Context: At the Passover meal on the night of His betrayal, Jesus interprets His own imminent death — before any apostle does — and He does so in the sacrificial system's own categories. "While they were eating, Jesus took bread, spoke a blessing and broke it, and gave it to the disciples, saying, 'Take and eat; this is My body'" (v. 26). "Then He took the cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, 'Drink from it, all of you. This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins'" (vv. 27-28). The setting is itself exegesis: the Passover meal memorialized the substitutionary blood that averted judgment (Exodus 12:13), and Jesus relocates its meaning onto Himself. The single sentence of v. 28 fuses three OT streams: "My blood of the covenant" takes up Moses' words at the covenant inauguration — "This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you" (Exodus 24:8; cf. Zechariah 9:11); "poured out for many" echoes the Servant who "poured out His life unto death" and will "justify many... bear their iniquities... He bore the sin of many" (Isaiah 53:11-12); "for the forgiveness of sins" is the signature of Jeremiah's new covenant — "I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more" (Jeremiah 31:34). Within this trajectory the passage is the dominical hinge: the bridge between the OT system (Stages 1-8) and the apostolic interpretation (Stages 11-13), establishing that the sacrificial reading of the cross originates with Jesus Himself.
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Connections:
Christological Connection: In its own context the cup-word is covenant-making speech. At Sinai, Moses sprinkled sacrificial blood on the people and declared, "This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you" (Exodus 24:8) — blood that bound God and Israel in formal covenant relationship. Jeremiah later promised that this broken covenant would be superseded by a new one whose signature is definitive forgiveness (Jeremiah 31:31-34), and Isaiah announced the personal sin-bearer through whom the many would be accounted righteous (Isaiah 53:11-12). What no single OT text combines, Jesus combines in one sentence at the table: covenant-inaugurating blood, vicarious outpouring for the many, and new-covenant forgiveness.
The escalation is deliberate at every point. At Sinai the blood was animal blood; here it is "My blood." At Sinai the blood ratified a covenant Israel would break (Jer 31:32); here it inaugurates the covenant that cannot fail because its substance is "the forgiveness of sins." The Passover lamb's blood shielded one nation's households for one night; this blood is "poured out for many" — Isaiah's universalizing term for the beneficiaries of the Servant's death (Isa 53:11-12). And the direction of the gift is Levitical: as God says of the altar-blood, "I have given it to you to make atonement" (Leviticus 17:11), so here God incarnate gives the cup — atonement remains divine provision, not human payment. Mark 10:45 supplies the same substitutionary logic in Jesus' own voice outside the Supper: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many" (λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν) — a life given in the place of the many, fusing Daniel 7's Son of Man with Isaiah 53's Servant. The two dominical sayings interpret each other: the ransom-saying states the logic of exchange; the cup-word states its covenantal effect. The apostolic theology of Stages 11-13 — propitiation by His blood (Rom 3:25), covenant inauguration (Heb 9:18-22), and the once-for-all offering that secures Jeremiah's promise (Heb 10:15-18) — is not a later construction imposed on Jesus' death but the unfolding of His own self-interpretation.
The already/not-yet is built into the institution itself. The blood is "poured out" (present participle, ἐκχυννόμενον) — the sacrifice is imminent and, from the church's vantage, accomplished; the forgiveness of sins is now covenantally secured, and every Lord's Supper proclaims it "until He comes" (1 Corinthians 11:25-26). Yet Jesus immediately points beyond the table: "I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in My Father's kingdom" (Matthew 26:29) — the covenant meal anticipates the consummated banquet, just as the once-offered Christ "will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation" (Hebrews 9:28).
Connection Method(s): Promise-Fulfillment (primary) — Jesus explicitly declares Jeremiah 31:31-34's verbal new-covenant promise fulfilled in His blood ("for the forgiveness of sins"), and Isaiah 53:11-12's announced Servant-for-the-many reaches its referent; this is fulfillment of spoken divine promise, not merely institutional correspondence, so Promise-Fulfillment rather than Typology is the governing method. Also Typology (Direct, Forward-Looking) — the Sinai covenant-inauguration blood (Exod 24:8) and the Passover blood (Exod 12, the meal's setting) are divinely instituted rites that Jesus takes up with escalation: animal blood → His own blood; breakable covenant → unbreakable new covenant; one nation → "many." All five characteristics hold: analogical correspondence (covenant-ratifying substitutionary blood), historicity (Sinai rite and the cross are both historical), escalation (demonstrated above), pointing-forwardness (Jer 31 announces the old covenant's replacement from within the OT), and retrospective interpretation (Jesus Himself, then Heb 9:18-22, makes the connection explicit). Also Redemptive-Historical Progression — the Supper marks the epochal transition from the Mosaic administration to the new covenant: the moment the system's fulfiller declares its telos has arrived.
Trajectory Table: 136 - Sacrificial System (Christ Our Sacrifice)