The Passover

ONE of the most well known scriptures in the Word of God is John 3:16. “For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world, that He even gave His One and only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him as Saviour shall not perish but have eternal life” (Amplified).

God demonstrated this while “we were yet sinners” 5:8).

This testifies to the un conditionality of God’s love for us.

He didn’t love us because we were lovely. He loved us because He is love (1 John 4:8).

The focus of John 3:16 is not just on perishing, but rather on us having everlasting life. According to Jesus in John 17:3,

eternal life is knowing God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is speaking of intimacy.

A person who comes to the Lord for forgiveness of sins but doesn’t go on to experience intimacy with God is missing the true point of salvation.

While it is very important that one avoids hell and all its torments, everlasting life begins here on earth in the form of intimacy with the Father and Son (John 3:36).

Sin was just a barrier that blocked our access to God. Without the removal of that barrier, there could be no true fellowship with the Father.

Jesus did take the sin of the world upon Himself (John 12:32)

and has reconciled us to God (2 Corinthians 5:19).

However, if we don’t go past life (Romans

THE world we build tomorrow is born in the stories we tell our children today.

What creates freedom? A revolution in the streets? Mass protest? Civil war? A change of government? The ousting of the old guard and its replacement by the new?

History, more often than not, shows that hopes raised by such events are often dashed, sooner rather than later.

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,” wrote Wordsworth about the French revolution, but the mood did not last long.

It rarely does. Sometimes all that happens is that the tyranny where the barrier used to be, into intimacy with the Father, we are missing the true point of salvation in this life.

It is very sad to note most of us ministers of the Gospel, just preach about the forgiveness of sins and leave out the other benefits of the finished work of the cross which include deliverance, healing and prosperity.

No wonder most believers are being tormented by the devil in most aspects of their lives through sickness, disease and poverty.

We preach about sin, and portray God as a God who is so mean, angry and ready to punish any sinner. Our messages become so intimidating that people receive Christ out of fear not out of the love of God.

This is how we then set a faulty foundation which is based on fear not the love of God. It is God’s love that leads man to repentance not fear or intimidation.

The resurrection of Christ ushered a new era in the life of a believer.

It signalled the passing away of an old covenant that was based on law and works and brought in a new Covenant that was associated with grace and a divine exchange in which man obtained Christ’s righteousness in exchange for his sins.

This new Covenant is outlined in (Hebrews 8:8 – 13). The key message in this Covenant is that God brought in a “new Covenant” because He had now made the “first obsolete”.

In addition, He would put “His of the minority is replaced by the tyranny of the majority; sometimes not even that.

The faces change. The suffering remains.

The books of Exodus and Deuteronomy take a different route altogether.

It’s astonishing how, reflecting on the Israelites’ journey from slavery to freedom, Moses keeps returning to one subject above all others: how we teach our children. “When your children ask you this, you should answer them that.”

“Teach your child on that day.” “Say to your child ...” Four times Moses speaks about the duty of parents to educate their children, handing on to them their people’s story until it becomes laws in our mind and write them on our hearts” and He “would be merciful to our unrighteousness and our sins and lawless deeds, He would remember no more”.

This is the good news. Christ who knew no sin was made sin because of my sin and I who was neck deep in sin have been made righteous through faith in Christ. I have become a new creation and the old sin nature is gone and everything has become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).

This new dispensation in my life as a believer now means that I have now become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21)

and as Christ is so am I in this world (1 John 4:17).

I now have direct access to my Father through Christ and I don’t need a priest like in the old covenant, to take my requests to God.

I now have the authority to “command mountains to move away and be cast into the sea” (Mark 11:23). Christ now lives in me the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27).

I can do “all things through Him who strengthens me”(Philippians 4:13) and I am an over-comer (1 John 5:4).

I have become rich through Christ who became poor for my sake, (2 Corinthians 8:9). By His stripes I was healed (1 Peter 2:24).

All I need to do as a believer to make the above privileges a reality in my life is to have faith that God has already done that for me.

