As His last Passover neared, Christ said to His disciples that in a couple days He was going to be crucified by the Romans under pressure from the Jewish rulers. His disciples were shocked, disbelieving and bewildered.

“You know that after two days is the Passover, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified,” He said (Matthew 26:2).

It seemed crazy, illogical, like asking, “Could God be killed by men?”

In their view, Jesus was indestructible. God was with Him in everything. He could walk on water. No one had ever defeated Christ in an argument. He had always avoided and evaded attempts to kill or harm Him. He could make Himself invisible. He could change water to wine, turn a few fish and loaves of bread into many pounds of food, miraculously feeding thousands. Jesus Christ could, in vision, turn into His gloried God Being state of brilliant, fiery white light. And He could raise the dead to life.

As events cascaded forward during those last weeks before the death of their leader, the disciples were wrestling with the ideas from Jesus Himself that He was God in the flesh. When asked by Jesus, Peter had said, “You are the Christ, the Son of God” (Matthew 16:16).
Christ had been telling and showing them for three and a half years that He was a supernatural being, the literal Son of God who had come to live among men to show them the Kingdom of God. He said He had come down from heaven and was Lord of the Sabbath, a blasphemous claim for the non-believing Jewish leaders who perceived that He was claiming to actually be God, who created time itself. To the disciples, He revealed that He was the Creator God. He had revealed that He had a Father in heaven, whom He had come to reveal, who was greater and whom He represented and spoke for in spirit.

Why would God allow His Son to be executed when He was to rule all nations from Jerusalem? Had not Jesus demonstrated to them His constant emphasis that God is love? God was supposed to deliver and keep the righteous from evil—not allow them to be oppressed and killed. God had performed countless miracles through Jesus Christ, and His teaching was to love your enemies and hate all violence.

This previously-unknown God the Father loved Jesus and would glorify Him, He had told them. So really, how could He allow Christ to be crucified? How could that be the will of God His Father? It didn’t make sense!

The Passover Experience—Christ Defines God’s Love

Christ was passionate about spending His last hours before His murder keeping the Passover with His disciples. “He said to them, ‘With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God,’” reported Luke (Luke 22:15-16, emphasis added). Five New Testament writers tell us various parts of what happened at Jesus Christ’s last Passover just a few hours before the indescribable brutality began. When putting together these accounts like a jigsaw puzzle, all the major details of what was said and done that evening had one overarching theme, which John described in his gospel account: “Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end” (John 13:1). 

He loved them to the end.

That Passover defined love in ways that would only be perceived after the experience of His execution for human sin. What Jesus’ commitment was to them, the depth of His and the Father’s love and how God’s love is defined for members in the Kingdom of God were the topics He explored that night.

John and Matthew were the only two eyewitnesses to write Bible accounts of this Passover. Two other gospel writers—Mark and Luke—heard about what happened from the apostles and wrote what they said they experienced. Paul later gave specific instructions about Passover observance for the Church based upon Christ’s own instructions to Him. Paul stated the new Passover ceremony for Jesus Christ’s Church was not the same as Old Testament Israel’s.

Banquet Begins with the Past

It began with a robust meal followed by activities, wine and more light eating. Jesus interspersed the experience with profound teaching, which made an indelible impression on the minds of the disciples.

Christ began the evening with obedience to the law of Moses, which required all Israel to ritually eat a supper of lamb, herbs and unleavened bread. This commemorated the deliverance of the children of Israel from the destruction of the firstborn of Egypt. God commanded that Israel “eat the flesh that night; roasted in fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it” (Exodus 12:8).

Starting with this familiar ritual meal required under the law, Jesus moved forward quickly, introducing new ideas—God’s ideas—with great depth, dramatically altering the Passover experience completely. As called, chosen, faithful and baptized Christians, it’s these new symbolic rituals introduced by Jesus that are taken every Passover. Instead of a physical family meal, it’s a God-family occasion, as Paul’s later instruction correctly spelled out (1 Corinthians 11:17-29).

Christ’s Humility Shock

On this new Passover night event, Jesus didn’t look back to the triumph over Israel’s murderous enemies celebrated by the Passover, but rather He took off His outer robe, took a towel used by guests at a banquet, got down on His knees, unlatched the sandal of a disciple and began to wash his feet.

Here was the future King of Israel, who was acclaimed as the Messiah several days before by tens of thousands of people as He entered Jerusalem in the ritual donkey ride into the city as the King. In this case the disciples believing Jesus would begin a reign over the entire earth according to prophecies and His own statements.

But here He was washing their feet!

The foot washing and the remainder of this new ritual would teach them the most profound remembrance of Christ Jesus’ life and the meaning of His death—God’s love for all humanity. They would experience why a member of the Godhead—God in the flesh—was allowed to be killed after a life of demonstrating to the world what love is. For this reason, He would command all His followers thereafter on this night to follow the new rituals every year exactly so they would learn the meaning of conversion to His way of love. It symbolically represents the way of love of God and loving your neighbor as yourself. He would thereby explain this meaning for all His true followers for all time the exact attitudes of the Kingdom of God: putting the needs of others ahead of the self—the greatest of noble purposes.

