Passover and the Lord’s Supper: the New Covenant and Maundy Thursday
The relationship between Passover, the Lord’s Supper, and Christian observance is examined through Scripture, arguing that the essential elements of Passover—lamb, bread, and bitter herbs—are fulfilled and transformed in the Lord’s Supper. The lamb is identified with Christ himself, the bread becomes the means of participation in his life as the true bread from heaven, and the imagery of suffering and deliverance associated with the bitter herbs is carried forward and reshaped, particularly through the symbolism of the cup as the covenant in Christ’s blood. Because these elements are already present in fulfilled form, the continuation of Passover as a separate practice is unnecessary, though optional observances may be permitted if they serve to clarify Christ-centered meaning. Emphasis is placed on the centrality of the Lord’s Supper—especially in connection with the resurrection—as the primary expression of covenant participation, with preference given to historic Christian patterns of remembering Christ’s death and resurrection rather than reconstructing earlier ritual forms.
At the time of recording this, it's Holy Week, and that means upcoming is Maundy Thursday. You may have never heard of that term, or maybe you have and even celebrated it. For many years, my family celebrated Maundy Thursday by going through the basics of a Jewish Seder meal, taking the imagery and viewing it through the lens of Christ to see the messianic expectation built into the Jewish faith. Recently, I’ve started to question whether that’s actually a good or beneficial practice in every way. That’s led me into biblical reflection, thinking about symbolism and biblical theology within the Scriptures.
The first thing to do is ask: should Christians celebrate the Passover, should Christians celebrate Maundy Thursday, and what does this have to do with the Lord’s Supper? To answer that, I want to start with some basic biblical observations about the Lord’s Supper, since the Passover, the Seder, and Maundy Thursday are all connected to Jesus’ institution of it. These are observations any Bible reader can see.
The first is in Matthew 26. Jesus institutes the Lord’s Supper during the Passover meal. In verses 17–19, they gather to celebrate Passover, and in verses 26–29, you see the institution of the Lord’s Supper while that meal is happening. For Jesus and the early disciples, the connection between Passover and the Lord’s Supper is unmistakable. But that raises questions, because the modern Seder has many elements, while the Lord’s Supper uses only bread and cup.
The second observation is that the Lord’s Supper only requires bread and wine in Scripture. In Matthew 26, Jesus uses the bread and the cup—“this is my body,” “this is my blood.” Then in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul reflects on this and presents the bread and the cup as the elements of the Lord’s Supper. Even though the early church gathered for full meals, Paul still identifies the bread and the cup as the Lord’s table. So while a full meal may happen, the essential elements are only bread and cup.
The third observation is that Paul discourages the Corinthians from turning the Lord’s Supper into a full meal. In 1 Corinthians 11, people were eating too much, drinking too much, and leaving others with nothing. The poor would arrive late and find no food or wine left. Paul responds, “Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in?” Then he centers the practice on the bread and the cup. He is not forbidding shared meals altogether, but he clarifies what is necessary for the Lord’s Supper itself.
So the three observations are these: the Passover was being celebrated when the Lord’s Supper was instituted, the Lord’s Supper only requires bread and wine, and Paul corrects abuses by focusing on those elements. From there, it becomes clear that if you look at a Seder, there are many elements not required in Scripture. In fact, the biblical Passover only mandates three: roasted lamb, bread, and bitter herbs.
Consider the roasted lamb. In the Lord’s Supper, the lamb appears, but not in the expected way. Jesus himself is the Passover lamb. John the Baptist says, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” The lamb is not on the table because Christ himself is present as the fulfillment. He is the one who stands in place of the sacrificial lamb.
Now consider the bread. In the Passover, the bread represents affliction. But in the Lord’s Supper, Jesus transforms that imagery. He presents the bread as his body. In John 6:53, he says, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” The bread becomes not merely a reminder of affliction, but the means of identifying with Christ himself. It is the bread from heaven, not just the bread of affliction.
The bitter herbs are more difficult. They represent the bitterness of slavery in Egypt, but they are not explicitly included in the Lord’s Supper. There is no direct biblical explanation for their omission. However, their symbolism appears to shift as the new covenant is revealed. The suffering and bitterness they represent are not denied, but they are transformed in light of Christ’s work.
