What does it mean that Christ our Passover Lamb was sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5:7)?

The Passover shows us the cross of Christ as a shelter from the judgment of God. "For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment." (Ex. 12:12) Now Israel themselves could only be sheltered by the blood of the paschal lamb placed between the people as sinners and God as a Judge who was against them. This is expiation. The blood stays God, so to speak; keeps Him outside, and places us in safety inside. "When I see the blood I will pass over you." Only let us not forget that it is the love of God which provides the sacrifice capable of meeting His own judgment. Love thus spares the people who could not of themselves escape judgment any more than the Egyptians.

But we learn more than this in the Passover. The blood was that of the paschal lamb wholly roast with fire; a type of Christ who endured in the fullest way both externally and in the depths of His whole being the judgment of God for us and in our stead. Whilst under the shelter of the blood, the Israelites, and above all the believers amongst them, found food for their hearts in the thought of Him in death, yet with a deep feeling of the bitterness of sin, as typified by the bitter herbs, but of a sin completely atoned for.

70 Let us consider a little the nature of sacrifice. "Christ our passover is sacrificed for us" (1 Cor. 5:7). Now, how was this done? Was it by simply shewing love to Israel, in that there was One willing to suffer in this work of love? Nothing of the sort. God was going through in judgment to smite the guilty. Why should not Israel be smitten? They were guilty; they had even fallen, as Ezekiel 20 shews us, into the idolatry of the Egyptians. They were to put the blood on the doorposts, that, when judgment passed, they might be safe. "When I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt." That is, the blood of the slain victim-the figure of the true Lamb-secured them from judgment. Do you deny that Christ was our true paschal Lamb?

Here is another feature to be noticed. The passover was followed immediately by the feast of unleavened bread. Not a single day was allowed to intervene. For as an ordinary rule, there was a space between these different feasts; but here is a plain exception to the rule. Let me ask who could, save by God's power, have appreciated the force of this beforehand? Now that it is revealed, we may follow. Like Moses from the cleft of the rock, one can see Him as He passes before us; but who can go before Him? The passover was followed immediately by the feast of unleavened bread. There was not the lapse of a day between them — one being on the fourteenth, the other on the fifteenth, of the same month. As the feast of unleavened bread in the New Testament is treated as beginning with the killing of the paschal lamb, the immediate response of the Christian to Christ's blood is to walk in holiness. Henceforth God will not have him to claim a single day to himself. At once he is called by the grace of God to own his responsibility to put away all leaven. We know from 1 Cor. 5:7 that leaven is symbolic of corruption. "For also Christ, our passover, was sacrificed for us; wherefore let us keep the feast." What feast? That of unleavened bread.

Now comes the grave warning of the apostle in Christ's faithful love to the church. The tolerance of evil in any part vitiates the whole. It virtually commits the Holy Ghost to the sanction of what God hates. No interpretation can be more contrary to the spirit of the apostle's admonition than that which supposes that the whole is only leavened when every part is saturated with the leaven. It is really meant that a little leaven gives its character to the whole lump. Even the late Dean Alford (though far from sound generally in doctrine, strict in ecclesiastical principle, or firm for the glory of Christ) speaks incomparably better than those brethren who debase the holy name of love to mean license for their friends or themselves. "That this is the meaning," says he, "and not 'that a little leaven will if not purged out leaven the whole lump,' is manifest from the point in hand, namely, the inconsistency of their boasting: which would not appear by their danger of corruption hereafter, but by their character being actually lost. One of them was a fornicator of a fearfully depraved kind, tolerated and harboured: by this fact the character of the whole was tainted." (Comment on 1 Cor. 5)

The apostle therefore charges them to purge out the old leaven, that they might be fresh dough, "according as ye are unleavened." This is of high importance. The saints are unleavened, not merely ought to be. Their practical conduct is grounded on their standing. All efforts to deny the purity of the church are from the enemy. The apostle, writing even to the Corinthians, reminds them of this, and insists upon it. He recalls them to what God's grace had done for them. He rouses their conscience to act consistently with and for Christ. Never does he think of allowing sin, because saints have the old man as well as the new. Was not the old man crucified with Christ? If God has already executed sentence upon it, there is no excuse for allowing it. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set every believer free. Not only has he a new nature, but the Holy Ghost to work in it by the word and grace of Christ. They were unleavened then and must purge out the old leaven. The very object of God was to form the church in purity for Christ and according to Christ in this world, and the responsibility of the saints is to walk individually and corporately according to Him. His word makes His will plain.

But the figure of an unleavened lump at once recalls Christ as the true paschal lamb, and the consequent putting away of sin by His sacrifice. This deepens the ground on which the apostle demands that sin should be judged by the saints if through unwatchfulness any one had fallen into sin and repented not. The feast of unleavened bread was bound up with the passover, as every Israelite knew. This is turned to practical account here. "Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened [bread] of sincerity and truth." There might be new forms of evil besides those of old habits and associations. But as all leaven had to be shut out by the Jew, so the Christian is solemnly called to deal unsparingly with evil in every shape.

