User blog:AdamSch/Passover and Good Friday- No Coincidence

Hello readers! As you all should know,  the holiday Easter is coming up soon. Easter is the holiday that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ and is accompanied immediately before by a series of several holidays titled “Holy Week”. The “Holy Week” begins with Palm Sunday (the commemoration of Jesus entering Jerusalem for the final time to be greeted with crowds with palm leaves). It continues with various anniversaries of some of Jesus’s final actions before his crucifixion and leads up to Good Friday the death of Christ and ends with Easter. Another holiday series around that time is the Passover, which was the feast Jesus was celebrating with his disciples during the Last Supper. Interestingly Good Friday and the beginning of Passover began on the same dates and the Passover itself is very symbolic of the death of Christ. It is no coincidence they occurred on the same dates in different years but rather this can be traced back to a God who knows the future and a Scripture that is inspired by God. Amazingly, Moses had no idea about Christ at the time the Passover happened, yet it’s as the Passover was written in the Bible to purposely foreshadow death of Jesus.

To give a bit of background and set the stage for the Passover, the Israelites were still under the subjugation of the Egyptians and God had performed 11 plagues prior, none of these changing the mind of Ramses to free the Israelites. Therefore God commanded the Israelites to kill a lamb and put its blood on the doorframe and that tan Angel would pass over the house if it had the blood. That night the Angel of the LORD did what was promised and went into the firstborn of all who did not have the lamb’s blood on their door and killed them. This included not just the Egyptians but also their livestock and there was not a house with one dead.

The Angel that God had sent passed over the Israelites home when seeing the blood of a lamb. Jesus is referred to a lamb by John the Baptist  and is even called the Passover lamb by Paul in his first letter to the Church of Corinth. God came in human flesh and form and actually became human to be our passover lamb. God literally chose to be human, to experience all human temptations, and to live and die.

According to the account in Exodus, God had very specific requirements for the lamb that was to be killed. One of these requirements was it was to be without a blemish and have no fault. Jesus meets this requirement as he had no sin. This was required, because an impure subject of sacrificing could not be atonement for the sins for humanity. The Israelites were obedient throughout their history in very specific sacrificing of animals. These animals, by their blood compensated for their punishment. So when God saw the blood of the animals the Israelites had sacrificed, he had temporarily passed over judgement. These animals were not human and therefore could not act as permanent replacements. Jesus Christ did not sin and acted as a perfect replacement for the lamb or bull that would be sacrificed. The animal being sacrificed would take the punishment and specifically in the passover would take the death penalty for the Israelites. And when the Angel of Death saw this blood on the doorframes he passed on by that household as does God do with each and one us. When God sees that you are covered in Christ’s blood and that you accept it you will be forgiven and your judgement will be passed over.

This is what Easter is truly about; that Jesus Christ a perfect embodiment of God Himself in flesh and bone came down, was tempted by everything we were and still did not sin. Only a human that did not sin could act as permanent replacement, by his death and blood and take the punishment for sin so that we may be forgiven. So that us who have broken a law and are lawbreakers still have a chance to have an eternity with God. When we break one law, we break the whole law and that leaves us to not even deserve this amazing grace. It didn’t just stop there are this amazing act of love. Jesus rose on the day we call Easter. The day we celebrate to remember that He is alive and then He gave us a commission to make disciples in every nation. Let this Easter be a true reminder of how the gory death of God, rescued us from having such a similar punishment.