying) “the years of Messiah”, and instead of finding any difficulty in the figure they said that the days of Hezekiah were so good “Messiah will come no more to Israel; for they have already devoured Him in the days of Hezekiah” (Lightfoot [The Whole Works of the Rev. John Lightfoot, D.D.], vol. 12, pp. 296, 297 [1]). Even where eating is used of the devouring of enemies, it is the enjoyment of victory that is included. The Lord’s words could be understood thus by hearers, for they knew the idiom; but of “the eucharist” they knew nothing, and could not have thus understood them. By comparing verses 47 and 48 with verses 53 and 54, we see that believing on Christ was exactly the same thing as eating and drinking Him. (Companion Bible, note on John 6:53, page 1532; emphasis added).

Eating the flesh of Christ and drinking His blood [Sellers continues] means participation in and identification with His sacrifice. We must abandon all else and let Him give Himself for us and to us. We must appropriate by faith His blood-bought merits. His words in John 6 declare the truth that believing can be an act of eating and drinking. This Do in Remembrance, 1964, 48-49.

Christ also gave new meaning to the cup used in the Passover ceremony: it signified His blood of the new covenant [ἡ καινη διαθήκη, hē kainē diathēkē], the covenant Jeremiah prophesied:

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Jeremiah 31:31-34 (KJV)

This was the agreement God made with “the house of Israel and the house of Judah” and not any other people or nation. Not with Europeans or Americans or Chinese.

And the promises are irrevocable: the order of nature will be overturned before God breaks this covenant, that is, never. Jeremiah continues:

Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The Lord of hosts is his name: If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever. Thus saith the Lord; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord. Jeremiah 31:35-37 (KJV)

Regardless of what the Passover cup represented to any given Israelite, Christian or not, it would do so only for Israelites, only until 70 A.D., and never again until the restoration of all things in the Kingdom of God.

What about the words of Paul, the Apostle to the Nations—primarily Jews outside the land who felt like second-class citizens of Israel, little better than the non-Israelites into whose lands their ancestors had been dispersed, unable to keep the law of Moses because of their distance from the City of David?

Like the Corinthians?

For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup ye do shew the Lord’s death till He comes. 1 Corinthians 11:26

Annually was how often they would do those things for, again, the subject is the Passover. The Elizabethan English word “shew” translates καταγγέλλω  (katangellō), which means, “to announce.” But as someone’s behavior can “speak volumes” about what he or she believes without a word being uttered, so can a Passover commemoration proclaim the Lord’s death. There was no need for an after dinner speech.

Christian descendants of Israel in Corinth observed the Passover, but with Christ as their paschal lamb (1 Corinthians 11:20-34).

This had not been done before [Sellers writes], and to many outsiders it must have seemed like a direct flaunting of the law of God. . . . When the day came, they observed the Passover, but the paschal lamb was omitted. It seemed as if they had forgotten the most important element. But this omission was deliberate and for a purpose. By omitting the lamb and eating the Passover bread and drinking the Passover cup they pointed to another Lamb, even the Lamb of God, and so they announced the death of the Lord. Thus by their act they virtually shouted “We have a Lamb. Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us, and with Him as our paschal lamb we keep this feast! . . . .  [T]he announcement of the Lord’s death was based just as much on the omission of the lamb as it was on eating the bread and drinking the cup. This Do in Remembrance, 44.

There are other aspects to consider, such as the divine punishments (as well as blessings) of the New Covenant that were visited upon those who ate and drank damnation to themselves, not discerning the Lord’s body (1 Corinthians 11:27-29). That was during the Acts dispensation, which pertained almost wholly to Jews, inside and outside the Land of Israel. This requires one to “rightly divide the Word of Truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). Sellers sums up the point of this post:

On every hand today we see services that claim to be fulfillments of the Lord’s command “This do in remembrance of Me.” These services differ all the way from the ornate Mass to the simple ceremony of a [Plymouth] Brethren assembly. But there is one thing they have in common. Not one of them can be found in the Word of God. All they find is something like it. The Catholic finds something a little like his Mass there, and the Protestant finds something like his “Lord’s Supper,” but it is not actually there. All that is found there is Israel’s Passover. With this ceremony we have nothing to do. This Do in Remembrance, 46.

