When Jesus asked if there was another way, heaven’s answer was clear. The cup of judgment fell on Him so it would never fall on you, and that truth anchors our confidence in the only Savior who redeems.
On the night before he rescued his people from Egypt, God gave Moses instructions about the Passover meal—a commemoration of the deliverance they were about to experience (cf. Exodus 12). Their meal was simple, made up of unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The unleavened bread, or matzah, symbolized the fact that the Israelites had no time for their bread to rise (v. 39), and they dipped it in bitter herbs, or maror, to symbolize the bitterness of their time in slavery. Then they would eat it with their bags packed, their walking shoes on their feet, and their belts on.
The people of God celebrated this Passover meal for centuries. In fact, Orthodox Jews today still do. And at the center of the Passover table today, you will find four cups, each corresponding to a promise of deliverance in Exodus 6:6–7.
The first cup is called “the cup of sanctification,” and it corresponds to the promise in Exodus 6:7, “I will be your God.” As the Bible shows us, God was not just rescuing Israel from something, slavery, but to something, service to himself. They drank from this first cup of wine to show that God had set them apart for himself.
The second cup was called the “cup of deliverance,” and it’s based on this phrase in Exodus 6: “I will deliver you from slavery!” In the Passover, God delivered them from bondage to sin and death.
The third cup was called the “cup of redemption,” and it’s arguably the most important of the four cups. Again, Exodus 6 says, “I will redeem you ….” They would hold up this cup and say, “This represents our redemption from Egypt, how God brought us out with a mighty hand.” This was the cup, by the way, that Jesus held at the Last Supper (which was, we must never forget, a Passover meal). But Jesus didn’t say, “This represents our redemption from Egypt.” Instead, he said, “This cup is the new covenant of my blood, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sin.” A new redemption had arrived.
The fourth cup was called the “cup of praise,” or the cup of “final consummation,” and it corresponds to this phrase: “I will take you to be my people.” An interesting detail about this cup: When the children of Israel celebrated the Passover during the exile—after they’d been driven into Babylon and Persia because of their disobedience—they wouldn’t drink this cup at all. They would hold it up and say, “Hopefully next year we’ll drink this one in Jerusalem.”
On the night that Jesus celebrated this Passover with his disciples, he held this fourth cup up and said, “I will not drink this cup with you until we drink it together in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:29). Not, “Next year, in Jerusalem.” But instead, “In the new Jerusalem.” In other words, when we all gather for the marriage supper of the Lamb, that’s when we’ll drink this last one.
Many traditions point to a fifth cup, called “the cup of wrath,” and it was a plea for God to execute judgment on the evil nations. They got this idea from the statements of some of the prophets, like Isaiah, who described God’s wrath like a toxic poison contained in a cup that he would one day pour out on the earth (most of us know the image from John’s use of it in Revelation). But the rabbis debated whether they should even include this fifth cup in the Passover. After all, it represented judgment on the nations, so why should Israel drink it?
To resolve this issue, Jews around the time of Jesus started to say, “When Elijah returns, he'll tell us who should drink the cup of wrath.” There was a belief that Elijah the prophet was going to return before the Messiah came, which is how this fifth cup became known as “the cup of Elijah,” something it is called to this day. (By the way, Jews leave the front door of their homes open during Passover, symbolically inviting Elijah in to take this cup and inaugurate the kingdom of God.) This fifth cup was the one, scholars say, that Jesus referred to in Gethsemane when he said, "Father, if there’s any other way, let this cup pass from me.”
But you know the story: The Father said, “No, there is no other way.” And on the cross, Jesus drank this fifth cup, the cup of God’s wrath, down to the dregs. And when he cried out with a loud voice, “It is finished,” it was like he was slamming that cup down on the table, saying he had finished the work of the Passover once and for all, forever. God’s judgment had gone into Jesus, so it wouldn’t pass to me.
Can you think of any greater insult to Jesus than to say there are multiple ways to God? As in, when Jesus asked the Father if there was another way, the Father was like, “Actually, there are multiple ways to get to me; I just want you to go through this really brutal one.” No, there was no other way, which is why Jesus did this.
Had you or I been there that day in the Garden and tried to stop him, he would have said, “No! This is your cup. There is no other way for you to escape this judgment other than I drink it for you. Either you drink the cup of God’s wrath eternally, or I drink it in your place.”
On the night before Jesus died, Jesus took the matzah, and instead of saying, “This is the bread of our affliction,” he said, “This is my body, broken for you.” When I was growing up, the only thing we were supposed to think about during communion was our sin, to make sure we’d confessed it so that we didn’t get sick or die after communion. And that’s important and biblical, but I want you to think about the other meanings too. Think about the fact that they ate this bread with their backpacks on and their shoes on. It was unleavened because the yeast didn’t have time to rise. The next time you take communion, maybe you should consider: Have I gotten too comfortable in Egypt? Maybe the yeast, the leaven, has started to get worked back into the dough. Have you started to say, “You know, Egypt wasn’t so bad”? Or, “My sin was not so bitter”? Maybe right now you need to say, “Lord, you are my home. Your presence is the bread of my soul now, and I can’t wait to be with you forever.” Take and eat, Jesus said, and do it in remembrance of him.
And the cup: the third cup, the cup of redemption. Jesus held up this cup and said not, “This is your delivery from Egypt,” but “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins.” There is no Pharaoh that can hold you captive after Jesus has set you free. No power in heaven or on earth; no addiction, no regret—the power of this blood is greater than that of all enslaving Pharaohs.
Pastor J.D. completed his Ph.D. in Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Chick-fil-A, serves as a Council member for The Gospel Coalition, and recently served as the 62nd president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Pastor J.D. and his wife Veronica are raising four awesome kids.
"Editor's Note: Pastor JD Greear's "Ask the Pastor" column regularly appears at Christianity.com, providing biblical, relatable, and reliable answers to your everyday questions about faith and life. Email him your questions at [email protected]."
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