And he said to them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer.
Jesus sits down to His last meal with the disciples. His first words tell them how much He had wanted this evening. In the same breath He names the suffering that is only hours away.
Older translations read "with desire I have desired." The ESV puts it as "earnestly desired." One writer gives the force of the word.
Satan's power and illusion held men's souls. Our perfect blessed Saviour passed through that night, His last with His disciples. He ate that Passover supper of which He speaks in those touching words: "With desire ('earnest, yearning longing,' as the word means) I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer."
The same Greek word appears elsewhere in the New Testament with a very different sense. So what makes a longing holy?
"Desire" and "lust" are really the same word, as many passages show… It is the thing longed for that gives the feeling its character. If the object of the craving is good, according to God, then it is a holy desire. So the Lord Himself uses this very word when He speaks to His disciples here… "Lust," as James teaches, starts in us. But holy "desire" is the fruit of the Spirit of God working in the believer.
Compare His side of the table with theirs. The longing ran one way.
First of all His desire is to eat that paschal feast with His disciples. He was the only One who knew what it meant. To Him it spoke of a burden no mere man ever bore, or ever could bear. And yet with desire He desired to eat of that passover before He suffered. He knew it was the immediate forerunner of His death on the cross. Yet not one of the disciples desired to eat it with Him as He desired to eat it with them. This is love, and love is self-sacrificing.
The roast lamb in front of Him was a picture of Himself. One writer asks what He was thinking as He looked at it.
What a moment! On the night He was betrayed, Jehovah-Jesus sat down with His apostles to eat the last Passover with them before He died. A better blood had to be shed — the blood of the Lamb of God… On the table before Him and His apostles lay the roast lamb, and He Himself was the blessed reality it pictured. What was the train of His thoughts when the Holy Lamb of God looked at the picture before Him? Was it His own sufferings? Yes, but in what way? "With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you, before I suffer."
What He wanted from them was company — and He wanted it precisely because of what was coming.
Verse 15 is a most beautiful expression, restrained, yet showing the depth of His desire for fellowship with His disciples at the moment when His great sufferings were imminent… In deep affection for them He sought their affections too, some little comfort of their fellowship in view of His very soon being utterly alone on a cross of unspeakable agony.
This was the last Passover He would keep. He did not brush the old order aside.
Here the Lord shows how His heart goes out… As the words that follow show, He is closing His time on earth with them, and the old order of things with it. He closes it with honour, magnifying it by celebrating it. At the same time He longs for the better thing beyond — its glorious fulfilment in the Kingdom of God. His suffering was the only way to this fulfilment, and it was itself the strongest proof He could give of His longing for it.
At the Passover He ate with them. At the supper, minutes later, He was the one who gave.
Notice here two things. The Lord set up the supper after the passover, and He Himself ate the passover with them. It was His service to fulfil all righteousness. At the supper it was different. He entered deeply and perfectly into its character, in all its marvellous blessing to us, so that He gave thanks. Yet instead of eating, He gave it to His disciples to eat. He said, "Take, eat."
- Longing — The doubled wording means an earnest, yearning ache. The same word is elsewhere translated "lust." What is longed for decides whether the desire is holy or evil.
- Love — Not one disciple wanted that meal as much as He did. Love like that is self-sacrificing.
- Lamb — He alone knew what the roast lamb meant, because He was the One it pictured. Better blood was about to be shed.
- Last — It was His final Passover. He honoured the old order by keeping it, and looked past it to its fulfilment in the kingdom of God. His suffering was the only road there.
- Legacy — He ate the Passover with them. The supper that followed He did not eat; He handed it to them: "Take, eat."
For I say unto you, that I will not eat any more at all of it until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.
This was the last Passover meal Jesus would share with His disciples before the cross, and He points past it to a fulfilment still ahead. Two questions follow: what fulfils the Passover, and which kingdom is He waiting for?
The Lord opens the meal by telling them how much He wanted it.
First of all, His desire is to eat that Passover meal with His disciples. He was the only One who knew what it meant. To Him it spoke of a burden no mere man ever carried or could carry. And yet He longed to eat that Passover before He suffered. He knew it came right before His death on the cross. Yet not one of the disciples wanted to eat it with Him as much as He wanted to eat it with them. This is love, and love is self-sacrificing.
This was the last Passover of its kind. Its meaning pointed forward to the cross.
So far, this was the last Passover kept as God meant it to be kept. When the Lord died and the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, the Mosaic ritual began to fall away. Believers from among the Jews came to see that their place was outside the camp, and they left Jerusalem and the temple behind. The Lord's death fulfilled the Passover, just as the coming of the Holy Spirit fulfilled the feast of weeks. The blood of the Passover lamb was a picture of the blood of Christ. He is our Passover, and He has been sacrificed (1 Cor. 5:7). But at that moment the Passover was not yet fulfilled. So the Lord took part in it.
He eats with them. He does not drink with them. Then He puts something else in its place.
I think the account of the Passover in Luke shows the old system passing away and the new coming in. He shows true love to His disciples by eating with them for the last time — a token of affection, but He will not eat it any more. Then the Passover cup — fellowship and joy in it — He does not take at all. They are to divide it among themselves; He will not drink of it till the Kingdom of God comes. Then He sets up the new thing in His body broken — the remembrance of a new and better deliverance — and the Cross, the new covenant in His blood.
The change was not a repair of the old arrangement. The whole footing is new.
In the next place the Lord breaks every link with the old order of things. He says, "I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God." In this verse the question is not setting up the kingdom, or establishing it as things were. He is about to establish things on a wholly new basis through redemption, through the work He was about to do before God.
Commentators differ over the timing of "the kingdom of God" here. Some read it as the kingdom that was about to arrive in a new, moral form:
It was about to come in a moral way. Luke holds to that great principle: God was about to establish His kingdom in what you may call the Christian system.
Others place it further ahead, at the day when Israel sees the One they rejected:
He would not eat the Passover again until its spiritual meaning is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. His own death did fulfil the meaning of the Passover. But Israel stays blind to this until they "look on Me, on Him whom they have pierced" (Zech. 12:10), and He will bring in the kingdom for that nation. Only then will the Passover be fulfilled for them.
He shares the food. He passes the cup to them untouched. One writer reads this as a refusal of gladness.
Why did He not take the cup? The Passover rules did not require it. "Now," said the Lord, "I will not taste joy." As an obedient Jew, He kept the Passover, but joy waited for Him in the kingdom. Till then, He knows no earthly joy.
- Desired — He longed for this meal knowing it was the last before the cross; He wanted it more than any of them did.
- Fulfilled — the Passover pointed forward, and His death answered it: "Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed."
- Finished — the last true Passover closed the old system. In its place He gave bread and cup, the memorial of a better deliverance.
- Delayed — commentators differ on the timing. Does "the kingdom of God" mean the kingdom coming now in a moral way, or the day when Israel sees the One they pierced?
- Deferred joy — He ate but would not drink. The cup of gladness waits for the kingdom.