The lamb that is slaughtered during the Israelite/Jewish festival of Passover. The adjective paschal derives from the Hebrew word pasach, 'passover.' In the Exodus account of the institution of the feast, God commanded the Israelites under bondage to pharaoh in Egypt to sacrifice a lamb and to paint its blood on the lintels of their homes so that the Lord may, seeing it, pass over them and they escape the death brought upon every first-born in Egypt (Exo 12:22).
Most of all, however, Christians find the term's most poignant significance in its reference to Christ who died on the cross for our sins at the time of the Passover festival. Paul, in urging the Christians in Corinth to give up their old ways and, instead,live the new life of the Kingdom of God, gave as the reason the fact that "Christ, our paschal lamb (to pascha), has been sacrificed" (1 Cor 5:7). Otherwise the term is found in Exo 12:21; 2 Chron 30:15; 35:1; Ezra 6:20; Mk 14:12; and Lk 22:7.
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