The Passover That Has Begun But Is Not Yet Finished

by John Wiertzema

In the final hours before His arrest, Jesus gathered with His disciples to share the Passover meal. It was a familiar moment.

For generations, Israel had observed this meal in remembrance of the night God brought them out of Egypt – when the blood of the lamb marked their doors, when judgment passed over them, and when deliverance began.

The story was well known. The pattern was established. The meaning seemed clear. And yet, as they sat at that table, Jesus spoke words that introduced a tension that could not yet be resolved.

“I will not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”

He did not say the Passover had reached its conclusion. He did not say its meaning had been exhausted. He spoke of its fulfillment as something that was still ahead. And yet, at that same table, He took the bread and the cup and spoke of His body and His blood.

Something had begun. But something was not yet complete.

The First Passover

To understand what was unfolding, it is necessary to return to the beginning of the story.

The original Passover instructions were not imagined by man. They were commanded by divine decree. God Himself prescribed every detail so that the rite would stand as a clear, annual symbolic pre-enactment woven into the fabric of covenant life. It was a prophetic storytelling of salvation, one that could not easily be misunderstood – yet could be truly understood only with spiritual discernment and illumination from above.

On the night of deliverance, each household was instructed to take a lamb. The lamb was to be without blemish. It was to be sacrificed. And its blood was to be placed on the doorposts of the house.

That night, judgment would pass through the land. But wherever the blood was present, the firstborn would be spared. The house marked by blood would be protected. And from that moment forward, those who were spared would belong to God in a special way.

Here the already/not yet tension is already present. The sacrifice was offered, the blood was applied, and deliverance had begun. Yet the full inheritance – the complete entrance into the Promised Land – still lay ahead.

The Passover Reframed

When Jesus sat at the table with His disciples, He did not set that story aside. He drew it together. He took the bread and said, “This is my body.” He took the cup and said, “This is my blood.” In doing so, He did not abandon the meaning of Passover. He revealed it.

The lamb. The blood. The deliverance. These were not separate ideas. They were converging in Him.

The Passover had always pointed forward – to Christ as the true sacrifice, and to those who trust in His blood as the firstborn ones saved from death. What had been remembered for generations was now present in a way that had not been seen before. And yet, even as He spoke these words, He pointed forward: “Until it is fulfilled…”

The story was not ending. It was moving forward.

Fulfillment Begins

The events that followed would make clear that something decisive had taken place. The cross was not an interruption of the story. It was its center.

The Lamb was slain. The blood was shed. Deliverance was secured.

In this sense, the symbolism of the Passover lamb’s sacrifice reached its fulfillment in the work of Christ on the cross. The sacrifice that protected the firstborn had now been offered once for all. What the ancient rite had always pointed toward had come to pass. And yet Jesus’ words remain: “Until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”

The Meaning of “Until”

That small word – until – reveals the already/not yet reality at the heart of the Passover. The sacrifice is fulfilled. The blood has been shed. Deliverance has been secured.

But the full outworking of that saving work is still unfolding. The protection of the firstborn has begun – yet the final phase of their salvation, the resurrection of the firstborn ones, still lies ahead. What was secured at the cross will reach its completeness when the dead are raised and the kingdom of God is fully manifest.

The language holds both realities together. What has begun is real. What is ahead is certain.

A Story Still Unfolding

This pattern is not unique to Passover. It is woven throughout Scripture. God makes promises. He acts in history. And His purposes unfold over time. What He begins, He brings to completion. But not all at once.

The disciples would come to see this only gradually. At the table, they could not yet see the cross. At the cross, they could not yet see the resurrection. And even after the resurrection, there were still things they did not yet understand.

The story was clear. But its unfolding required patience.

Living Within What Has Begun

This is where the church now lives. Not at the beginning of the story. And not yet at its final fullness. But within what has already begun.The Lamb has been given. The blood has been shed. Deliverance has been secured. And yet the fullness of that deliverance is still to come.

The Passover story is more than a picture of Christ’s death. It is a divine pattern that reveals how God’s salvation works. The decisive work is accomplished first. The full effects of that work then unfold over time until they reach their appointed completion in the kingdom.

This already/not yet reality of Passover is foundational to eschatology. The same tension that marked the original Passover night, and then, subsequently, the Last Supper night, runs through the entire Christian hope. What Christ has accomplished at the cross is real and secure. What that accomplishment will ultimately produce – the resurrection of the dead, the final defeat of evil, the full manifestation of the kingdom – is still unfolding and will be brought to completion when Christ returns.

Understanding Passover in this way helps us approach the whole subject of the end times with greater patience and clarity. The end is not a single instant in which everything happens at once. It is the completion of what has already been decisively secured in Christ.

The story is not uncertain. But it is still unfolding. And learning to live faithfully in that tension is at the heart of biblical hope.

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