THE PASSOVER AND THE LORD'S SUPPER
© Hubert Krause March 1999 Additional Editing by Orest Solyma
The Church of God in Williamstown
WEB SITE: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~sanhub/index.htm

PASSOVER PERPLEXITY
For many of us in God's Church the term the "Lord's Supper" can conjure up notions that have more to do with traditional forms of Christian liturgy rather than with the Festivals ordained in the Bible. Among the churches of God today there is much confusion on this subject. Diverse ideas and practices abound. Some seek to combine this memorial with the Passover celebration as laid down in the Scriptures. Others observe it and/or the Passover Holy Day on the afternoon of Abib 14, or the evening of Abib 14, and others still on the evening of Abib 15.
Two notions about Passover extant in churches of God thinking are:

Yet the term the "Lord's Supper" is biblical (1Co 11:20) and refers to Christ's final pre-resurrection meal with His disciples during which He instituted the symbols of the bread and the wine for all Christians. The purpose of this paper is to show that the "Lord's Supper" and the Passover are not one and the same. Terminology is important. The season is called the Passover, but the "Lord's Supper" is not the Passover commemoration proper. That begins the next evening.

THE OLD TESTAMENT PASSOVER
Let us examine God's original instructions to Moses as to how the Passover was to be kept:

The date of the Passover celebration is re-iterated in Lev 23:4-6: The original command to eat the Passover "in haste" was obviously no longer binding upon the Israelites once they had escaped from the Egyptians and were in the Promised Land. The Israelites were also instructed to celebrate at the place chosen by God: Please note especially verse 4: it states clearly that the lamb was sacrificed on the evening of the First Day of Unleavened Bread, showing that the lamb must have been killed on the latter part of the fourteenth and eaten at the beginning of the fifteenth of Abib! Verses 3 and 4 also clearly show that the Passover sacrifice was eaten with unleavened bread and that this bread marked the beginning of the seven-day period that it was to be eaten daily. Whatever ceremony the Scriptures define as Passover must therefore occur in tandem with the first day of Unleavened Bread!

The original Passover command-to kill the lamb-for the evening of the fourteenth of Abib then led into the evening and beginning of the first Day of Unleavened Bread-the eating of the lamb (vv 2-4). The ancient Israelites killed the Passover lamb in the latter part of the fourteenth of Abib, not at the beginning. They ate the lamb that night, which began Abib 15. In future, the Israelites were to keep vigil on the night of the Passover in gratitude for God's watchful protection during the judgment of Egypt and-for those who had eyes to see-in anticipation of His miraculous delivery from slavery to the world which lies in the power of the Evil One.

This "night to be observed" is the evening of the Passover feast! Today, we also ought to observe this evening in a Christian community if possible (as the Israel of God: Gal 6:16; 1Pet 1:1-2; Jas 1:1; Rev 14:1-4) to commemorate our deliverance, as individuals and as a Body, from spiritual bondage.

THE JEWISH PASSOVER DATE: "BETWEEN THE EVENINGS"
The Passover lambs were killed at the Temple on 14 Abib, in the evening ("between the evenings"), and they were eaten on 15 Abib. This has not been in dispute historically other than among very small groups in our day. In an attempt to discredit the correct Jewish practice, much has been made of the phrase "between the two evenings" to seek to prove that the lambs were killed a day earlier, after sunset at the beginning of Abib 14.

There is no biblical statement that indicates that a day has two evenings, only traditions held by some Jews and a few Bible scholars, such as that "between the two evenings" was the time from noon to sunset, and then from sunset until daybreak of the next morning; or just before sunset until the stars appeared, and then from the beginning of the darkness until daybreak. The Pharisees considered the time when the sun began to descend as the "first evening", with the "second evening" being the real sunset; in other words, the period covered the time the sun began its descent (after midday) till final sunset. "Between the evenings" simply means towards sunset of that day, at "the going down of the sun" (Dt.16:6)! The Passover was slain in the latter part of the 14th, but not eaten until the twilight or darkness of Abib 15.

