Then He took a cup, and after giving thanks, He gave it to them and said, “Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood that establishes the covenant; it is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Mt 26:27-28 HCS)

As Jesus ate the last supper with his disciples, it is important to know that this was during the Jewish Passover celebrated in Jerusalem — the celebration of the Egyptian Exodus — when they ate the Passover Meal (the Jewish Seder meal) on Saturday. The Jewish Passover date still lines up closely on the calendar following the Christian period of Good Friday when Christ was crucified; and Easter Sunday, the first day of the Jewish week when Jesus was resurrected.

John the Baptist called Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (Jo 1:29). Jesus’ fulfilled the Jewish festal symbolism related to the “Lamb of God,” notably, the Passover metaphor of blood. Thus we see Jesus’ celebration of the pre-cross Passover with the Apostles who were his select representatives of his new messianic community, portraying Himself to them as the Passover sacrifice to which the Egypt experience of deliverance pointed.

The first Passover in the Old Testament began just before the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt under the leadership of Moses. God told them to mark their door lintels with the blood of a lamb. When the destroying angel saw the blood, it passed over the homes with the blood, evidence that they were Yahweh’s children. The angel killed all the firstborn of the Egyptians motivating Pharaoh to let Yahweh’s children go finally!

The metaphor of Christ as our Passover was doubly evident when He presented the bread as His body which would be beaten by the Romans and hung on the cross of Calvary. The first Passover meal in Egypt included unleavened bread, typifying Christ’s body and the symbolism of this meal which reenacts every time Christians have communion with these two symbols:

“Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take and eat it; this is My body’”. (Mt 26:26)

“Then He took a cup, and after giving thanks, He gave it to them and said, ‘Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood that establishes the covenant; it is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins’”. (Mt 26:27-28)

The wine Christ offered his disciples symbolises the blood He would shed for humanity – a new Exodus for lives breaking free from the power of sin and the judgement of the written law (failure of which results in eternal death) by symbolising the blood smeared on the doorposts during the Passover in Egypt. We see this in the writings of Paul: “for Christ, our Passover has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us observe the feast, not with old yeast or with the yeast of malice and evil but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (1 Co 5:7a-8); and in Romans 8:1-3:

“Therefore, no condemnation now exists for those in Christ Jesus, because the Spirit’s law of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. What the law could not do since it was limited by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending His own Son in flesh like ours under sin’s domain, and as a sin offering.”

As the Israelites were God’s delivered children coming out of Egypt, Christians are now referred to as God’s children, saved from the condemnation of the moral law, by Christs’s atoning sacrifice when He died on the cross. We now are offered the Holy Spirit to indwell our minds and lead us as we live in Christ’s spiritual kingdom under the New Covenant in contradistinction to living as the Jews did under the Mosaic code of law to motivate obedience:

“So then, brothers, we are not obligated to the flesh to live according to the flesh, for if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. All those led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ”. (Rm 8:12-17)