NT Text: 1 Corinthians 5:7
OT Source(s):
Source: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Typology
Anchor Text: Exod 12 — The Passover
Significance: "For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed" (1 Cor 5:7) is Paul's explicit identification of Jesus with the Passover institution of Exodus 12:1-14. The connection meets every mark of a valid type. Analogical correspondence: the unblemished year-old male lamb (Exod 12:5), slaughtered so that its blood spares the household from death, corresponds to the sinless Christ whose blood delivers His people from judgment. Historicity: both the Egyptian Passover and the crucifixion are real events. Escalation: the lamb's blood averted one night's death-stroke and won release from Egypt; Christ's blood averts eternal judgment and accomplishes the new exodus from sin (cf. 1 Cor 5:8; 1 Pet 1:18-19). Pointing-forwardness is built into the rite's perpetual observance (Exod 12:14), and the NT supplies the retrospective interpretation. Paul presses the type ethically—because the true Lamb is slain, the church must "get rid of the old leaven" (5:7), keeping the feast in sincerity and truth (5:8)—yet the ground of the imperative is the finished sacrifice, so the demand for purity is gospel response, not moralism. Christ is seen as the desirable substitute whose death secures the deliverance the first Passover only foreshadowed.