The claim made that the lamb was kept until just before Abib 14, but not really into the fourteenth, is false.

Compare: In addition, Christ validated the date of the Passover kept by the Jews and announced that it was to mark the day of His crucifixion: Even the day after the Last Supper, when Jesus was taken down from the cross, was still the "preparation" for the Passover, which was to be eaten that night: THE PASSOVER AND THE JEWS: THE GOSPEL ACCOUNTS
The Jews then kept the Passover at the correct date, and still observe it today in the evening leading into the 15th Abib, but according to their rabbinically-altered calendar with its various postponement rules (since ca. 358AD). If we accept that the Jews in Christ's day were observing the Passover at the right time, then we also have to accept the fact that Christ's last supper was not the Passover observance as laid down by the Scriptures. Otherwise, the armed band which took Jesus captive and the priests who tried Him, presented Him to Pilate and had Him crucified would have violated the sanctity of the Passover night for they: The argument that the Jews in Christ's day had the Passover date wrong when they killed their lambs on the mid-afternoon of the fourteenth of Abib is erroneous, for this was the scriptural command, and they were doing this as Christ was hanging on the cross. It has always been understood even by traditional Christianity that the lambs were slain towards the end of the fourteenth of Abib and eaten during the night of the fifteenth. The true Lamb of God had to be slain at that very time: He symbolised the very lambs that were killed. Therefore, the Son of God had to die at the time the lambs were slain (see 1Pet 1:18-21; Rev 5:6).
Christ kept the Passover many times and the Scriptures give no indication that He ever questioned the date of the celebration as kept by the Jews of His day: John wrote his Gospel late in the first century, when more Gentiles had been added to the Church, and so probably adds the description "of the Jews" for his gentile readers. The use of this qualifier may also be due to the fact that Christian observance was thereby differentiated from rabbinical traditions consistently condemned in the New Testament.

However, the Jews at that time counted the preparation day of Abib 14, the date of Christ's final supper and of His death, as the first of eight days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread:

It should be noted that both Matthew and John tell us that the day before the first Holy Day was a day of preparation. In fact, some Jewish families would move to temporary accommodation for the fourteenth and there eat a special preparation meal known as the chagigah, the meal that may even have been in the disciples' minds when they asked Christ about the Passover preparations. After this chagigah meal (see Edersheim, The Temple, Eerdmans, 1978; p 218), final cleaning was carried out, herbs purchased and prepared, the roast-spit was prepared, the lamb was bought and killed by the priests and then brought back to the home where the participants were gathered. Before the Sabbath began most of the work of roasting the lamb was done. It is not surprising therefore that the apostles were merely expecting a regular meal, then the next day they would be very busy preparing everything for the Passover evening meal.

The entire eight-day celebration was sometimes referred to as the Feast of Unleavened Bread, as shown in Mk 14:12:

A close examination of the Gospels reveals that when the word "Passover" as used by the Gospel writers it is not necessarily in reference to the Passover meal, but sometimes to the entire Feast of Unleavened Bread period itself. The Catholic Encyclopaedia (article "The Lord's Supper") states: "The word pasch [Passover] does not exclusively apply to the paschal lamb on the eve of the feast, but is used in the Scriptures and in the Talmud in a wider sense for the entire festivity, including the chagigah". Let us see some examples of this: The time setting of Mt 26:17 was actually the day before the Days of Unleavened Bread. The disciples did not mean that the actual Day of Unleavened Bread had arrived; simply that it was drawing near. We see that the term "Passover" is used generically, and can include the entire Passover season.
Luke clarifies this: Luke is showing us that it was the custom to speak of the day before the Festival started as an integral part of the Festival. This is understandable if one considers all the preparatory work that was done. The fourteenth of Abib was called a day of Unleavened Bread because of these final preparations during which the disposal of all leaven was completed.
By New Testament times, the commentaries tell us, the terms "Passover" and "Feast of Unleavened Bread" were often used interchangeably to refer to the week-long festival. We therefore need to beware of too literal an interpretation of these terms in the Gospels.

