The Israelites were given specific instructions. Sacrifice a lamb, spread the blood of the lamb on your doorposts, and eat the lamb as your last meal before leaving Egypt. In the final plague on Pharaoh, the angel of death swept through the land, killing all the firstborn, but he passed over the houses with the blood of the lamb on the doorposts. The Passover meal became a yearly remembrance in Israel. Centuries later, John the Baptist introduced Jesus as the Lamb of God.
John 1:29
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
Jesus was God’s one-time-for-all-time sacrifice. In 1 Corinthians 5:7, Paul exhorts, “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.” When we apply his work on the cross to our lives, we are forever freed from the slavery of sin and death.
Jesus, our Passover lamb, gives us the right to become children of God and protects us from death—the final enemy. Because of Jesus, we will pass from death to life. One commentator explains it this way:
[Lamb of God] combines in one descriptive term the concepts of innocence, voluntary sacrifice, substitutionary atonement, effective obedience, and redemptive power like that of the Passover Lamb.[1]
Father,
Thank you for Jesus Christ, our Passover lamb! Thank you for Jesus voluntarily going to the cross so that we can live. Thank you for Jesus dying as our substitute; his death provides the atonement for our sin. Thank you that through the death of Jesus you have redeemed us—purchased us from the slavery of sin. Thank you for the Lamb of God.
In his name. Amen.
[1] Kenneth Gangel, John, Vol. 4, 16.