“Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” (I Corinthians 5:7).
The Fifth Day of Redemption Week was the annual day for the Passover Supper. We know nothing of His words during that day, but perhaps this Scriptural silence is for the purpose of emphasizing the greater importance of these preparations for the Passover.
Multitudes of sacrificial lambs and other animals had been slain and their blood spilled through the centuries, but this would be the last such acceptable sacrifice. On the morrow, the Lamb of God would take away the sin of the world (John 1:29). He would offer one sacrifice for sins forever (Hebrews 10:12). With the blood of His cross, He would become the great Peace Maker, reconciling all things unto the Maker of those things (Colossians 1:16,20).
As the Lord thought about the shedding of the blood of that last Passover Lamb on that Fifth Day of Holy Week, He must also have thought of the Fifth Day of Creation Week, when He had first created animal life (Genesis 1:21). This had been His second great act of creation—this creation of the entity of conscious animal life (the first act of ex nihilo creation had been the creation in Genesis 1:1 of the physical elements). In these living animals, the “life” of the flesh was in their blood, and it was the blood which would later be accepted as an atonement for sin (Leviticus 17:11). Note that the words “creature,” “soul,” and “life” are all translations of the same Hebrew word, nephesh. Surely the shedding of the innocent blood of the lamb that day would recall the far-off day when the “life” in that blood had first been created. And because He, the Lamb of God, was about to become our Passover (note our text for the day), death itself would soon be swallowed up in victory and life (I Corinthians 15:54). HMM