CHRIST'S FINAL "SUPPER"
Some people have made the assumption that when Christ expressed His desire to eat the Passover with His disciples before He died He was saying that the Jews had the date wrong-that somehow over the centuries they had changed the Passover observance from the beginning to the end of Abib 14-and that the meal He was now to share with them was the Old Testament Passover on the correct date; this, despite not the slightest suggestion from the mouth of the Son of God that He was in fact changing anything! Let us look at the verses used to substantiate this assumption:

They had to, among other things, order a lamb, find out the time of the killing the next day so that they could pick it up and bring the carcass back for roasting at the place at which they were gathered. There is no apparent reason to doubt that Christ's disciples were expecting to celebrate the Passover as they had done in previous years. The question is: Was the "Passover" that was prepared and eaten the Old Testament Passover? If this were the case, there would seem to have been insufficient time for the disciples to prepare the Passover lamb for that same day according to the specifications set out in the Scriptures. They would have had to kill the lamb themselves because lambs were killed for the Passover by the priests the next day. Additionally, any lamb left over would have had to be burned by fire according to the instructions of Ex 12:10, and there is no indication whatsoever that this took place. Moreover, notice that John's Gospel tells us that Christ's final supper took place just before the Passover feast that was due to be celebrated by the rest of the country. It could not therefore have been the Passover: It was in fact the evening that began the preparation day, which continued and was the same day during which Christ hung on the cross: This is rather definitive: the last night Jesus Christ and the apostles had together, the Last Supper of Christ, on the beginning of Abib 14, was not the Passover proper, as it would have meant that the same evening also began the First Holy Day of Unleavened Bread, which it did not. The very afternoon/evening of the day that Christ died was the fourteenth. This was just before Abib 15 and was the time of the slaying of the Passover lambs. That evening began the High Day of the First Holy Day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lambs were eaten.

Let us notice Lk 22:16:

The RSV and the NRSV omit the word "again" in the translation, and in a footnote add: "or never eat it again", as included in some manuscripts. Papyrus 75, the Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and Vaticanus do not have ouketi, again, or no more (see Bruce M. Metzger's A Textual Commentary on the New Testament, 2nd Edition UBS: 1994; with similar comments about Mk 14:25). It is clear, however, that Jesus drank wine that evening, but would not again until the Kingdom (see Mt 26:29).

The Amplified Bible translates Lk 22:15-16 as:

It is quite probable that the term "Passover" was being used generically to refer to a meal prepared and eaten, the first meal of the spring festival, and that Christ was commenting to His disciples that He earnestly desired to eat the Passover proper with them, but that He knew that this was impossible, as He, the true Passover Lamb, would be dead by the time the celebrations of Abib 15 began. His desire could therefore not be fulfilled until the Kingdom of God came.
It might be said that Christ ate a Passover meal, but He did not eat the Old Testament Passover meal, the Passover lamb-for on that same day He would fulfill its meaning by His sacrifice.

CHRIST DID NOT EAT AN EARLY PASSOVER!
Some will concede that the Jews have always kept the correct date for the Passover at the end of Abib 14, but will then claim that this "Last Supper" held by Christ with His disciples at the beginning of Abib 14 was a "New Testament Passover"-in contrast to the "Old Testament Passover"-with the new symbols of unleavened bread and wine, which now serves as the standard for Christians. Jesus, it is suggested, knowing He would die on Abib 14, anticipated the Passover, eating it with His disciples twenty-four hours before everyone else.
Again, let us be reminded that Christ avowed that not one iota of the Law of His Father was to be changed by Him (Mt 5:17-19), let alone a Holy Day of God's sacred calendar. There is no statement or implication in the New Testament that the emblems of bread and wine of the Lord's Supper are a substitution for or replacement of the Passover as set down at the correct biblical time. They are the symbols of the New Covenant (1Co 11:24-25).
In addition:

The Passover lamb was always killed on the evening of the fourteenth. Christ ate His final meal with His disciples on the evening that began Abib 14, and died as Abib 14 was about to end.

