Jesus’ Last Hours: Understanding the Passover Symbols

Few verses instill more trepidation in Christians than I Corinthians 11:27: “Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.”

No one wants to take the Passover symbols and be found guilty of our Savior’s death!

Paul’s warning in verse 29 adds even greater weight to taking the bread and wine: “For he that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.”

Unworthily. Damnation. Not discerning the Lord’s body.

“Unworthily” can mean irreverently and “damnation” means judgment. We can take the bread and wine at Passover in an irreverent manner—and by doing so, bring judgment upon ourselves.

While examining our spiritual condition before Passover (vs. 28) is critical, we must also consider the final phrase: “Not discerning the Lord’s body” (vs. 29).

What does this mean?

First, consider that we are eating and drinking symbols. The bread and wine represent Jesus’ body and blood; they are not literally those things. We must discern—use our minds to comprehend—what these symbols mean.

Other translations shed light on this verse:

• New American Standard: “For the one who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not properly recognize the body.”
• Moffatt: “For he who eats and drinks without a proper sense of the Body, eats and drinks to his own condemnation.”
• New Living Translation: “For if you eat the bread or drink the cup without honoring the body of Christ, you are eating and drinking God’s judgment upon yourself.”

To truly recognize and honor what Jesus endured, we must understand exactly what He suffered. We must grasp Christ’s suffering to properly discern His body and blood in the symbols.

This knowledge helps us approach Passover with the proper perspective and a clear conscience. It allows us to gain deeper meaning from this somber annual service

Jesus Knew What Was Coming

On the night before His death, Jesus entered the Garden of Gethsemane with His disciples, already under tremendous mental distress.

Matthew 26 says, “Then comes Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and said unto the disciples, Sit you here, while I go and pray yonder. And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy” (vs. 36-37).

Jesus said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry you here, and watch with Me” (vs. 38).

He then went off by Himself and prayed, knowing that His torture and death were mere hours away: “Saying, Father, if You be willing, remove this cup from Me: nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).

Humanly, Jesus was asking God if there was any way to avoid what He was about to suffer. Christ knew the horrors that awaited Him and had millennia to meditate on what He would have to do.

As the Word of God that was made flesh (John 1:1-3, 14), Christ helped inspire every prophecy related to His death.

Roughly 700 years before, He moved Isaiah to write: “He is despised and rejected…a man of sorrows…He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities…and with His stripes we are healed” (53:3-5).

About 1,000 years before Jesus’ prayer in the garden, He inspired David to write Psalm 22: “They pierced My hands and My feet” (vs. 16) and “I may tell all My bones: they look and stare upon Me” (vs. 17).

David was writing about crucifixion many centuries before it was invented. Yet the Word knew.

Revelation 13:8 puts this all into perspective: Jesus Christ is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”

From the beginning, our Savior knew what He would have to endure. The same was true as Jesus lived out His 30-plus years before His death. This all weighed on His mind as He cried out to the Father in Gethsemane.

Luke, who was a physician, records the physical toll of this emotional distress: “And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44, New King James Version).

Modern medicine helps explain what may have happened. In 1986, the Journal of the American Medical Association published “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ” by Dr. William Edwards and colleagues, which states that Jesus likely experienced hematidrosis—a rare condition in which extreme stress causes capillaries to burst, mixing blood with sweat. The rarity of this condition underscores Jesus’ immense anguish.

Despite this distress, He willingly went forward to fulfill His purpose.

Betrayal, Abandonment and Trial

After Jesus finished praying sometime after midnight, He went back to His disciples who had fallen asleep. He said: “Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrays Me is at hand” (Mark 14:42).

One of the 12 disciples, Judas, arrived with men armed with swords and clubs, a mob sent by the Jewish chief priests, scribes and elders (vs. 43).

Judas approached Jesus and betrayed Him with a kiss (Matt. 26:49-50), fulfilling Psalm 41:9: “Yes, My own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of My bread, has lifted up His heel against Me.”

As Christ was arrested, His disciples “forsook Him, and fled” (Mark 14:50). He willingly submitted to His captors.

