Matthew, like Mark before him, has moved the story of the crucifixion into the season of Passover. That helped the followers of Jesus to identify him with the paschal lamb. When one reads the story of the first Passover in the book of Exodus (Exod. 12), one understands that it was the blood of the lamb of God sprinkled on the door posts of Jewish homes that banished death from those homes. Now, under the power of Christian preaching, the cross came to be understood as “the door post of the world.” The blood of the new paschal lamb was placed upon that new door post, and the result was that
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