Researched by the Ignaria Editorial Team · Published 2026-04-22
The Passover lamb is the most directly named OT type in the New Testament — Paul declares it plainly in 1 Corinthians 5:7: "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us." Every requirement in Exodus 12 finds its correspondence in the antitype: unblemished and male in its prime — Matthew Henry notes Christ "offered up himself in the midst of his days, not in infancy" — slain at twilight by the whole assembly, its blood applied to doorposts with hyssop to shield households from the destroying angel. Origen draws the central contrast: the Jewish Passover required thousands of lambs slaughtered household by household, while Christ's sacrifice is singular for all. Calvin explains why God commanded per-household sacrifice despite one sufficing — so that each family might feel divine grace "more peculiarly conferred on itself," a pastoral provision pointing to the personal yet universal scope of Christ's atonement. Hugh of St. Victor makes the Eucharistic connection explicit: the paschal lamb "preceded in the figure of the sacrament of the body of Christ," its eaten flesh and applied blood foreshadowing the real reception of Christ's body. Chrysostom presses the moral demand: to receive "of His own holy flesh" and still become wolves rather than lambs is the deepest ingratitude. Hugh of St. Victor traces the shadow-to-substance arc: after the truth came, the sign was removed, "when there was nothing in the future to be signified but something in the present to be received."
What the primary sources show
"And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the bason, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the bason; and none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning. For the LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the LORD will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you." — the operative typological moment: blood as the sign that shields from judgment, the specific mechanism that patristic writers, Aquinas, and the Reformers consistently read as pointing to Christ's atoning sacrifice.
"The passover of the Jews consists of a sheep which is sacrificed, each taking a sheep according to his father's house; and the passover is accompanied by the slaughter of thousands of rams and goats, in proportion to the number of the houses of the people. But our Passover is sacrificed for us, namely, Christ." — the clearest patristic statement of the typology's fulfillment: the multiplicity of Jewish Passover lambs resolved into the singularity of Christ's once-for-all sacrifice. (ANF-09)