Imagine the scene.
The room is dim, and a family of four stands around the table, eating. On the table in front of them is a roasted lamb, a plate of flat bread, and a cup of wine for every seat. The family eats with a sense of urgency – their cloaks are tucked into their belts, they are wearing their sandals, and one of them holds his staff in one hand even as he eats with his other. They glance repeatedly at the door, and at the growing darkness falling around them.
This is the Passover described in Exodus 12. On the night before God sets the Israelites free from their slavery in Egypt, he instructs them to observe a specific meal called the Passover. The meal must include bread made without yeast, wine, and most importantly a lamb. There are specific instructions for the lamb too – it must be of “year-old males without defect”, slaughtered and roasted, then most importantly, the blood is painted on the sides and top of the doorframe.
Why this odd command?
God explains: the blood is a “sign”, so that “when I see the blood, I will pass over you. (hence the name!) No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt”. On that night, when God sends the final plague of the death of every firstborn in Egypt, only every house with blood on their door frame was spared. The condition was not if they were Israelite or not – it was only if they had the lamb’s blood on their door.
The Problem
Why was the blood on the doorframe necessary? It was because even as God’s people, the Israelites were still sinners, just like the Egyptians. The truth is that from the moment that Adam and Eve fell into sin, every single person is a sinner. No one can be before God, and live – because God is just, and a just God must punish sin.
But what counts as sin anyway?
The Bible defines sin as failing to keep God’s commands. In other words, sin is doing what we should not, and not doing what we should do. Sure, we may not have broken the commandment to not murder, or not steal, but what about the command to honour our parents? (Exodus 20:12) What about the command to “love our neighbor as ourselves” (Leviticus 19:8), or that we should not covet what is others (Exodus 20:5)?
No matter how good we are, even if we’re the most active at church or have been the ‘good’ Christian kid our whole lives, we’ve failed. Even if we’ve kept some of God’s commands, to obey God means to obey His law in its entirety. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 8:28). And the “wages of sin are death.” (Romans 6:23) That’s our predicament.
If even God’s people have fallen short, how can He still keep His promise to be with them?
The Solution…Or Is It?
If we return to the Passover, we can see how God spares Israel from punishment. For God to ‘pass over’, there must be the shed blood of an unblemished lamb.
Thus comes the principle of salvation. Sin is serious. It has a cost. For sinners to be spared, there must be the death of one who has not sinned. There must be an undeserved death to substitute for the death that should be ours. Someone must take on the punishment for sin.
Yet the problem is: the death of the lamb doesn’t stop God’s people from sinning. Once again, they sin, and once again, an unblemished lamb must be sacrificed. Is this really the solution? Can the repeated sacrifices of animals ever really save us?
Behold the Lamb of God
After 400 years from the last Old Testament prophet, a voice breaks into the silence.
“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29)
We turn our heads. Who is it speaking? It’s John the Baptist, standing in the river, and he points towards a man coming towards him. The crowd murmurs. But isn’t that just the carpenter’s son, Jesus? He’s just a man! How can he take away our sins when even the yearly death of animal sacrifices can’t?
The crowd watches as the man, Jesus, begins his ministry. He displays awesome displays of power – healing the sick, calming the storms, feeding the 5000 with only a few loaves and fish – but also actions of great tenderness – welcoming and blessing the little children, reaching out a hand of forgiveness and love to those that have been cast aside. And most importantly, he perfectly keeps all of God’s commands. He does not sin. Those watching grow excited – could this be the prophesied king of Israel, who would bring back the glory of their people?
But then he is taken, and crucified. His body is placed in a tomb, and a stone is rolled across the opening. He is dead.
The crowd sighs. He was only just a man after all. Some Messiah – he couldn’t even fight back against the elders plotting against him, or the Romans crucifying him.
But what the crowd forgets is the principle of the Passover. For sinners to be spared, there must be the death of one who has not sinned. Someone must take on the punishment for sin. Jesus was not just a good man, one who became a victim at the hands of evil. Jesus willingly entered into this place of death with a mission: to take on the punishment of sin for the whole world. It is impossible for humans not to sin, yes, but Jesus was God and man in one – thus He did not sin at all for that is against his nature, but at the same time, He is able to die just like us. Therefore, for God’s justice to be perfectly executed yet us spared, God found a radical solution: God Himself is the only who can bear the weight of all our sins.
Jeus was the Passover Lamb once and for all. Like a lamb that is silent before its shearers (Isaiah 53:7), he took on the cross without complaint and willingly – out of his love for us.
And astoundingly, in three days, Jesus rises in triumph from the dead. Not only has he conquered over the wages of sin, but also over the power and pain of our sin – death. Death is no longer the end: Jesus has gone through it, and so He will lead us through into His eternal embrace. As it says in 1 Corinthians 15:55, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
Okay.. So what now?
Maybe this Easter story is one you’ve heard so many times before that it almost loses its meaning. We know that Christ died for our sins, rose from the dead, but so what? As long as I believe in Him, all that can stay 2000 years ago, far, far away from my life.
But to accept the Lamb of God for our own has three inescapable impacts:
1. The Lamb of God is one who doesn’t only save us from sin but from the control of sin
What makes Christ’s sacrifice different from that of previous lambs? In dying in our place, He releases us from the punishment of sin, but in rising from the dead, He frees us from the control of sin. Like it says in Romans 6:10-11, “The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Unlike before, where we had no choice but to sin, we now have the power through Christ to not sin. He doesn’t just tell us not to sin and call it a day, but He gives us the ability to do so graciously.
It’s this that makes all the difference. If a slave is freed, what’s the point if they are only to return to slavery once again after? God’s saving work is a continuous one – where He shapes us everyday to be more like Him, and when we fall, He gives us the grace to stand back up again and press on.
2. The Lamb of God is one who is with His sheep
One of my favourite go-to verses for when I’ve been stuck in sin is this: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”
The almost unbelievable wonder of the Lamb of God is that He lived as one of us – a Shepherd who has lived as His sheep. He has been lonely. He has been deserted and betrayed by His friends. He has cried, He has grieved, and He has suffered. And when we suffer, when we are in pain, when we are alone, He is with us. He is Emmanuel – God with us. This is our hope – that He will hold our hand, and bring us step by step forward, past the pain, in His plan.
And when we fall, when we are too weak to carry on, it is then He will carry us.
3. The Lamb of God is one who will return as a Lion
Yesterday, during my church’s Easter Sunday service, the pastor highlighted the following passage from Revelation, the apostle John’s vision near the end of his life. “Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David”, says one of the elders in heaven to John.
Yet who should walk forward, but a Lamb! Not only a Lamb, but one that looked as if “it had been slain”. What does this mean for us?
The Lamb of God who saves through His blood is one who will return as a Lion, and as a judge and King. Don’t take the gentleness and grace of the Lamb for granted or carelessly. It is a grace that has been bought at an unbelievable cost – the death of God Himself.
How else can we respond but in the same manner of the angels in heaven: Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” (Revelation 5:12)