Peter knew nothing of this. He objected to the humility of Christ, rebuking and arguing with Jesus, claiming it was completely inappropriate. “Then He came to Simon Peter. And Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, are You washing my feet?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this.’ Peter said to Him, ‘You shall never wash my feet!’ Jesus answered him, ‘If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me’” (John 13:8). In other words, He was telling Peter, “If I don’t wash your feet, you are ‘out of here.’” Therefore, this ritual is a requisite criterion to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Jesus was very serious, essentially saying, “If you don’t keep it, you are not in Christ.” Jesus was not speaking only to Peter. He is talking to us and to every human being who intends to follow Him.

“So when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again,” He explained the meaning of what He did by asking: “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” This ritual foot washing was the epitome of the attitude of God toward serving other people. It is the entrance requirement into the Kingdom of God. It was the job of the lowliest of servants in a household on the social pecking order, and He showed them He was that kind of servant to them and to all humanity.

Then Jesus stated the purpose for everything that would be a part of the new Passover ritual of Christ: “For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (John 13:12-17).

Through the Passover, we know that the greatest meaning of Christ Jesus as both God and man is the capacity for love by the supernatural God of the universe, the Creator of man in His own image. Human beings were created to understand and develop that same kind of love. This is the ultimate meaning of the Passover experience. There is no other religious experience in the history of man that has anything like this ritual with the teaching of its meaning attached to it by its Founder. Any substitute for this Passover experience is a fake and a counterfeit.

Traitor’s Fellowship and Jesus Institutes the New Passover Meaning and Symbols

After explaining more about the foot washing and humility in leadership, His mood changed. ^“When Jesus had said these things, He was troubled in spirit,” John wrote. “Most assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me” (John 13:21). This prediction hung over the occasion as He instituted a new ritual.

Judas had already made a deal to sell Christ’s whereabouts to the Jewish leadership for 30 pieces of silver. They wanted Him murdered by the end of the day of Passover—the 14th of the first Hebrew month—just a few days away from the time Judas agreed to his dastardly deed. Jesus knew who His betrayer was.

As they continued to eat after the main courses were over, Christ told them that He was instituting a Passover observance of unleavened bread and wine. These food items were now to represent God’s Passover with a new meaning, representing Jesus Christ’s flesh and blood. “As they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body’” (Matthew 26:25). Luke’s account says it was after the supper that Christ took the bread and expounded on its symbolism.

“And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me’” (1 Corinthians 11:25). Matthew wrote, “Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins’” (Matthew 26:27-28). Then Luke also relates, “Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.But behold, the hand of My betrayer is with Me on the table.And truly the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed!’” (Luke 22:20-21).

Peter, John and all the others were extremely distressed. The disciples questioned Christ who it was. “They began to be sorrowful, and to say to Him one by one, ‘Is it I?’” (Mark 14:19). Matthew adds Judas’ own manipulative question: “Then Judas, who was betraying Him, answered and said, ‘Rabbi, is it I?’ He said to him, ‘You have said it’” (Matthew 26:25).

John wrote that Jesus answered the following to all the disciples: “‘It is he to whom I shall give a piece of bread when I have dipped it.’ And having dipped the bread, He gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. Now after the piece of bread, Satan entered him. Then Jesus said to him, ‘What you do, do quickly.’ But no one at the table knew for what reason He said this to him…Having received the piece of bread, he then went out immediately. And it was night” (John 13:26-30).

Most people who consider the tragedy of this moment of betrayal and what happened to Jesus Christ over the next 16 hours see it as the low point of mankind—the ultimate example of man’s inhumanity to man. The Devil, who had wanted to kill the Son of God from the time He was born, was now allowed to do so.

The disciples would be sifted like wheat as the soldiers took Jesus, beat Him brutally beyond recognition and crucified Him, inflicting tremendous pain. Jesus endured it all for us. Later, as crowds surged below Him as He hung on the cross, Christ could still love through it all. He knew how close to victory He was, certain of man’s spectacular future as moment by moment His blood and life drained from Him like rain on the soil.

The night of Passover was Jesus Christ’s crowning night of teaching and fellowshipping with the disciples He had spent three and a half years with, and whom He loved so much. They would never forget that night. When it was over and Jesus was talking with them later, having been resurrected, they experienced such joy that they couldn’t contain themselves. After the stone was rolled away late Sabbath afternoon and they saw Him the next day, it all started to make sense. Everything Jesus said about what would happen was true.

Following in His Footsteps

Indeed, God had in mind that Jesus the Christ would initiate a new and wonderful experience of foot washing, bread and wine. These are the symbols of the triumph of God’s master plan for saving man from death. Through this ceremony, the way was made open for man to follow Jesus Christ from being mankind into becoming God-kind. That’s where the footsteps of Jesus lead.

That evening, many of the most profound, deep, sublime and astonishing revelations of God’s intentions and truths for mankind were explained by God through His Son. He explained love, the Holy Spirit, how He had overcome Satan and that man was to be one with God in every way as Jesus is one with God. These truths are recorded in the extensive teachings of John 13-17.

God’s people keep this Passover to this day for their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He is the Bread of Life. Let us observe it exactly as He instructed.