SYMBOLISM: THE LORD'S SUPPER VERSUS THE PASSOVER
Christ's death is indeed the fulfillment of the Old Testament typology of the Passover sacrifice, our liberation from the bondage of sin through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our Passover. It is because Christ was slain that we are able to take part in this evening, the celebration of the Passover evening, the beginning of the Days of Unleavened Bread.

Eating of the lamb's roasted flesh symbolised the relationship the Israelites were to have with God. The death of the Lamb of God brought deliverance through His shed blood and the forgiveness of sin for all. The apostle Paul used the word "Passover" in these verses (1Co 5:7-8) because he is alluding to the Feast of the Passover and the Unleavened Bread season where the symbolism was of Christ as the Passover Lamb.

Yet just a few chapters later, when contrasting sacrifices made to idols with the sacrifice of Christ ("our Passover"), the word "Passover" is noticeably absent where it could logically have been used in referring to Christ's death. Instead, Paul uses terms like:

This is especially striking in 1Corinthians 11, where Paul discusses the actual commemoration of the death of Jesus Christ. The words "Lord's Supper" are used. This is so because the Feast of the Passover, to follow the next day, is not being referred to, but rather the reference is to the ceremony in which the death of the Son of God is proclaimed. Proclaim is translated from the Greek verb katangello. The word and its variant tenses are used in Acts 3:24; 4:2; 13:38; 16:17,21; 17:3,23; Col 1:18; Php 1:17-18. It has the sense of proclamation, stating in advance, speaking in advance, declaring. Let us notice the following: The importance is in the symbolism of this "supper", not in what was consumed.

To commemorate, to share in this supper of the Lord, is to have full fellowship with Him (and, of course with one another, as part of His Body), and with His sufferings:

It is important for us to realise and consider that none of the ritual sacrifices which prefigured the death of Jesus Christ, including the Passover lamb itself, involved intense suffering. Yet commemorating and participating in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ involves sharing in His sufferings: This is only possible through godly observance of the Lord's Supper, as we shall further see.

LAST SUPPER NOT THE PASSOVER
The last meal of Jesus Christ was not, nor could it have been, the Old Testament Passover meal for various reasons, some of which are listed here:

  1. We previously noted that the Passover celebration was a family event.
      Ex 12:47 (NIV) The whole community of Israel must celebrate it.
    However, Christ's final meal was shared only by His disciples. Not even their families, nor any of the women who often ministered to Christ were present. This does not mean that the wives and children would not have been there the next evening if things had followed the normal and expected pattern. Wives and older children would have helped in day-time preparations for the evening commemoration and celebration (Ex 12:26-8,40-2).

  2. The Passover participants were forbidden to leave their dwellings before morning (Ex 12:22). However, Jesus and the disciples left the house after the meal, well before midnight. Christ was betrayed that evening, and was already tried and condemned before the next morning.

  3. Notice Jn 13:28-30:
      Jn 13:28-30 Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. 29 Some thought that, because Judas had the money box, Jesus was telling him, "Buy what we need for the feast"; or, that he should give something to the poor. 30 So, after receiving the morsel, he immediately went out; and it was night.
    If this were the Passover proper, then why would the thought be there in the minds of the disciples that provisions needed to be purchased for the Feast? These would surely have already been completed. Besides, the Passover evening would be the beginning of the Holy Day, so how could they even purchase such provisions? It is quite obvious that the Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread were yet to come and that purchases would be finalized the following morning.

  4. Notice Jn 19:31 and Lk 23:50-55:
      Jn 19:31 Since it was the day of Preparation, in order to prevent the bodies from remaining on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.
    The day of Christ's crucifixion was a preparation day for the Passover that evening, and the next day the annual Sabbath of Abib 15, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Christ's followers had no difficulty with these calendar dates, for He had not taught them differently. The Passover proper was yet to come
      Lk 23:50-55 Now there was a man named Joseph from the Jewish town of Arimathea. He was a member of the (Sanhedrin) council, a good and righteous man, 51 who had not consented to their purpose and deed, and he was looking for the kingdom of God. 52 This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 53 Then he took it down and wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid him in a rock-hewn tomb, where no one had ever yet been laid. 54 It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath (of the first Holy Day) was beginning. 55 The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and saw the tomb, and how his body was laid; then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.
    Both the Holy Day that began with the Passover and the weekly Sabbath were observed by Christ's followers at the same time as the rest of the Jews, so the disciples waited till the annual Sabbath was over before attending to the anointing of Christ's body. There is no indication in any of the apostolic writings that there was any dispute about these dates or the correctness of the Passover or of any other holy day kept by Jews and Christians in the first century.