This raises the question of the wine. Wine plays a large role in the Seder, yet it is not mandated in the Passover instructions. Still, it appears centrally in the Lord’s Supper. In the Passover, the blood of the lamb is placed on the doorposts as a sign of covenant protection. In the New Testament, Jesus says the cup is the new covenant in his blood. The wine becomes the sign that God’s people are covered by Christ’s sacrifice.
In that sense, the wine may also take on the role of the bitter herbs. It represents deliverance from slavery—not Egypt, but slavery to sin and evil. Jesus says, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant” (Matthew 26:27–28). To drink is to be bound to Christ, leaving behind bondage to the world. The imagery of suffering and deliverance is still present, but now centered in Christ.
So the three elements of the Passover—lamb, bread, and bitter herbs—are all present in the Lord’s Supper, though transformed. The lamb is Christ himself, the bread is his body, and the cup carries the covenantal and redemptive imagery. Because of this, there is no need to continue celebrating Passover separately. It is fulfilled in the Lord’s Supper.
That leads to the question of Maundy Thursday. Should Christians celebrate it with a Seder? Throughout church history, there have been different approaches. In Eastern Christianity, Easter is called Pascha, meaning Passover, showing that the church understands the entire resurrection celebration as the fulfillment of Passover.
The Lord’s Supper should be central on Easter Sunday. It is the clearest expression of the gospel in sacramental form. Celebrating resurrection without the Lord’s Supper neglects the very means Christ gave to proclaim his death and resurrection. The bread and the cup declare participation in his life and covenant.
As for Maundy Thursday and the Seder, it may be permissible. “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). But it is not necessary. In some cases, it may even be distracting if it becomes more about cultural reconstruction than Christ himself. For some communities, especially those engaging Jewish contexts, it may serve a purpose. But for most churches, it is not essential.
It may be better to focus on the historic practices of the church: Christ’s humility on Maundy Thursday, the crucifixion on Good Friday, the harrowing of hell on Holy Saturday, and the resurrection on Sunday. These are the central realities of the Christian faith.
Whatever is done, it must be done to the glory of Christ. The focus must remain on him, not on novelty or cultural interest. Christ is king, and that changes everything.
And what’s interesting is you only get three elements. Not all the elements of the modern Jewish Seder—only three mandatory elements in the Scriptures: roasted lamb, bread, and bitter herbs. You don’t even get wine as a mandated element for the Passover meal in the Scriptures. So let’s go through these things and think about roasted lamb first. What happened to the roasted lamb? The modern elements are not all prescribed for a biblical Passover, but these three are, and the roasted lamb does appear in the Lord’s Supper, just not in the way you might expect.
As we think about the lamb of the Passover, the true lamb is Jesus. He is present as the one presenting the elements, even though the lamb itself is absent from the New Testament accounts of the Last Supper. That moment becomes the institution of the Lord’s Supper because Jesus Christ took the place of the Paschal Lamb. He stands in that place as the perfect lamb. John the Baptist says, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” He comes as a substitution to give his body for us, and so the lamb is omitted because Jesus himself is the lamb.
But it’s not entirely omitted, because when you think about the bread, the imagery shifts. In the Seder or Passover meal, the bread represents affliction, and you see that in the breaking of the bread as a symbol of Israel’s suffering in Egypt. In the Lord’s Supper, however, the lamb is presented as the bread. Jesus says, “This is my body,” and breaks it, presenting the bread as the lamb. He is reshaping the imagery to show the new covenant fulfillment of what Passover pointed to.
In the book of John, Jesus identifies himself as the true bread from heaven, saying, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). That statement comes before the institution of the Lord’s Supper, but it points to a greater reality. Life comes through taking in Christ himself. Just as the Israelites ate the lamb on the night of Passover—whose blood secured their salvation—we take in Christ. In that act of faith, the imagery is the same: deliverance through participation in what God provides.
So we eat the bread as representing the eternal bread from heaven, not the earthly bread of affliction. Jesus has transformed the meaning. He is the bread who came down from heaven, and by consuming that bread, we become people of heaven. “You are what you eat” applies here—we become shaped by what we receive. We are not becoming people of affliction in Israel, even though affliction still exists in some ways.
Now the bitter herbs are the interesting piece. There were likely other foods present at the Last Supper, including bitter herbs and possibly lamb, though the Gospels only record the institution of the bread and the cup. The bitter herbs are commanded in Scripture, yet there is no clear biblical explanation for their omission in the Lord’s Supper. There is no verse explaining how they are fulfilled or set aside.
