The Last Supper and the meaning of Passover
The Last Supper wasn’t the start of something new—it was the unveiling of what Passover had always meant: a living parable pointing to Christ, whose body and blood fulfilled the promise of salvation.
The Last Supper and the meaning of Passover [∞]
The Last Supper wasn’t the beginning of a new tradition—it was the unveiling of an ancient one. For generations, the Jewish people had celebrated Passover to remember how God delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt. Every year, the meal retold the story of that rescue through symbols: unleavened bread for the haste of their escape, and wine for the promises of God.
But at His final Passover meal, Jesus revealed what the symbols had always pointed to. The bread, He said, was His body—given for His followers. The wine was His blood—poured out for the forgiveness of sins. In this moment, He reframed the meal, not by changing it, but by fulfilling it.
In the Gospels of Mark and Matthew—written with a Jewish audience in mind—Jesus doesn’t instruct the disciples to repeat the meal as a new ritual. And He didn’t need to. Jewish believers already kept the Passover every year. What they needed wasn’t a new ceremony, but a new lens: to see that the Passover was always about Him.
But when Paul wrote to the Gentile believers in Corinth, who had no tradition of Passover, he quoted Jesus' words: “Do this in remembrance of me.” These Gentile Christians had to be brought into the story—to understand how the bread and wine spoke of Christ’s sacrifice.
As Christianity spread into Greek culture, some began interpreting the Lord’s Supper through mystical lenses, believing the bread and wine physically transformed into Christ’s body and blood. But this idea was foreign to Jewish thinking. Passover was never a magical ritual—it was a living parable, a way to teach and proclaim God’s redemption.
Paul’s warning in 1 Corinthians against taking the Lord’s Supper “unworthily” wasn’t about superstition or curses. It was about protecting the gospel. The danger wasn’t in how the bread and wine were eaten—but in forgetting or distorting what they meant. The real threat was losing sight of the cross.
Today, when Christians take the Lord’s Supper, the focus should be the same as it was at the first: not on the ritual, but on the remembrance. Like Passover in the Old Testament, the Lord’s Supper is a proclamation—a declaration that salvation has come through Jesus. It’s not a means of receiving grace, but a symbol of the grace already given—a celebration of the good news that Christ gave His life for the world.
