By ICEJ
This is an unusual year… The Feast of Passover in Israel begins this coming weekend as Christians in the Western nations gather to celebrate Easter. The two holidays seldom coincide, but their significance is closely intertwined.
- Passover celebrates God’s salvation of Israel from slavery to Egypt
- Easter acknowledges God’s salvation for mankind from the bondage of sin
- Passover recognizes the sacrificed lamb that rescued the firstborn son from Egypt’s final plague
- Easter recognizes that God offered up His own Son to rescue us from sin and grant us eternal life
- Passover is the climactic event that set the Jewish people on their way to the Promised Land
- Easter celebrates Christ’s resurrection and points to a day when we will enjoy eternal life with Him
As we celebrate Easter this year, we should not only be enriched by the clear connection with Passover, but we should also remember the debt we owe to the Jewish people for giving us the Word of God, the roots of our faith, and most importantly our Messiah, Jesus Christ.
Here is an important truth… God has given us the opportunity to come into relationship with the Living God through Jesus and enjoy eternal life. While salvation first came to the Jews, we as Gentiles have been grafted in so that we can partake of Christ’s blessings.
Source: From an email by ICEJ (International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, Israel) on April 3, 2012. To learn more about ICEJ’s work in Israel, go to http://www.icej.org.