Passing Over to Faith

It was their last night in the land of their oppression. The midnight of judgment was nigh. Every house of Israel had, four days earlier, carefully selected a lamb or kid, keeping it near (Exodus 12:3-6). A destroyer was on his way, on his way to rip away every firstborn son in all the land. But in the lamb, Israel would find protection. At twilight on the designated day, every head of household was deputized a priest, sacrificing the lamb (Exodus 12:6). All Hebrew homes used hyssop to paint their entryways with blood like altars (Exodus 12:7). Inside, with feet shod and staff in hand, each family ate the roasted lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs (Exodus 12:8-11). Of each in Israel it would be said, “by faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them” (Hebrews 11:28). In faith, each ransomed their families by the lamb, and this destroying power passed quietly over them as gods, men, and beasts were judged (Exodus 12:12-13).

Stricken in the midnight judgment, the Egyptians were keenly eager to send Israel away, to bribe Israel to leave with whatever it took (Exodus 12:29-35). “The LORD had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians so that they let them have whatever they asked; thus they plundered the Egyptians,” receiving reparations for their generations of forced labor (Exodus 12:36). As Israel and a mixed multitude journeyed under cover of darkness to Egypt's borders (Exodus 12:37-38), Moses declared that every firstborn of this redeemed people was to be consecrated to the LORD (Exodus 13:2). Reaching the sea, threatened by destruction at an Egyptian hand, yet the LORD parted the waters from the waters to create a new way, and the people had no task but to believe – and then to walk through in faith, themselves passing over the seabed to freedom (Exodus 14:21-29). Safe on the far side, they sang a song of sweet salvation, and how every pagan power would tremble “till your people, O LORD, pass by, till the people pass by whom you have purchased” (Exodus 15:16).

Every year, planted in the sanctuary their Lord had established, all Israel would repeat the sacrificial meal that heralded their salvation. And so there came an hour when Israel's Messiah – who had been “foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for your sake” (1 Peter 1:20) – reclined at a table with his disciples in an upper room which had been furnished for their yearly observance of that Passover meal (Luke 22:7-14). For, he told them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15). That evening, “he took bread and, when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, 'This is my body, which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me.' And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, 'This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood'” (Luke 22:19-20).

Less than eighteen tumultuous hours later, as the sun reached its noonday heights overhead, the fists of callous Roman soldiers were smashing nails through his hands and feet, hauling his battered and bloodied body upright on the cross, all while the crowds smugly jeered and mocked him as a failure, as ineffectual to help himself as the Egyptians. How little they understood, though the heavens scowled black and the earth shook in fright. Three hours later, having embraced the depths of suffering and shame, the Messiah offered up his life to his Father: “Christ, our Passover Lamb” – “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” – “has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7; John 1:29). It was an act of perfect divine love, an act of perfect human hope, an act marrying perfect divine faithfulness to perfect human faith.  It was the highest worship ever rendered in heaven above or on earth below, purer than every hymn of cherubim and seraphim.  It was the costliest work ever brought to a conclusion, more taxing than to swat down all the flames of hell barehanded.  It was the culmination by the holiest death of the liveliest life ever lived in all of God's creation.

That next sabbath, so silent on earth, was all uproar below. As the Hebrews had plundered the Egyptians, so he plundered the whole realm of Death of its treasures: the holy souls once imprisoned there. Then came the next morning, the morning which is this morning. Just as Israel began to ascend from Egypt before sunrise, so ere the darkness had fully lifted off the land, the stone had been rolled away by angel hands (Matthew 28:2). There within lay the linen shroud and the face cloth, two relics abandoned to the glorious emptiness. And why was the stone-cold tomb discovered vacant? Why, when God put the sun in the Sunday, did its light not shine in on the corpse of a crucified man? Because, as Simon Peter would testify, “God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it!” (Acts 2:24). “God... raised him from the dead and gave him glory” (1 Peter 1:21), “and of that,” the apostle preached, “we are all witnesses” (Acts 2:32).

For late that afternoon, the deathless Messiah, cloaking his identity and his glory, had walked the miles with two grief-gripped doubters, who only belatedly recognized their Salvation at the parting of bread from bread (Luke 24:30-35), a truth which lit their hearts ablaze and made their “sorrow and sighing flee away” (Isaiah 35:10). That very evening, as disciples quaked in hiding, the risen Jesus invaded their midst – defying all we understand of time and space – and bade them peace (John 20:19), gladdening their hearts with proof that the one they'd seen slaughtered was the very one standing before them in the living flesh, his open wounds of scarring pain transfigured in the radiance of triumphant love's beauty (John 20:20-21).

And so, breathing on them a foreshadowing of his own Holy Spirit (John 20:22), he “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,” including the true meaning of the Passover now fulfilled: “that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations” (Luke 24:45-47). For “just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father,” so it was God's will that in Christ “we too,” won from every people and tribe, from every nation and tongue, “might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

Therefore, the good news one day reached your soul and your body that “you were ransomed from futile ways... with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Peter 1:18-19). Through Jesus Christ our Passover Lamb, we've been set free at last from “the passions of our former ignorance” (1 Peter 1:14), liberated from our age-old slavery to sin as surely as Israel was liberated from slavery (Romans 6:17-18). And it is “through him,” through the risen Messiah, that we whose ancestors bowed to idols now “are believers in God,” our hearts and souls infused with a gift of faith we couldn't concoct of our own volition (1 Peter 1:21).

So we no longer live in the house of slavery. We no longer live in the house of sin. We no longer live in the house of disbelief. We no longer live in the house of despair. We no longer live in the house of wrath. We no longer live in the house of death. We live in a house painted with the blood of the Lamb! We live in a house of faith, of hope, of love! We live in a house of Passover! We live in a house where death reigns no more! We live in a house of freedom! We live in a house of resurrection! We live in a house of gladness! For we live as the house of the Lord! Therefore, the Apostle Peter preaches, “your faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:21). Having been redeemed, we are consecrated to God through Christ: “having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth” (1 Peter 1:22), “conduct yourselves with fear” (1 Peter 1:17), being “holy in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:15). For we are a people who have passed over to faith, to hope, to the love which is greater than victory, to the open door of life eternal!

And what does our risen Savior proclaim to us now? Hear him: “I set free the condemned, I give life to the dead, I raise up the entombed. … I am he who destroys death and triumphs over the enemy and crushes Hades and binds the strong man and bears humanity off to the heavenly heights. … So come, all families of people adulterated with sin, and receive forgiveness of sins. For I am your freedom. I am the Passover of salvation, I am the lamb slaughtered for you, I am your ransom, I am your life, I am your light, I am your salvation, I am your resurrection, I am your King. I shall raise you up by my right hand, I will lead you to the heights of heaven; there shall I show you the everlasting Father.”¹  

And so, as the prophet promises to us all: “You shall have a song as in the night when a holy feast is kept, and gladness of heart as when one sets out to the sound of the flute to go to the mountain of the LORD, the Rock of Israel” (Isaiah 30:29).  “Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously” (Exodus 15:21).  “And the ransomed of the LORD shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Isaiah 35:10). For in this faith, in this joyous hope, have we “passed from death to life” (John 5:24). Hallelujah!  Amen.

1  Melito of Sardis, On Pascha 101-103 (second century), in Popular Patristics Series 55:80-82.