Mary and Joseph went to Jerusalem every year for Passover, as God had directed Luke , and as an adult, Jesus continued to return to Jerusalem for the Passover and is recorded going more than once with His disciples John The Last Supper, before Jesus was arrested and put to death, was a Passover meal.
The first Christians were Jews, and as such, continued to worship in synagogues and partake in many Jewish customs. Paul, though an apostle to the Gentiles, appears to have continued celebrating Passover Acts ; Acts ; 1 Corinthians Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch — as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Jesus is likened to the sacrificial lamb. As time went on, the church grew from majority Jewish to majority Gentile. These Gentiles were largely unaware of Jewish culture, so those things not specifically tied-up with Christian doctrine were often lost. As Christians, the church was no longer bound by Old Testament law Romans With these laws, many of the associated customs fell away as well.
Eventually, the celebration of Easter grew more prevalent than the celebration of Passover. In AD at the Council of Nicaea, Easter was cemented as the day to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, and its date was also determined. This was when Easter perhaps most officially replaced Passover. However, today, more Christians are beginning to take an interest in Passover and its meaning for the Jewish people and Christians alike.
In the end, we must look to verses like Colossians :. Immediately upon their departure from Egypt, He instituted the Feast of Passover as an everlasting memorial to the astounding feat of their deliverance. God set an annual appointment for Israel to intentionally remember what He had done for them in the Passover and Exodus.
Thousands of years later, Jewish people commemorate this and tell their children, passing on a legacy of faith in the one true God, just as He commanded them. The final plague in Egypt was the death of the firstborn of all households. God revealed to Israel the one way they would be spared: They were to sacrifice an unblemished lamb and brush its blood on the lintel and doorposts of their homes. Only then would the Angel of Death pass over their homes and spare their firstborn. As Messianic Jews celebrate Passover, they also celebrate the eternal deliverance provided by Messiah Yeshua.
Sign Up Log in Search. Blog Magazine Newsletter Messianic Literature. Who Is Yeshua? Published on March 15, Passover is the second most important holy day of the Jewish year. God delivered the Jewish people from years of slavery Four hundred years before the Passover, God saved the Jewish people from a deadly famine by bringing them to Egypt, the only nation prepared with storehouses of food.
God showed His power through the miracles surrounding Passover Pharaoh recoiled at the idea of letting the Hebrew slaves leave Egypt.
God reaffirmed His covenant with Abraham and further set apart the Jewish people as His Chosen People For generations, slavery was all the Jewish people knew. The links between the two events existed historically and remain canonized in Scripture. Paul said Jesus is our Passover lamb 1 Cor. Both the original Exodus and the Cross deliver people and show that God keeps his promises. When believers in Jesus observe a Seder, they affirm and celebrate these links and the continuity of the testaments.
The Seder is uniquely Jewish, born of the Jewish reading of the Torah, shaped by the architecture of our magisterial Perushim-Pharisees and their rabbis, and given artistry and beauty through 2, years of Jewish experience.
Christians best honor their Jewish neighbors, to whom they wish to express the love of Christ, by recognizing that the Seder meal is the unique spiritual heritage of the Jewish people and respecting it as such. We believe such statements undo the bridges built over the last 50 years of Jewish-Christian relations. The question of whether or not Jesus celebrated a Passover Seder as we now know it today is to some degree moot.
He observed the Passover in the same way as any other first-century Jew. This event can draw Jews and Christians closer to one another rather than driving an additional wedge between our faith communities.
What is concerning to us is when Christians do not see any identification with the Jewish people and the Jewish backgrounds of their faith. But more to the point, we simply cannot rob Christians of their heritage in Jesus—especially not the events of the Last Supper, which was clearly some type of Passover celebration. Bock is executive director of Cultural Engagement and senior research professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. Already a subscriber? Log in to continue reading.
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Sections Home. Bible Coronavirus Prayer. Subscribe Member Benefits Give a Gift. Subscribers receive full access to the archives. Mitch Glaser and Darrell Bock April 10, The Last Supper accounts in the Gospels record a number of themes and practices held in common with the Passover Seder.
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