SHARON ROCKWELL | CONTRIBUTOR

Every year for Easter dessert my mother would use a special mold to create a cake shaped like a lamb lying down. The cake would be frosted with white icing and covered in coconut to resemble the lamb’s soft wool. This cake was eagerly anticipated by all of us kids, especially with hopes that one of us would get the head – it had the most frosting! The tradition that came from my father’s family was that the youngest child would be asked why we had a lamb cake for Easter dessert. One by one, each of us learned the proper answer, because “Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

I admit that early on, I did not make the connection between the lamb cake and Jesus. I knew the story from Exodus. God orchestrated the Jews’ escape from the Egyptians by sending plagues to change Pharaoh’s heart. The last plague was the death of all of the Egyptians’, and only the Egyptians’, first-born. The Jews marked their door posts with lamb’s blood so that Death would “pass over” their homes. The plague convinced Pharoah to free the Israelites. Later I came to understand that God did not let the destroyer kill any of His people who believed (Ex 12:23), foreshadowing a time when Christ would protect His own who believed in Him.

Much detail was provided to the Israelites regarding the preparation of the lamb to be sacrificed. Exodus 12:1-6 explains that families were to get a lamb on the tenth day of a certain month, examine it, and sacrifice it on the fourteenth. The lamb was to be without blemish. The Jewish families were to assure their lamb was perfect, a picture of what God demanded of their sacrifice in grateful thanksgiving for their deliverance from Egypt and a foretaste of the sacrifice of His sinless son for believer’s deliverance from sin and death.

The five days between the tenth and the fourteenth of the month was a shadow of the time between the triumphal entry to Jerusalem and the crucifixion of Christ, our Passover Lamb. During that time, Jesus was scrutinized repeatedly, first by the religious leaders, then before the Sanhedrin at the home of Caiaphas, then by Pontius Pilate, by Herod Antipas, and again by Pontius Pilate, who finally said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no guilt in this man” (Luke 23:4).

But Christ faced the cross anyway, hung between two criminals. One of the two was moved by the Holy Spirit to declare to the other, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23: 40-41). That condemned thief prayed for Jesus to remember him when he would go to his kingdom. And Jesus gave a response with words that still provide hope and comfort to all those facing death, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

So why is it so important that Jesus is the perfect Lamb of God? Because if He were not sinless, He could not have been the Passover Lamb. He would have had to die for His own sins, instead of dying for our sins. The apostle Peter reminded the dispersed and persecuted Jewish converts, “You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:18-21).

The Passover lamb foreshadowed the coming of Jesus, who is both our Deliverer and Savior. And just as the blood of Passover lambs was applied to the doorposts of only those who believed God’s promise, the blood of Jesus is applied to the repentant hearts of only those with faith in Him. God’s wrath passes over believers so that they might have eternal life. The Passover story provides Christians an understanding of God’s greater plan for redemption, that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Lord, thank you that you are all-loving, unchanging and your purposes stand forever. You determined from eternity past to redeem a people for your glory. Thank you that though we are undeserving, you chose us to be redeemed. Thank you for sending your Son to die on the cross so that our sins would be covered by His blood, and we can stand before you in His righteousness. Amen.

Photo by Tanner Yould on Unsplash