CrossReads Weekly Devotional: Christ Our Passover 4/4/2022

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by Precarious Yates

“Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” ~ 1 Corinthians 5: 7-8

I often wondered why when Jesus came He did not offer Himself during Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, since He is our atonement, but offered Himself during Passover. Yom Kippur was a day prescribed by the law instead of by both history and law the way Passover was instituted in Exodus 12. Passover is the one holiday where we “eat the story” and participate fully with all of our senses. Our whole being, body, soul and spirit, participates in the trajectory of the Passover story, which is from shame to glory, and it is all because of what God did.

Jesus immersed Himself in that trajectory. In Luke 12:50, Jesus says, “But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!” He fully experienced the trajectory of shame to glory. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).  “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Philippians 2:5-11 gives the full trajectory in a beautiful poem that may have even been a song or hymn in the 1st century church:

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,

    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing

    by taking the very nature of a servant,

    being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

    he humbled himself

    by becoming obedient to death—

        even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

    and gave him the name that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,

    to the glory of God the Father.”

Because Jesus, “the Author and Finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2), went ahead of us into glory, He is the Forerunner of the glory we will all experience. Through faith in Christ, our Passover Lamb, we who were once bound by the fear of death now have the promise of everlasting life in the presence of His Life in glory!

So what does this mean? What should we do in light of this? Paul tells us to “Get rid of the old yeast,” quoting the Law, and then tells us what this old yeast is: “malice and wickedness” (1 Corinthians 5:7-8). More than this, we clothe ourselves with “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Colossians 3:12). We walk out what Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount: showing God’s kindness and goodness to the world by our acts of righteousness. We become conscious that each person is made in the image of God and that Christ died for all. We walk out in the realization of Jesus’ teaching from Matthew 25:31-40: “Whatever you did for the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it for Me.”

The Passover story renews our sense of neediness: how much we need a Savior! The trajectory from shame to glory is possible for all because of what God has done through Christ our Lord!

May God richly bless you this Easter season!

Precarious Yates

About the Author:

Precarious YatesPrecarious Yates has lived in 8 different states of the Union and 3 different countries, but currently lives in Texas with her husband, her daughter and their big dogs. When she’s not writing, she enjoys music, teaching, playing on jungle gyms, praying and reading. She holds a Masters in the art of making tea and coffee and a PhD in Slinky® disentangling.

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