Thus began an all-night trial of false accusations at the Temple complex. Think of it. At God’s House, the Son of God was slandered and wrongfully accused.

Things turned violent: “And the men that held Jesus mocked Him, and smote Him. And when they had blindfolded Him, they struck Him on the face” (Luke 22:63-64).

Isaiah 50:6 gives insight into more of what Jesus went through during this time: “I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not My face from shame and spitting.”

Repeated blows battered Christ’s face: Deep bruises darkened His skin, His eyes swelled shut and raw patches bled where His beard had been ripped out.

Despite this, He remained silent: “He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth” (53:7).

At dawn, around 6:00 a.m., the Jewish leaders formally declared Jesus deserving of death (Matt. 27:1-2). However, under Roman occupation, they lacked authority to execute Him, so they delivered Him to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, to press for a crucifixion.

Roman Trial and Scourging

By now, Jesus had been awake for roughly 24 hours. He had been under an immense emotional burden, abandoned by His closest friends, mocked mercilessly and hit in the face. Dr. Edwards suggests that the combination of stress and exhaustion could render a person particularly vulnerable to shock once further injury ensues.

Pilate questioned Jesus and found no reason to execute Him (Luke 23:4). King Herod, the ruler of Judea, also refused to sentence Him (vs. 8-11). Yet the Jewish leaders pressed for Jesus’ death.

The frenzied crowd cried out: “Let Him be crucified…His blood be on us, and on our children” (Matt. 27:23-25).

Pilate finally relented and “took Jesus, and scourged Him” (John 19:1).

The words “scourged Him” grossly understate what He endured. Before crucifixion, it was standard Roman procedure to scourge the condemned—a vicious flogging meant to weaken a prisoner and hasten death.

Jesus was stripped and tied to a post, and Roman soldiers beat Him with a whip known as a flagrum. This instrument had multiple leather thongs embedded with small iron balls and sharp pieces of bone. With each lash across Jesus’ back, buttocks and legs, the weighted bones and metal bits bruised deeply and then ripped into His flesh, tearing skin and underlying skeletal muscle.

Dr. Edwards explained that as the flogging continued, the wounds opened into quivering ribbons of torn flesh, causing profuse bleeding. Ancient accounts indicate a Roman scourging could be so savage that the victim’s bones or entrails might become exposed. Many did not survive.

Yet Jesus did survive, but His body was now a bloody, weakened wreck. The soldiers then heaped more humiliation upon Him. They draped a scarlet robe over His shoulders (Matt. 27:28), likely clotting into the wounds, and pressed a crown of thorns onto His head (John 19:2). The long, spiked thorns pierced His scalp, causing bleeding on the head—one of the most vascular areas of the body—adding to His blood loss.

They placed a reed-staff in His hand as a mock scepter, knelt in fake homage and jeered, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They spat on Him and struck His head repeatedly with the staff, driving the thorns deeper (Matt. 27:29-30; Mark 15:19). Jesus, already gravely injured, silently absorbed this abuse like a “lamb to the slaughter” (Isa. 53:7).

When the soldiers tired of their mocking, they tore the robe off Jesus’ back, reopening the bleeding wounds that had begun to stick to the cloth (Matt. 27:31). They then put His own clothes back on Him and led Him away to be crucified.

By now, Jesus was so battered and bloodied that an onlooker could not recognize Him—a sobering image Isaiah had detailed: “His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human” (Isa. 52:14, New International Version). The King James says He was “marred more than any man.”

Dr. Edwards explained that the hematidrosis from the garden had likely left His skin particularly tender—heightening the intense pain and hemorrhaging.

The combination of pain and blood loss likely put Jesus’ body into a pre-shock state, Dr. Edwards wrote. This would cause His blood pressure to drop and His heart rate to spike as His body struggled to maintain blood flow. He would have felt extreme thirst, lightheadedness and may have been close to collapse.

This is supported in the gospel accounts, which show Jesus—a 30-year-old physically fit carpenter—was unable to carry His own crucifixion stake to the place of execution (Mark 15:21; Luke 23:26).

The Crucifixion

On top of the hill Golgotha, outside of Jerusalem, Christ was crucified around 9:00 a.m. He was stripped naked and Roman soldiers drove large metal spikes through His hands and feet.