That is, if Coverdale’s precept is sound and if demonstrative pronouns mean anything.

Note

[1] I encourage interested readers to study Lightfoot’s comments on the metaphor in the PDF of this volume of his works. Here are most of them (minus the Hebrew characters and footnotes, which I could not reproduce without unduly postponing this essay’s publication):

I. There was nothing more common in the schools of the Jews, than the phrases of ‘eating and drinking,’ in a metaphorical sense. And surely, it would sound very harsh, if not to be understood here metaphorically, but literally. What! to drink blood? a thing so severely interdicted the Jews once and again.—What! to eat man’s flesh? a thing abhorrent to human nature: but, above all, abhorrent to the Jews, to whom it was not lawful . . . to eat a ‘member of a living beast,’ nor touch . . . ‘the member of a dead man.’

“Every eating and drinking, of which we find mention in the Book of Ecclesiastes, is to be understood of the Law and good works,” i. e. by way of parable and metaphor. By the Capernaite’s leave, therefore, and ·the Romanist’s too, we will understand the ‘eating’ and ‘drinking’ in this place, figuratively and parabolically.

II. Bread is very frequently used in the Jewish writers for doctrine. So that when Christ talks of’ eating his flesh,’ he might, perhaps, hint to them, that he would feed his followers, not only with his ‘doctrines,’ but with ‘himself’ too. . . . “The whole stay of bread,” Isa. iii. . . . ‘These are the Masters of Doctrine; as it is written, Come, eat of my bread, Prov. ix. 5.’ . . . ‘Feed him with bread, that is, Make him take pains in the warfare of the Law, as it is written, Come, eat of my bread.’

Moses fed you with doctrine and manna; but I feed you with doctrine and my flesh.

III. There is mention, even amongst the Talmudists themselves, of eating the Messiah . . . .”Israel shall eat the years of Messiah” . . . . We must except against that of R. Hillel, who saith, . . . “Messiah is not likely to come to Israel, for they have already devoured him in the days of Hezekiah.” Those words of Hillel are repeated, fol. 99. 1.

Behold, here is mention of ‘eating the Messiah,’ and none quarrel the phraseology.—They excepted against Hillel, indeed, that he should say, ‘That the Messiah was so eaten in the days of Hezekiah, that he was not like to appear again in Israel;’ but they made no scruple of the scheme and manner of speech at all. For they plainly enough understood what was meant by ‘eating the Messiah’; that is, that, in the days of Hezekiah, they so much partook of the Messiah, they received him so greedily, embraced him so gladly, and, in a manner, devoured him, that they must look for him no more· in the ages to come. . . .

IV. But the expression seems very harsh, when he speaks of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. He tells us, therefore, that these things must be taken in a spiritual sense: ‘Do these things offend you? What, and if you shall see the Son of man ascending up, where he was before?’ That is, “When you shall have seen me ascending into heaven, you will then find how impossible a thing it is to eat my flesh and drink my blood bodily: for how can you eat the flesh of one, that is in heaven? You may know, therefore, that I mean eating me spiritually: ‘For the words that I speak to you, they ate spirit, and they are life.’

V. But what sense did they take it in, that did understand it? Not in a sacramental sense, surely, unless they were then instructed in the death and passion of our Saviour; for the sacrament hath a relation to his death: but it sufficiently appears elsewhere, that they knew or expected nothing of that. Much less did they take it in a Jewish sense; for the Jewish conceits were about the mighty advantages, that should accrue to them from the Messiah, and those merely earthly and sensual. But to partake of the Messiah truly, is to partake of himself, his pure nature, his righteousness, his spirit; and to live and grow, and receive nourishment from that participation of him. Things which the Jewish schools heard little of, did not believe, did not think; but things which our blessed Saviour expresseth lively and comprehensively enough, by that of eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.

The Whole Works of the Rev. John Lightfoot, D.D., ed. Rev. John Rogers Pitman, (London: 1823), vol. 12, 295-97.