“Faith Facts” is a series of short write-ups (approximately 350 words) that can be used in church bulletins or as brief explainers during Christian worship.
Download: Bulletin insert (5.5″x8.5″).
Faith Facts
Easter is the Christian Passover.
In the Old Testament, the Passover feast was an annual reminder of how God delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt. A lamb was killed, its blood was applied to the doors, God’s angel of death passed over, and Israel went out in a mighty exodus through the Red Sea.
In the New Testament, the Passover was fulfilled when “Christ our Passover” (1 Cor. 5:7) was killed on the cross, shed his blood to spare his people from judgment, then went out of the tomb in a mighty exodus, inviting all people to participate in his new exodus through the “Red Sea” of baptism (1 Cor. 10:2; 1 Pet. 3:21; Rom. 6:4).
The Church commemorates the fulfillment of the Passover in the “Great Three Days”: Maundy Thursday (when Christ ate the Passover meal with his disciples), Good Friday (when Christ our Passover was sacrificed), and the Easter Vigil, sometime after sunset on Holy Saturday (the night when the Lamb arose). These days are treated as if one long worship service with breaks in-between, climaxing with the Great Vigil, at which Exodus 14 (the Red Sea deliverance) is always read and many baptisms are performed. The three days are known as “the Paschal Triduum” (“Paschal” is the adjective form of “Pascha,” the Greek word for “Passover”). The Old Saxon word for “paschal lamb” (Passover lamb) was ostar-frisking, and “Easter” likely derives from “ostar” (not a pagan goddess as is commonly claimed).
Christians do not observe the modern Jewish Passover or partake in Seder meals because we already keep the feast through our participation in Christ by faith, especially in the Lord’s Supper, which Christ ordained as a memorial of his Passover. These were shadows, but the substance belongs to Christ (Col. 2:17). “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5:7–8).