According to Dr. Edwards, these thick 5-to-7-inch-long nails driven through the wrists (the area between the radius and carpal bones) would have likely damaged the median nerves—sending fiery bolts of agony through the arms. Jesus’ feet would have been nailed either through the tops (one foot over the other) or through the ankles. In either case, the tibial nerves would be injured, causing intense radiating pain up the legs.

Once affixed to the stake, Jesus would have been hoisted upright, and the full horrors of crucifixion came into play.

The main medical “effect of crucifixion, beyond the excruciating pain, was a marked interference with normal respiration,” Dr. Edwards stated. He described how Jesus’ body weight pulling down on his arms made exhaling increasingly difficult, leading to progressive asphyxiation and extreme pain: “Adequate exhalation required lifting the body by pushing up on the feet and by flexing the elbows…However, this maneuver would place the entire weight of the body on the tarsals and would produce searing pain.”

Every time Jesus spoke while crucified, He endured incredible agony. Go read Luke 23:34 and 43; John 19:26-27; Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34; John 19:28 and 30; and Luke 23:46. Each sentence meant having to push up on His nailed feet, pull on His impaled wrists, and drag His shredded back against the rough wood.

His words—whether asking His Father to forgive the executioners, comforting the thief nailed next to Him or ensuring His mother’s care—all came at the cost of incredible suffering.

The Darkest Hours

Around noon, supernatural darkness covered the entire land (Luke 24:44-45). Three excruciating hours later, Jesus remained on the stake. He had taken every sin—past, present and future—upon Himself. He felt utterly alone and cried out: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). He was quoting Psalm 22:1.

Christ's body trembled from exhaustion, dehydration deepened from blood loss and thirst and His limbs burned with aches and searing pain. Each breath became a battle between exhaustion and suffocation.

Even in this state, Jesus diligently fulfilled every prophecy written about His death. There was a last one to complete: “After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture [Psalm 69:21] might be fulfilled, said, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to His mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished: and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost [His spirit]” (John 19:28-30).

Luke describes His death, which occurred around 3:00 p.m., like this: “And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, He said, Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit: and having said thus, He gave up the ghost” (23:46).

John adds one more event: “But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out” (19:34, NKJV).

Jesus’ shed blood paid the penalty for our sins, making it possible for us to be forgiven and reconciled to God.

Honoring Christ’s Sacrifice

As we mediate on Jesus’ suffering, we should remember what He did for each of us personally. Recognizing our individual roles in His death is essential in properly “discerning the Lord’s body.”

Read yourself into Isaiah 53:3-5. The New Living Translation helps highlight our part in His suffering: “He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on Him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.

“Yet it was our weaknesses He carried; it was our sorrows that weighed Him down. And we thought His troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for His own sins!

“But He was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.”

We all bear responsibility for Christ’s suffering. Yet He willingly endured it all for us.

Truly appreciating what Jesus went through puts God’s mercy in the proper perspective. It reminds us that forgiveness was not free—it was purchased at the highest possible cost. God the Father willingly gave His only Son out of love for mankind so that we may have eternal life (John 3:16). This should weigh on our minds as we approach Passover.

Before Jesus endured the agony of betrayal, scourging and crucifixion, He instituted the New Testament Passover symbols.

Paul recounts: “That the Lord Jesus the same night in which He was betrayed took bread: and when He had given thanks, He broke it, and said, Take, eat: this is My body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of Me. After the same manner also He took the cup, when He had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in My blood: this do you, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me” (I Cor. 11:23-25).

Each year, as you take the Passover symbols, remember what they represent. Christ’s body was beaten, broken and torn so you can be healed (I Pet. 2:24). His blood was poured out so your sins can be forgiven (Lev. 17:11; Heb. 9:14).

To partake of these symbols without considering their weight—to take them lightly, unthinkingly or without reverence—is to fail to discern the Lord’s body.

This Passover, and always, let’s fully grasp the magnitude of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice. Let’s approach this solemn service with sobriety and gratitude. Let’s never take lightly what cost our Savior everything.