  5. The Gospel of John clearly identifies Christ as the antitype of the Passover lamb: as such He had to die at the time the lambs were being sacrificed. John quotes a number of Old Testament Scriptures in fulfillment of the prophecy reiterated in Jn 19:36:
      Jn 19:36 For these things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled, "Not one of His bones shall be broken." (cf. Ex 12:46; Num 9:12; Ps 34:20).
    Christ, already dead, was not to have any of His bones broken, just like the Passover lambs being killed in the Temple at the same time.

  6. In addition, John tells us that the priests on the morning following Christ's final supper with His disciples had still not eaten of the Passover:
      Jn 18:28 Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium, and it was early morning. But they themselves did not go into the Praetorium, lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover.

  7. There is nothing in Jn 13-17 that suggests the Passover-not even a mention of roasted lamb or of bitter herbs! This should not, however, be understood that there definitely was no lamb or herbs at this particular meal.

  8. The absence of the word "Passover" in Paul's description of this final meal.
      1Co 11:23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread.
    Paul, in commenting on the night of Christ's betrayal, makes no mention of any Passover meal, which itself is most telling, as the context of Christ's final meal and the fact that he had in the same letter previously referred to Christ as "our Passover" (1Co 5:7) would have lent itself ideally to the use of the term "Passover". Instead, Paul continues by describing this meal of Christ and the disciples as a "supper" (v 25).

  9. The absence of any correction by Paul of the Corinthians over the use of the term "Lord's Supper".
      1Co 11:20-22 When you meet together, it is not the Lord's supper that you eat. 21 For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal, and one is hungry and another is drunk. 22 What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.
    Paul recommends that they first eat their regular meals at home, then they should come together for the commemoration described in vv 24-26. Note that Paul had no objection to the use of the term "the Lord's Supper" in ICo 11:20. His condemnation was for the way the Lord's Supper was being abused by the Corinthians (vv 21-22). If he had wanted to correct the Church over the use of the term, then here was a perfect opportunity to do so; he could have used the term "Passover" to refer to the commemoration, but he chose not to do so-because it was not the Passover.
    James Moffatt translates 1Co 11:20-22 as:
      But this makes it impossible for you to eat the 'Lord's' supper when you hold your own gatherings. As you eat, everyone takes his own supper; one goes hungry while another gets drunk. What! Have you no houses to eat and drink in? Do you think you can show disrespect to the church of God and put the poor to shame? What can I say to you? Commend you? Not for this!
    According to some sources, it had become a tradition in the early Christian Church to hold a communal meal, of the type that Jude refers to as a "love feast" (Jude 12), after the pattern of Christ's final supper with His disciples. After this they would keep the Lord's Supper together, taking the bread and the wine according to Christ's instructions. However, because of the excesses of their feasting prior to the taking of the Lord's Supper, they were defiling the ceremony that commemorated the death of their Saviour, and Paul was instructing them to abandon their prior festivities and to instead eat and drink at home to avoid bringing judgment upon themselves (1Co 11:22,34).

