Over the past weeks we have continued to look at this spiritual reality of our need to eat or partake of the Lord. To have a spiritual diet that truly makes one spiritually healthy means we must eat of Him for ourselves. Only then will we benefit from what we are eating.
Now let us move forth to even a greater beholding of the Lord as we see Him as our Passover. Here in 1 Corinthians 5:7-8, Paul speaks of Christ as our Passover. In doing so, Paul is bringing fulfillment of the Passover into Christ the Lamb being given of the Father. This is true of all feasts, Christ is who the feasts were pointing to for He and relationship with Him were what the feasts were prophesying about. If we celebrate these feasts today but have not come to see Him, His finished work, and the New creation to be what the feasts were speaking of, we are in error. We must turn and see Him, or we are still living in Old Covenant understanding rather than the New creation which He and His body now are. Christ, our Passover, has (past tense) been offered; that is the ending of the former types and shadows and the bringing in of the Lord’s new day of the true versus the temporal.
However, let us look more closely at the type found in Exodus 12 that we may allow the Holy Spirit to reveal Christ from these scriptures. The main focus of Exodus 12 is God’s way of delivering the people from slavery. We should note that none of the miracles or plagues could bring their deliverance. Thank God for His miracles, I love and appreciate all His kind acts, but our deliverance, like theirs, is only achieved when we eat the Lamb. Now, we should note that every household had to eat the Lamb and that the whole Lamb had to be eaten. Thus, to be delivered from slavery and death was to eat all of the Lamb. There is much symbolism in these things, too much for this short article, but perhaps over the coming weeks we will go into some of the symbolism as we can.
The first point I wish for us to realize is that eating was God’s direction to the people, but the Lamb was what He was pointing them unto. God’s Lamb, God’s Son, God’s Christ was their only answer and hope and the same is true now. No one who came out of Egypt did so without eating of the Lamb; all had to partake of Him in order to Exodus out. So the way out of our former, the self Adamic life of slavery, is through the eating of God’s eternal Lamb. They left Egypt an entirely New people, the people of the firstborn, the people of the Lamb. This was a type for them, but may it become true eternal reality for us in the now. It is not a natural lamb that we have been given to eat of, it is the eternal Lamb of God who was slain before the foundation of the world. This is who we are to eat of and who we must eat of if we are to see the increase of the Lord.
Let us keep in mind that they also put some of its blood on the doorpost and on the lintel of their houses in which they ate it. This was a sign, and the sign was that they had eaten the Lamb, and this brought the distinction between those who were the Lord’s and were to go forth and those who were to remain and those who would die. So those who would not eat would stay behind and not leave Egypt or enter into the promised life and land that the Lord spoke of. So the Lamb was not only the way out of their former lives, He was also the only way, gate, or door, to enter into the promises. Coming out is not the same as entering in. I can come out of slavery to things but still be a slave to myself, for this issue is resolved by entering into Christ. Our relationship with the Lord cannot be defined by what we have come out of, it is defined by whom we have entered into relationship with. Life in Christ is about this entering in and knowing, beholding, eating, and partaking of Him as the Lamb, as our lamb. The “taking us out of” is but the beginning, so that we might enter into Him who is our life.
The people of Israel were free from Egypt, but were they free of themselves? An entirely other type of slavery was revealed to be within them. It led to their being unable to go on and enter into the promises. Eating the Lamb is meant to begin the internal process of our becoming one with the Lamb in life and nature. Again we will become what we eat, so let us eat of the One and Only Lamb of God.
Again, we will continue this in the coming weeks, Amen.
1 Corinthians 5:7-8
“Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”