In order to explain the principle further, and to show its application fully, the apostle uses the figure of leaven, intelligible to everyone familiar with its working, and especially to such as knew the care to get rid of it required at the paschal feast, which bore typically on the redeemed. Leaven represents corruption — evil in its tendency to spread and in its character of contaminating. "Your glorying is not good: know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened. For our passover also, Christ, was sacrificed: wherefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven nor with leaven of malice and wickedness, but with unleavened things of sincerity and truth." Clearly Christ's sacrifice, set forth in the paschal lamb, is the ground and means by which Christians are unleavened. The feast of unleavened bread that follows figures the hallowed condition that attaches to them imperatively.

Jehovah says, "I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am Jehovah. And the blood shall be unto you for a token upon the houses where ye are; and when I see the blood I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt" (v. 12, 13). This was not the deliverance of Israel, like the passage of the Red Sea, but it was the ground of it; and of the two, the Passover was really the more solemn morally, though the Red Sea displayed God's saving power more gloriously on behalf of His people and against their foes. But on the paschal night it was a question how God could pass over the guilty, even if His people; and the blood of the lamb sprinkled on Israel's doorposts declared that God, though expressly judging, could not touch those screened thereby His truth and justice were stayed and satisfied before that blood. The destroyer was kept from entering. Not an Israelite perished within the blood-sprinkled lintels. It was a question of arresting God's judgment here, of destroying Satan's power in the type of the Red Sea; but the blood of Christ laid the foundation for the victory displayed in His resurrection.

But it is God as Judge which is the prominent idea in the passover. Every blessing flows from it. Still on that night the word was "I will pass over:" not communion with God, but barring out judgment; God as Judge was going through the land, searching for sinners, not to save but to slay. Blood by His own appointment turns away His eye from the sinner, and the Judge passes on as if there were no sinners in the house. "When I see the blood, I will pass over." While the blood upon the door-post prevented the entrance of judgment, other truths were typified in the house, truth beyond the intelligence of the Israelite. But God was setting forth truth for us as well as for Israel. Eating the lamb was a symbolic owning that the blood on the door-post was a substitute for their own. In some measure this is identification with the lamb; not the truth brought out after the cross, that we have with Christ died to sin and law, which goes with assurance of life (Rom. 6 and 7); but that they as sinners were deserving of death, yet were sheltered by the blood of the typical lamb. This confession of having deserved death was not to be lightly made; there must be with it a realizing the bitterness of sin, "with bitter herbs" (that is, genuine repentance, a turning to God) to be eaten with unleavened bread. No allowance or excuse for sin can be: those who eat the roast lamb eat it with bitter herbs and under the shelter of the blood. With all this there is no assurance of life nor sense of justification. It is the moral and necessary preparation, typically, for God righteously to lead out His chosen people from the land of bondage. As there must be a divine and adequate reason why the sinner should live — the sprinkled blood, so there must be a moral preparation of the soul. The divine ground of deliverance was outside for the eye of God, the moral preparation was inside. Therefore not only the unleavened bread and bitter herbs, but they eat in haste, standing staff in hand and their feet shod. They were thus ready and fitted by grace to be led out of the land of bondage — of sin — by the mighty hand of God who had found a ransom. This moral preparation however would have been vain, had it not been for the blood sprinkled on the door-post. For if the Avenger entered, neither the bitter herbs nor the unleavened bread could save them: God is Judge first, then is Saviour.

The Passover speaks of Calvary: “Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5: 7). The Passover shows us how someone can find refuge under the blood of the Lamb of God (cf. 1 Peter 1: 19, for example). The Passover, which was celebrated annually, give us several parallels to the Lord’s Supper.

The Passover spoke, in the first place, of the just judgment about to descend upon every house in Egypt not sheltered by the token of the blood. God was seeking sinners to slay — not to save. The Blood on the lintel stayed the stroke of justice, for it showed that death, in type, had already been there. They were sheltered. Inside the house, and under that shelter, they partook of the lamb roast with fire. It was identification with the victim, and thus a confession that death was deserved. Sheltered by the blood and sustained by the feast, Israel marched out of the land of bondage. God was known to them first as a Judge, whose claims had been righteously met in the death of another, and then as a Saviour-God, whose power and grace were now free to flow out towards them without measure and without end.

When the Lord delivered His people Israel out of Egypt, they were sheltered by the blood of the Passover lamb, and within their houses upon which the blood was sprinkled, they were to eat the lamb, “roast with fire, and unleavened bread, and with bitter herbs” (Ex. 12:7–9). It was a picture for us of how the death of Christ was to be appropriated. The lamb roast with fire surely speaks eloquently to us of Christ having died for us under God’s judgment, and it is as sheltered with His blood that we feed upon, appropriate for ourselves, the love of God made known in death for His people.