  10. The Passover meal was to be roasted lamb eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. This was clearly not the case at Christ's final supper. In fact, the "dipping of the sop" in Jn 13:26 may indicate a regular meal during which it was common to dip bread in soup or broth or a paste. It is certain that unleavened bread that symbolizes the Bread of Life was eaten every day of the seven-day Festival. And most certainly, since we commemorate the fact that Christian life is only possible with the Bread of Life, we eat unleavened bread the evening of the Lord's Supper, as Paul calls it.
The earliest Church authorities understood that "...Jesus and his disciples conformed to the ordinary custom, that the Last Supper took place on the fourteenth [of Abib], and that the Crucifixion was on the fifteenth, the great festival of the Jews" and that this opinion "is confirmed by the custom of the early Eastern Church which, looking to the day of the month, celebrated the commemoration of the Lord's Last Supper on the fourteenth of Abib, without paying any attention to the day of the week. This was done in conformity with the teachings of St. John the Evangelist" (The Catholic Encyclopaedia, article "The Last Supper").
It is important to note also that the Quartodeciman Controversy of the second century had nothing to do with any disputation about whether the date of the Lord's Supper was on Abib 14 or Abib 15, but rather about whether it should be taken on the evening of Abib 14, one day prior to the normal Passover meal, or as a part of a Good Friday-Easter Sunday tradition, commemorating the Lord's death and resurrection.

"ARTOS" AND "AZUMOS"
The claim is made by some that the bread Christ ate at the Last Supper was normal, leavened bread, and so two propositions have been put forward:

  1. That the bread broken and eaten by Christians to symbolise Christ's broken body can be normal leavened bread.
  2. That this ritual therefore can be partaken of as often as desirable, according, it is maintained, to the instructions of the apostle Paul in 1Co 11:23-26.
However, the only thing that is proven by this account from the Synoptic Gospels is that Christ's Last Supper, or at least the memorial of His death symbolised by the wine and the bread, was definitely not the Abib 15 Passover.

Let us go to the Gospel accounts:

The Greek word "artos" refers to regular bread, which is raised, as a loaf (# 740 in Strong's). It is the same word used in passages such as: And also in reference to Christ describing Himself as the "Bread of Life": It is indeed used in the apostle Paul's instructions to the Corinthians in regard to the proper observance of the Lord's Supper: The claim is then made that because the Greek word "azumos", which is always used when referring to unleavened bread, is not used in these Gospel accounts of the bread representing the New Covenant, this bread must therefore have been normal leavened bread.

The word "azumos" is indeed used to refer to unleavened bread, as in the following accounts:

The word, however, means simply "unleavened"; the "bread" is implied, as in: In this verse, Paul is referring to their lives, which, like the unleavened bread of the Passover season, were supposed to be unleavened.

This is not problematic at all: the simple answer is that the Greek word "azumos" is used whenever the reference is to the unleavened bread-or the unleavened condition-of the Passover/Unleavened Bread period. The Greek word "artos" is the only word used generically for bread-whether leavened or not-that is employed outside of the Unleavened Bread Holy Day season, or in reference to bread that has nothing to do with this period, or to bread that is not referring specifically to the period. In other words, it is not used if it is qualified by the word "unleavened" ("azumos"). In the New Testament, this qualification comes only when the reference is being specifically made to the period of unleavened bread usage.
Christ is the [unleavened-sinless] Bread of Life, yet the word "artos", as illustrated above, is still used to describe Him, since there is no reference to the unleavened bread season in this description of Him. Similarly, the word "artos" is also used to refer to the manna from heaven, which was hardly leavened; in fact, it is described as having simply been small round grains or flakes which came with the dew, and which were ground and made into cakes or boiled (Ex.16:13-36).

This fact may well prove that the "artos" which represented the Body of the Lord was eaten at a time that was outside the Abib 15-21 Passover/Unleavened Bread period (because it was the previous day), or the word "azumos" would most likely have been used. It does not prove that Christ used leavened bread for the New Covenant symbol for His broken body.
However, note Lk 24:30:

The day after His resurrection-therefore still definitely during the Days of Unleavened Bread-Christ ate bread ("artos") with His disciples. Here, "artos" is again used generically, the reference not being specifically to unleavened bread nor to a description of the Unleavened Bread period, although it fell within this period. There is no "azumos" qualifier.