What seems to be happening is a transformation of their symbolism, similar to what happens with the bread. The bitter herbs in the Passover represent the bitterness of slavery in Egypt. In the new covenant, that imagery is not discarded but reshaped in light of Christ. The suffering they represent is still real, but it is now understood through the lens of redemption.
That raises the question of the wine. Why is wine central in the Seder but not mandated in the Passover instructions, yet central in the Lord’s Supper? The wine plays a major role in the Seder, and it’s possible that the form of the Seder known today was already developing around the time of Jesus. Still, the Scriptures themselves do not require wine for Passover, yet Jesus includes it in the Lord’s Supper.
If you think about wine as representing blood, then its presence is already embedded in the Passover through the lamb. The blood is shed and placed on the doorposts so that the angel of the Lord passes over. That blood is the sign of the covenant—it marks out God’s people. In the New Testament, when Jesus says the cup is the new covenant in his blood, that same imagery is carried forward. The cup becomes the sign that we belong to God.
When the church takes the cup together, it functions as that covenant sign. It is the declaration that this is God’s house, marked by the blood of Christ. Though wine is not mandated in the original Passover, it becomes central in the Lord’s Supper because of what it represents. In that sense, the wine may also take on the role of the bitter herbs.
The blood of the new covenant represents freedom from slavery—not just from Egypt, but from sin and evil. It is about leaving bondage behind and being bound to Christ. Jesus says, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant” (Matthew 26:27–28). To drink is to take that reality into yourself, to be joined to Christ rather than to the world.
All of this leads to the conclusion that the three elements of the biblical Passover—the lamb, the bread, and the bitter herbs—are present in the Lord’s Supper, though transformed. The lamb appears in Christ himself, the bread carries both affliction and fulfillment, and the wine embodies the covenant and deliverance imagery that overlaps with the bitter herbs.
In the bread and the lamb, in the bread. So we do have them all represented, and thus there’s no reason to also celebrate the Passover. This comes from a way of thinking about Scripture that emphasizes continuity, the consistency of the narrative from Genesis to Revelation. The question becomes how God’s work in Israel continues to shape how we understand the Scriptures through the fuller revelation of the New Testament.
That leads to the question of how many of the Jewish festivals Christians should be celebrating. The Passover is clearly important to Israel, so should Christians be celebrating it? The answer is yes, but it should be done as Christ has instructed. That brings us to Maundy Thursday and whether it should be observed through something like a Seder.
If you’re thinking along these lines, it’s natural to see the Passover as significant and worth engaging. Throughout church history, this has taken different forms. In Eastern Christianity, Easter is called Pascha, which means Passover. The entire Easter celebration is understood as the fulfillment of Passover, not as something separate from it.
Because of that, the Lord’s Supper should be central on Easter Sunday. It is the primary and essential moment for the church to celebrate the Eucharist. Yet many churches, in an effort to draw guests, end up downplaying the Lord’s Supper on Easter. That’s a mistake. There should be a way to clearly invite participation while also maintaining the meaning and boundaries of the table.
If someone is not a follower of Christ or not part of the church, they can be asked to refrain from participating. Churches that practice a fenced table can still offer the Lord’s Supper centrally while giving clear instruction. The point is that the resurrection should not be celebrated apart from the sacrament that proclaims participation in Christ’s life.
The bread and the cup declare that life is found in Christ. To eat the bread is to have life in oneself, and to drink the cup is to enter into covenant with God through the blood of Christ. That is the gospel being preached in visible form, and Easter is the most fitting time to proclaim it.
As for Maundy Thursday, gathering for something like a Seder is permissible. “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). It can be done, but it is not necessary. In some cases, it may even become distracting or unhelpful if the meaning is unclear or if the focus shifts away from Christ.
There may be contexts where it is beneficial, such as in Messianic communities or in churches engaging closely with Jewish contexts. In those cases, it can help explain the symbolism and point to Christ. But in most settings, it is not required and should be approached carefully.
A stronger focus may be found in the historic rhythms of the church: Christ’s humility on Maundy Thursday, the crucifixion on Good Friday, the harrowing of hell on Holy Saturday, and the resurrection on Sunday. These form the core of the Christian proclamation.
Whatever is done should be done to the glory of Christ. The focus must remain on him, not on novelty or cultural interest. The aim is to make much of Christ in all things, because Christ is king, and that changes everything.
