The Passover-Easter Connection

Did you know that …

• the Jewish feast of Passover was instituted 3,400 years ago?
• what we now call Easter was originally celebrated by Christians on Passover?
• the Last Supper was a Passover seder?
• Jesus established the sacrament of Communion at the Last Supper using elements of the Passover seder?
• the New Testament refers to Jesus as the Passover lamb?
• the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt is symbolic of redemption from self, or
• sin?

It is not uncommon to hear someone say, “Isn’t it cool how Passover and Easter overlap this

year?” That is the case this year, 2026, when the first day of Passover (which lasts eight

days) falls on April 2 and Easter is celebrated on April 5. But it is not always so.

Originally, Jesus followers commemorated his death and resurrection on the first day of

Passover, which falls on the 15th of the Hebrew month of Nissan.

Larry Stamm, a Jewish believer in Jesus who serves as the local outreach pastor at Grace

Fellowship Church in Johnson City, Tenn., explains:

“In early Church history, particularly the first two centuries, followers of Jesus

commemorated the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ on the same day as

Passover. Back then, Easter was known as pascha (Greek for Passover). During the second

century, some Christians began celebrating it on the Sunday following Passover. This caused

a rift between Christians who wished to commemorate Passover and pascha together and

those who wished to distinguish the two holidays. Victor, Bishop of Rome, even went so far

as to excommunicate anyone who observed pascha on Passover.

“After Emperor Constantine stopped the persecution of Christians in the fourth century, he

convened the Council of Nicea in 325 AD to determine, among other things, when Jesus'

Resurrection should be celebrated. The Council decided that it would be observed on the first

Sunday after the full moon on or after the vernal equinox.

“It is worth noting that Constantine, who held anti-Semitic views, changed the date of the

observance to make sure the Resurrection was not celebrated on Passover according to the

Jewish calendar. He wrote, ‘First of all, it seemed most unworthy that in celebrating this

most holy festival we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have impiously defiled

their hands with enormous sin and are, therefore, deservedly afflicted with spiritual

blindness.’”

Passover commemorates the night of the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt around

3,400 years ago. According to the Hebrew Scriptures, the angel of death destroyed all the

firstborn of Egypt but passed over all the Israelite homes protected by the blood of the lamb,

which God told the Jewish people to apply to the doorposts and lintels (crossbars) of their

homes that night.

The word Passover comes from the Hebrew Pesach, which means to pass over.

Passover is celebrated in the Jewish home with the seder meal and the telling of the story of

the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt from a book called the Haggadah (which means

telling). The Haggadah sets forth the order (seder) of the celebration.

When Jesus observed the Last Supper with his disciples, it was a Passover seder. Jesus used

elements of the seder—the unleavened bread (matzah) and wine—to commemorate his

impending death (the bread represents his body, the wine his blood). That is why Christians

take Communion today.

Jesus is portrayed as the Passover lamb in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul wrote, “For

Christ (Messiah), our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (I Corinthians 5:7).

For the Christian, the Passover is symbolic of Jesus delivering those who trust in him from

the slavery and penalty of sin.

Rabbi Chaim Zaklos of Chabad Solano County (California) sees a similar kind of

symbolism.

“Egypt is not just a geographical location,” he said. “It is also a state of mind. When

somebody is in a state of mind of Egypt, they are automatically in exile. They are slaves. The

person that we get enslaved to the most is ourself, our ego. We are being held captive by our

animalistic self. However, the human being also has a godly divine self where it can

completely let go of its animalistic urges and completely cleave to God. So that is liberating

yourself from captivity.”

Zaklos said that the seder, which has 15 sections, is a prescription for liberation.

“Seder means order,” he said. “It’s an order of 15 steps that are the steps of redeeming

yourself from yourself. Before there was a 12-step program the Jewish people had a 15-step

program There’s no original sin, but we are all originally created with a dual personality. We

all suffer from a multiple personality disorder—our animalistic and our godly.”

While most Christian theologians would disagree that there is no original sin, they would

agree that God desires to liberate us from our selfish desires.

Pastor Greg Davidson of Trinity Baptist Church in Vacaville, California, is Jewish and sees a

very strong bond between the two holidays.

“There is a very deep connection,” he said. “The Jewish people were in horrible bondage.

They were in slavery to Egypt. It was just a very dark time for the nation of Israel.

“God sent Moses as the great liberator of the Jewish people. But Pharaoh refused to listen to

his demands, so God sent plagues as judgment to the Egyptians to convince them to liberate

this persecuted people. Pharaoh continued to resist, so God sent his final plague. The

protection the Jewish people could count on against this judgment was that each household

had to take a lamb and slit its throat, take its blood and put it on the lintel of the door and the

doorposts. And that night when the death angel came to kill the firstborn in the land, when it

saw the blood on the doorposts, it passed over the Jewish house.

“Jesus was called in the Scriptures our Passover Lamb. So Passover was actually a picture of

a Savior, a Messiah, that all the Jewish people longed for and looked for. It was a picture that

the Messiah would come, die on a cross, and his shed blood would cover their sins When we,

by faith, apply the blood of the lamb to the lintel and the doorposts of our hearts, then one

day when the death Angel comes, he will see the blood and he will pass over us and we will

go to heaven at our death.”

This article, which was contemporized, originally appeared in The Vacaville Reporter on

April 11, 2020.

Matt Sieger, now retired, is a former sports reporter and columnist for The Cortland (New

York) Standard and The Vacaville (California) Reporter. He is the author of The God Squad:

The Born-Again San Francisco Giants of 1978.