AS OFTEN AS YOU DRINK IT

ON THE NIGHT HE WAS BETRAYED
The apostle Paul's instructions to the Church about the commemoration of the Lord's Supper are quite straightforward: That Christ kept the Lord's Supper at the beginning of the fourteenth of Abib, and was crucified as the lambs were being slain towards the end of the fourteenth of Abib is the testimony of the Gospels. Paul also reminded the Corinthians that it is on "the night He was betrayed" (1Co 11:23) that the Lord's Supper has its relevance-not a day later, as seems to be the custom of some who seek to combine the two distinct commemorations into one, held on the evening of the fourteeth of Abib, on the so-called "night to be observed". There is no scriptural validity for this: On the anniversary of our Saviour's death-Abib 14-Christians will be observing the Lord's Supper with the symbols of the bread and the wine. "As often as" they do this-once a year on the night commemorative of His death-they will be proclaiming His suffering and death until He comes. This memorial, when observed annually, enables Christians to relive the suffering of their Master and to renew their commitment through the symbols of the blood and the wine and the subsequent sober meditations during the night about the sacrifice of the Saviour of us all. The impact of doing this more often, as is the habit of some, may be illustrated in terms of its effectiveness by considering weekly commemorations of American Thanksgiving, Anzac Day, Xmas, wedding anniversaries, family tragedies, and so on. Hallmarks of life's history are commemorated annually.

If we maintain that it is the Passover proper that we are observing on the evening of Abib 14 then, by definition (Dt 16:3-4), we must also continue eating unleavened bread into the next day, for seven full days. Yet we do not do this, because 8 days of Unleavened Bread is clearly unscriptural, and would violate the symbolism of the seven-day period denoting the completion of our journey out of sin.

LORD'S SUPPER AND PASSOVER ON THE 15TH ABIB:
AN UNSCRIPTURAL COMBINATION
One intakes Jesus Christ, through the bread and the wine, at the Lord's Supper. This opportunity to eat the true Bread of Life and to drink His blood was not afforded the Israelites of old (who rejected the Gospel: Heb 4:2), who fed instead on manna, the bread of physical life (Jn 6:31,49,58). The unleavened bread they ate was their bread of affliction (Dt 6:3), to remind them of their affliction in Egypt.
The Bread of Life of which we partake at the commemoration of the Lord's Supper is, one might say, our bread of affliction, a portion of unleavened bread symbolising the suffering of the Son of God as well as the sinless life of Christ that will live in us from now on; we repeat this each year to depict our desire to recall His suffering and to have the life of the Son of God continue to dwell within us. We are commanded to share in the sufferings of Jesus Christ:

This is the essence of the meaning of the Abib 14th memorial. Yet we, after taking part in this ceremony, go away from it as sinners still; the service does not specifically depict the putting out of sin. This is what the unleavened bread of the following Passover/Days of Unleavened Bread symbolises. We should not attempt to confuse the small portion of unleavened bread we take with the wine-both of which are sanctified, incidentally-with the daily eating of unleavened bread commanded during the Unleavened Bread season.
Yet unless we already have the Son of God dwelling in us-proclaiming His sacrifice at the Lord's Supper-what meaning will the eating of the unleavened bread of the festival to follow have for us? We will be just like Israel of old.

CONCLUSION
It is true that there were some similarities between the Old Testament Passover meal and the final supper of Jesus Christ for, as has been said, the entire season that was unfolding can scripturally be described as the "Passover festival". The Last Supper took place away from their normal dwellings (Mt 26:17-19), just as the Israelites were commanded to observe the Passover away from their homes (Dt 16:5-7). For Christ, the offering of the sop to Judas who was about to betray Him (Jn 13:26-32), was no doubt symbolic of the bitter herbs of the Passover lamb.

However, there is no more validity to describing Christ's Last Supper on the fourteenth of Abib as the Passover meal than there is to the claim that Christ substituted the new symbols of the bread and the wine for the lamb and the bitter herbs of the Passover meal at the time.

Our Lord ordained a quite separate ceremony to commemorate His death. This is the beauty of the Lord's Supper: it is the sorrow and grief over Christ's suffering before the joy and triumph celebrated by the Passover the following night (Ex 12:40-42; Dt 16:1-8). The two-the Lord's Supper and the Passover of the LORD-are indeed separate.

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