What Does the Lamb Do?

In my course on New Testament Theology and History I pointed out that Mark’s Gospel depicts Jesus’ death primarily as a Passover offering, not as a sin offering. One student asked me to elaborate on this and I thought I would share my thoughts here as well.

If you go back to the book of Exodus you’ll remember that the killing of the first Passover lambs was not designed to deal with the people’s sin. The blood of those lambs, placed on Israelite doorframes, was to protect them from the angel of death as it ravaged the Egyptians. So the passover lamb in the later festival was not understood as providing atonement for sin. It was a commemoration of how God delivered Israel from the Egyptians and created them as a new nation. It was, at the same time, an anticipation of how God would in the future deliver Israel…