The Passover Is Instituted Series

We have called the Passover a sacrifice. That has been disputed, but unreasonably. No doubt, it was a peculiar kind of Sacrifice, unlike those of the last ritual in many respects, and scarcely capable of being classified among them. However, keeping its strictly sacrificial character in view is vital, for it is essential to its meaning and specific aspect. The proofs of its sacrificial nature are abundant. The instructions as to the selection of the Lamb; the method of disposing of the blood, which was sprinkled with hyssop-a peculiarly sacrificial usage; the treatment of the remainder after the feast; the very feast itself-all testify that it was a sacrifice in the most accurate use of the word. The designation of it as a Passover to the Lord,' and in set terms as a 'sacrifice,' in Exodus 12:27 and elsewhere, to say nothing of its later form when it became a regular Temple sacrifice or of Paul's distinct language in 1 Corinthians 5:7, or Peter's quotation of the very words of Exodus 12:5, applied to Christ, a lamb without blemish,' all point in the same direction. But if a sacrifice, what kind of Sacrifice was it? The first purpose was that the blood might be sprinkled on the door-posts and lintels, so the house was safe when the destroying angel passed through the land. Such is the explanation given in Exodus 12:13, which is the divine declaration of its meaning. This is the center of the rite; from it, the name was derived. Whether readers accept the doctrines of substitution and penitence or not, it ought to be impossible for an honest reader of these verses to deny that these doctrines or thoughts are there. They may be only the barbarous notions of a half-savage age and people. However, whatever they are, there they are. The Lamb without blemish, carefully chosen and kept for four days, till it had become as it were part of the household, and then solemnly slain by the head of the family, was their representative. When they sprinkled its blood on the posts, they confessed that they were in peril of the destroying angel because of their impurity and presented the blood as compensation. So far, their act was an act of confession, deprecation, and faith. It accepted the divinely appointed means of safety. The consequence was exemption from the fatal stroke, which fell on all homes from the palace to the enslaved people's hovel, where that red streak was not found. If any son of Abraham had despised the provision for safety, he would have been a partaker of the plague.

All this refers only to an exemption from outward punishment, and we are not obliged to attribute to these terrified bondmen any higher thoughts. But clearly, their obedience to the command implied a belief in the divine voice; the command embodied, though in application to a quick judgment, the broad principles of sacrificial substitution, penitence by blood, and safety by the individual application of that shed blood.

In other words, the Passover is a Gospel before the Gospel. We are sometimes told that in its sacrificial ideas, Christianity still dresses in 'Hebrew old clothes.' We believe, on the contrary, that the whole sacrificial system of Judaism had for its highest purpose to shadow forth the coming redemption. Christ is not spoken of as 'our Passover' because the Mosaic ritual had happened to have that ceremonial. However, the Mosaic ritual was ceremonial mainly because Christ is our Passover. His blood shed on the Cross and sprinkled on our consciences does in a spiritual reality that the Jewish Passover only did in outward form. However exciting and hotly contested, all other questions about the Old Testament are of secondary importance compared with this. Is its chief purpose prophesying Christ, His atoning death, His kingdom, and Church, or is it not? The New Testament does not doubt the answer. The Evangelist John finds in the singular swiftness of our Lord's death, which secured the exemption of His sacred body from the violence inflicted on His fellow sufferers, a fulfillment of the paschal injunction that not a bone should be broken; and so, by one passing allusion, shows that he recognized Christ as the true Passover. John the Baptist's rapturous exclamation, 'Behold the Lamb of God!' blends allusions to the Passover, the daily Sacrifice, and Isaiah's great prophecy. The day of the Crucifixion, regarded as fixed by divine Providence, may be taken as God's finger pointing to the Lamb He has provided. Paul's language already referred to attests to the same truth. Moreover, even the last lofty visions of the Apocalypse, where the old man in Patmos so touchingly recurs to the earliest words which brought him to Jesus, echo the same conviction and disclose, amidst the glories of the throne, a Lamb as it had been slain.'