Should Christians celebrate Passover?

We should, on divine authority, and in spiritual, scriptural intelligence, hold to it, that the Lord's supper is the due characteristic expression of the Lord's-day — that which should then be made principal. If we read Luke 22:7-20, we shall learn that the passover of the Jews and the supper of the Lord being then exhibited successively — the one after the other — the latter thenceforth was to displace the former, and that for ever. The former, with other meanings attached to it, was the foreshadowing of the Great Sacrifice which was in due time to put away sin. The latter is now the celebration of the great fact that that sacrifice has been offered, and that, for faith, sin is put away. After the Lord's supper therefore is instituted, it is impossible to return to the passover. It would be apostasy — a giving up of God's lamb and of the atonement.

Now let us notice for a little the actual institution of the Supper by our Lord. The details are all familiar to us who are present, no doubt. While the disciples were eating, the Lord took bread. This act was not associated with the ritual of the passover supper; it was an act quite separate, of course, and quite distinct from it. The passover supper was kept, the ceremony was maintained in the prescribed form, and then the Lord instituted a new Supper, and one that would supersede it, because the passover was about to be fulfilled by the sacrifice of our Lord Himself, and having been fulfilled, it disappears, as it were, from the round of appointed feasts.

If we read Luke 22:7-20, we shall learn that the passover of the Jews and the supper of the Lord being then exhibited successively - the one after the other - the latter thenceforth was to displace the former, and that for ever. The former, with other meanings attached to it, was the foreshadowing of the Great Sacrifice which was in due time to put away sin. The latter is now the celebration of the great fact that that sacrifice has been offered, and that, for faith, sin is put away.

We have here a supper at Bethany and a supper at Jerusalem: one of them simply a supper in the house of those whom Jesus loved; the other a new thing instituted at the Paschal feast,137 which it was to set aside, while for the Church it was to be the standing memorial of the Lord Jesus that should follow.

But an outward observance of times and seasons belongs not to those who worship God in the Spirit, as themselves already by faith risen with Christ, and therefore no longer in the flesh. Viewed' in this light, the life which we now live in the flesh is a seven days' feast of unleavened bread; Christ, our passover, having been sacrificed for us, our present calling is to keep the feast; feeding now in spirit on the living Bread, and watchfully endeavouring to shun all forms of evil in communion with Him whose love is our life and hope. The shadowy ordinances have fled into oblivion before the bright shining of the living Truth. "The body is of Christ" (Col. 2:17). From Him, and not from Moses, they who are His house receive the law of their behaviour and the ordinances of their worship. He has given them a new commandment, which they keep only who abide in Him (John 15:12). He has charged us with a service of remembrance whose demand upon our conscience is forgotten in the weight of its appeal to our hearts (1 Cor. 11:24-25). The teacher of formalism is the spirit of error and of bondage, not of truth and grace. And if it should be asked, may not a Christian voluntarily hallow and observe those seasons and events in the life of our Lord that correspond historically with the typical observances which shadowed them before, it would ill become any who hold in due reverence the emotional longings of true piety to deny peremptorily such a form of spiritual liberty. If all other things are lawful, though not all expedient, surely this may be held in some cases both lawful and expedient. For whatever is done by believers at the dictate of their love to Christ has intrinsic value in His eyes, and should have also in the eyes of all who have His mind. But to impose such observances on Christians as things necessary is to repeat, with far less excuse, the sin of those who laboured to bring the Churches of Galatia under the legal yoke. It should be well remembered also that spiritual sentiment, though claiming always Christian sympathy, affords no solid ground for faith to walk on. It is moreover in its nature adverse to true edification, if indulged without due regard to the positive teachings of the Spirit in the written word. For although believers are not under the law, but under grace, obedience is the virtue most esteemed of God in the children whom He calls His own. His will, and not their own religious feeling, is their proper guide, and an unrequired yet fixed and formal habit of observance is, in the nature of it, "will-worship" rather than the genuine work of faith.

“One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” The reason for regarding special days can easily be seen in Judaism. God had established them in that system of things — certainly only as typical of better things to come, and not in themselves of any spiritual value. Yet if souls still clung in measure to the observance of those days as something that conscience requires of them, let no issue be raised on this account. Nor on the other hand are they to be allowed to require it of others.

In Romans 14 the Spirit of God gives us further teaching on the subject of days from another point of view. We have suggested that this chapter referred especially to the Jewish believers who had been brought up to such things; and there are many even Gentiles in our own day who are in a very similar position. They have been brought up to forms and ceremonies, and they have a conscience that they should observe them. We are to bear with these saints, and remember they keep the day as to the Lord. We sometimes hear very bitter things said against those who keep Christmas day. It is true that "Christ was not born in December. The time at which Mary went to visit Elizabeth proves that, if compared with the order of the twenty-four courses of the priests. Zecharias was the eighth course" (J. N. Darby). But there are many dear children of God who esteem this day above other days: not in the spirit of Galatians 4, but in the spirit of Romans 14. To such the Spirit says, "He that regardeth the day regardeth it unto the Lord." Rom. 14:6. And to those who judge and criticise their brethren for this act, the Lord says very plainly, "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own Master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand … But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ … Let us not therefore judge one another any more; but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way." Rom. 14:4, 10, 13. It is true that the one who is under the dominion of days and meats is called by the Holy Spirit "weak in the faith." But we are to receive such, and not judge him. (See Rom. 14:1.) And in all these things may we ever remember the words: "Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace." Rom. 14:19.

Believers today are not told to literally eat unleavened bread, as Israel was, but rather to observe the spiritual meaning of this, as told us in 1 Corinthians 5:7: "Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."

For God’s people Israel, His intervention to set them free from the bondage and oppression of Pharaoh was a very great event, and God would have them feel that their deliverance could only be accomplished through death. God’s righteous judgment was about to reach its height in Egypt in the death of the firstborn, and His people could only escape this judgment through the shedding and sprinkling of the blood of the Paschal lamb. Nor was the feeling of redemption by blood to pass with the event in Egypt; there was to be a memorial feast celebrated annually “by an ordinance for ever.” God would have this great truth to be constantly impressed upon His people, and to assure that this was done it is numbered among the “feasts of Jehovah” given by God to Moses, and recorded in Leviticus 23.

Although celebrating God’s deliverance of His people Israel, the passover indicated for a much wider circle the redemptive work of our Lord Jesus Christ, even as Paul wrote to the saints at Corinth, “For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5:7-8). This shows that the teaching of the passover is for the Christian as well as the Jew, foreshadowing Christ’s death to bring blessing to both, and having a very practical bearing on our conduct today. Those who have found shelter from divine judgment through the precious blood of Christ, and who have received life by feeding on His death, are under obligation to walk apart from all that is inconsistent with the death of Christ.

The announcement was made at the time that the night of the Passover was to be particularly observed by all the children of Israel throughout their generations. But since Israel has been scattered from their land after rejecting Christ, the temple being destroyed, the Passover can no longer be kept in God's appointed way. It lacks the shedding of the blood of the lamb, which was the very heart of the matter. But from God's sovereign point of view, this is of great value, for it tells us that the one sacrifice of Christ is the sufficient answer to all that the Passover signified. “Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us” (1 Cor. 5:7).