Passover is at the heart of Jewish identity. For thousands of years, this holiday has been an annual opportunity to teach the next generation about our roots as a nation—how we suffered as slaves in Egypt, until God heard our cries and delivered us to be His people. Yet in all the tradition and ritual of this special occasion, somehow the very heart of the Passover story has been overlooked and lost. This night is meant to commemorate a very specific event, one which is key to understanding not only how God redeemed our ancestors, but also the path to deliverance for every one of us.

The feast of Passover is the anniversary of the night of the tenth plague—the death of the firstborn. This devastating blow against Egypt was the final demonstration of Adonai’s awesome power, forcing Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go. God had made His judgment: the life of every firstborn was forfeit, and at midnight, God Himself would visit every single home in Egypt to see to it that blood was shed. But with the sons of Israel still trapped in Egypt, what would happen when God came knocking on their doors? To prepare for the plague, Moses commanded each Hebrew family to slaughter a perfect, unblemished lamb—called “the Passover”—and paint its blood on the doorposts of their homes. So as the De­stroyer swept through Egypt, whenever He came to an Israelite home and saw the blood, it was a sign to not enter the house and bring death, but to instead pass over the house and leave their firstborn unharmed. This is the event which Passover memorializes—when God spared the Hebrews as He killed the Egyptian firstborn. As the Torah explains:

“It is a sacrifice of Pesach [Passover] to Adonai who had passed over the houses of the sons of Yis’rael in Mitz’rayim [Egypt] in His striking the Mitz’ra­yim, and our houses He had delivered.” (Exodus 12:27, mjlt)

The Passover lamb served as a substitutionary sacrifice for Israel. God required the life of every firstborn in Egypt, but He also provided Israel with a substitute—a lamb—to die in the firstborn’s place. By the time God completed His plague, there had been a death in every house in Egypt (Exo. 12:30); yet in the Israelite homes, the only death was that of the lamb, because God saw the blood on the door and knew that a life had already been taken. Each Passover lamb had to be completely perfect: a single defect would have caused God to reject it as a sacrifice. But because this innocent creature was completely pristine and unblemished, its life was acceptable to God in exchange for the firstborn’s life. The substitutionary blood of the lamb was necessary in order for God’s judgment to pass over Israel, so that they could live and be set free from slavery.

Substitutionary sacrifice is the pattern for redemption throughout Scripture. Generations before Moses, Adonai demonstrated this when He tested our father Abraham, commanding him to sacrifice his only son Isaac. God then spared Isaac’s life by providing a ram for Abraham to kill “instead of his son” (Gen. 22:13, cf. 22:8). This same pattern was the basis of the Levitical priesthood which God established for Israel at Mount Sinai. With God living in their midst, the people faced the danger of death whenever they were tainted by sin or impurity (Lev. 15:31, 26:14ff), so the sacrificial system atoned for their lives with the lifeblood of perfect, innocent animals in their place (Lev. 17:11). Those who did not receive atonement had to bear their own punishment (Lev. 5:1,17), but through the sacrifice of substitutes—with the animals bearing the people’s guilt (Lev. 16:20-22)—Israel could live in God’s presence, cleansed from sin (Lev. 5:6,18-19; 16:30). Whenever God claims someone’s life as forfeit, the only path to redemption is through the killing of another life in his place. Blood marks the way to deliverance.

Whether we realize it or not, every one of us is in danger of death. No matter how moral we may think we are, none of us can stand blameless before God (Psa. 130:3), because we have all violated His commands… and God’s punishment for us is everlasting fire and contempt (Isa. 66:24, Dan. 12:2). We need deliverance. So in His mercy, God provided the greatest Passover sacrifice of all: the Messiah Yeshua. He is the only man who ever lived a perfect and innocent life—completely undeserving of punishment—which made Him qualified to give His own life as a substitute for the whole world. He willingly let Himself be killed, slaughtered as a lamb on our behalf, to take all our punishment on Himself (Isa. 53:4-11). If we, like the Israelites, accept the sacrifice made for us—painting His blood on the doorposts of our hearts by believing in Him—then God’s judgment will pass over us, and we will be forgiven and live in His presence forever!

At its core, Passover is about the lamb. Our forefathers were delivered from destruction in Egypt through the blood of the lamb, which was sacrificed as a substitute for the firstborn. In the same way, all of us can be delivered from sin and death forever, because the Lamb of God, Ye­shua (Joh. 1:29), shed His blood as a substitute for you.

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