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| Spiritual Meaning of the Passover.
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13. Spiritual Meaning of the Passover.
A few points may be added in connection with the
doctrines now under consideration, though it would require a special
discussion in many volumes to treat of all the mystical statements
about the law, and specially of those connected with the festivals, and
more particularly still with the passover. The passover of the
Jews consists of a sheep which is sacrificed, each taking a sheep
according to his father’s house; and the passover is accompanied
by the slaughter of thousands of rams and goats, in proportion to the
number of the houses of the people. But our Passover is
sacrificed for us, namely, Christ. Another feature of the Jewish
festival is unleavened bread; all leaven is made to disappear out of
their houses; but “we keep the feast5034
not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness,
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
Whether there be any passover and any feast of leaven beyond the two we
have mentioned, is a point we must examine more carefully, since these
serve for a pattern and a shadow of the heavenly ones we spoke of, and
not only such things as food and drink and new moons and sabbaths, but
the festivals also, are a shadow of the things to come. In the
first place, when the Apostle says, “Our passover is sacrificed,
Christ,” one may feel with regard to this such doubts as
these. If the sheep with the Jews is a type of the sacrifice of
Christ, then one should have been offered and not a multitude, as
Christ is one; or if many sheep were offered it is to follow out the
type, as if many Christs were sacrificed. But not to dwell on
this, we may ask how the sheep, which was the victim, contains an image
of Christ, when the sheep was sacrificed by men who were observing the
law, but Christ was put to death by transgressors of the law, and what
application can be found in Christ of the direction,5035
“They shall eat the flesh this night,
roast with fire, and unleavened bread on bitter herbs shall they
eat,” and “Eat not of it raw, nor sodden with water, but
roast with fire; the head with the feet and the entrails; ye shall not
set any of it apart till the morning, and a bone thereof ye shall not
break. But that which is left thereof till the morning ye shall
burn.” The sentence, “A bone of it ye shall not
break,” John appears to have made use of in his Gospel, as
applying to the transactions connected with Christ, and connecting with
them the occasion spoken of in the law when those eating the sheep are
bidden not to break a bone of it. He writes as follows:5036
“The soldiers therefore came and
brake the legs of the first, and of the other who was crucified with
him; but when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead, they
brake not His legs, but one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His
side, and straightway there came out blood and water. And he that
hath seen hath borne witness and his witness is true, and he knoweth
that he sayeth truth that ye also may believe. And these things
took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled, “A bone of Him
ye shall not break.” There are a myriad other points
besides this in the Apostle’s language which would call for
inquiry, both about the passover and the unleavened bread, but they
would have to be dealt with, as we said above, in a special work of
great length. At present we can only give an epitome of them as
they bear on the text presently before us, and aim at a short solution
of the principal problem. We call to mind the words, “This
is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world,” for it is said of the
passover,5037
“Ye shall
take it of the lambs or of the goats.” The Evangelist here
agrees with Paul, and both are involved in the difficulties we spoke of
above. But on the other hand we have to say that if the Word
became flesh, and the Lord says,5038
“Unless
ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no
life in you. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood, hath
eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My
flesh is meat indeed and My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth
My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me, and I in
him,”—then the flesh thus spoken of is that of the Lamb
that takes away the sin of the world; and this is the blood, some of
which was to be put on the two side posts of the door, and on the
lintels in the houses, in which we eat the passover. Of the flesh
of this Lamb it is necessary that we should eat in the time of the
world, which is night, and the flesh is to be roast with fire, and
eaten with unleavened bread; for the Word of God is not flesh and flesh
only. He says, in fact, Himself,5039
“I am the bread of life,” and “This is the bread of
life which came down from heaven, that a man should eat of it, and not
die. I am the bread of life that came down from heaven; if a man
eat of this bread, he shall live for ever.” We must not
overlook, however, that by a loose use of words, any food is called
bread, as we read in Moses in Deuteronomy,5040
“Forty days He ate no bread and drank no water,” instead
of, He took no food, either wet or dry. I am led to this
observation by John’s saying, “And the bread which I will
give is My flesh, for the life of the world.” Again, we eat
the flesh of the Lamb, with bitter herbs, and unleavened bread, when we
repent of our sins and grieve with the sorrow which is according to
God, a repentance which operates for our salvation, and is not to be
repented of; or when, on account of our trials, we turn to the
speculations which are found to be those of truth, and are nourished by
them. We are not, however, to eat the flesh of the Lamb raw, as
those do who are slaves of the letter, like irrational animals, and
those who are enraged at men truly reasonable, because they desire to
understand spiritual things; truly, they share the nature of savage
beasts. But we must strive to convert the rawness of Scripture
into well-cooked food, not letting what is written grow flabby and wet
and thin, as those do who have itching ears,5041
and turn away their ears from the truth; their methods tend to a loose
and flabby conduct of life. But let us be of a fervent spirit and
keep hold of the fiery words given to us of God, such as Jeremiah
received from Him who spoke to him,5042
“Behold,
I have made My words in thy mouth like fire,” and let us see that
the flesh of the Lamb be well cooked, so that those who partake of it
may say, as Christ speaks in us, “Our heart burned by the way, as
He opened to us the Scriptures.”5043
Further, if it is our duty to enquire
into such a point as the roasting of the flesh of the Lamb with fire,
we must not forget the parallel of what Jeremiah suffered on account of
the words of God, as he says:5044
“And it
was as a glowing fire, burning in my bones, and I am without any
strength, and I cannot bear it.” But, in this eating, we
must begin at the head, that is to say, at the principal and the most
essential doctrines about heavenly things, and we must end at the feet,
the last branches of learning which enquire as to the final nature in
things, or about more material things, or about things under the earth,
or about wicked spirits and unclean demons. For it may be that
the account of these things is not obvious, like themselves, but is
laid away among the mysteries of Scripture, so that it may be called,
tropically, the feet of the Lamb. Nor must we fail to deal with
the entrails, which are within and hidden from us; we must approach the
whole of Scripture as one body, we must not lacerate nor break through
the strong and well-knit connections which exist in the harmony of its
whole composition, as those do who lacerate, so far as they can, the
unity of the Spirit that is in all the Scriptures. But this
aforesaid prophecy of the Lamb is to be our nourishment only during the
night of this dark life of ours; what comes after this life is, as it
were, the dawn of day, and why should we leave over till then the food
which can only be useful to us now? But when the night is passed,
and the day which succeeds it is at hand, then we shall have bread to
eat which has nothing to do with the leavened bread of the older and
lower state of things, but is unleavened, and that will serve our turn
until that which comes after the unleavened bread is given us, the
manna, which is food for angels rather than men. Every one of us,
then, may sacrifice his lamb in every house of our fathers; and
while one breaks the law, not
sacrificing the lamb at all, another may keep the commandment entirely,
offering his sacrifice, and cooking it aright, and not breaking a bone
of it. This, then, in brief, is the interpretation of the
Passover sacrificed for us, which is Christ, in accordance with the
view taken of it by the Apostles, and with the Lamb in the
Gospel. For we ought not to suppose that historical things are
types of historical things, and material things of material, but that
material things are typical of spiritual things, and historical things
of intellectual. It is not necessary that our discourse should
now ascend to that third passover which is to be celebrated with
myriads of angels in the most perfect and most blessed exodus; we have
already spoken of these things to a greater extent than the passage
demands.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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