I don’t have to fast for these things unless I am trying to get rid of my unbelief so I can access these benefits.

Faith becomes my positive response to what God has already done for me. Without that faith, you can wallow in poverty, sickness or disease and no amount of anointed oil or water will change your position.

You should never put your faith in the anointed oil or water their own.

That’s what we do each year on Passover as we gather in our extended families to re-enact the night long ago when our ancestors readied themselves to leave Egypt and begin the long walk to freedom.

It’s a remarkable ceremony, the oldest continuously observed religious ritual in the world, going back thousands of years.

We still eat the matzah, the dry unleavened “bread of affliction,” and taste the maror, the “bitter herbs” of slavery.

And children are still at the heart of this celebration. For we can only tell the story in response to questions asked by a child.

That’s why, for many of us, our earliest Jewish memory is of asking the “four questions,” beginning with “Why is this night different?” We remain faithful to Moses’ mandate: first teach the children.

Much has been written since Moses’ day about freedom. Even today it is the key word of politics, especially in those parts of the world under repressive regimes.

Still the talk is of politics and power, armies and militias, tactics and strategy, regime change and international intervention. or any medium but the faith has to be anchored in Christ.

You are not healed by the anointed oil or water or the power of the pastor, bishop or prophet. You are healed by “the stripes of Jesus” (1 Peter 2:24).

All these benefits are coming to you and I as a result of the birth, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.

This had nothing to do with your “good works” which for your own information are like “filthy rags” compared to Christ’s righteousness.

No amount of fasting will make you holy and righteous as required by Christ. Righteousness is a “gift from Christ” (Romans 5:17).

Our own performance is inadequate. We still fall short of the glory of God.

We make mistakes and so if we were to depend on our performance, none of us would make it. Jesus didn’t come to die for the perfect people because there are none such people.

Instead, He came to die for messed up people like you and I. This happened while we were still enemies with God.

If He could love us while we were still enemies “much more then, having now been justified by His blood we shall be saved from wrath through Him.”

God has never quit loving you because of your mistakes. He still loves you. However it is important not to abuse the message of God’s grace.

There are people who believe that because of God’s grace, they are now free to live as they will. This is ignorance gone on rampage. Sin has consequences.

You reap what you sow. Sin opens the door for the enemy and the devil will have you for breakfast should you live in sin.

As we celebrate His resurrection, we should thank God for

Still we are surprised when the new guard turns out to be as bad as the old guard.

The faith religious believers have in God is small compared to the faith people put in politicians, knowing how many times they have been disappointed in the past but still insisting that this time it will be different.

Moses taught us something else entirely. The world we build tomorrow is born in the stories we tell our children today.

Politics moves the pieces. Education changes the game.

If you want a free society, teach your children what oppression tastes like.

Tell them how many miracles it takes to get from here to there. Above all, encourage them to ask questions.

Teach them to think for themselves. Get them to continue the heritage not through blind obedience – the world’s worst preparation for liberty – but through active, challenging conversation across the generations.

That’s how we learned, as children, about the long walk to freedom.

It’s how we came to take our ancestors’ story as our own.

Amid all the talk about the challenges facing the world in the twenty first century – climate paying the ultimate price for our salvation.

He paid a debt He didn’t owe and you and I had a debt we couldn’t pay.

Indeed what a friend we have in Jesus!

This should never be taken for granted. Our God is an awesome God who is Love Personified.

His resurrection is an announcement to the whole world including the devil and his clan than we have been forgiven and sin no longer has power over us.

We have been redeemed. We have been acquitted because of Jesus. Jesus was made sin without sinning and we have been made righteous through faith in Christ Jesus.

How religion has messed up many people’s minds.

All religions of the world are focusing on what do I have to do to get closer to God? What do I have to do to be blessed by God? What do I have to do to get to heaven? My Bible tells me that all that is required is faith in Jesus Christ and not works. Christ did everything for me.

It is about having an intimate relationship with God and not works.

My holiness becomes a by product of the intimate relationship I have with God not the other way round.

Religion teaches you that you are a sinner because you sin and it is your works that make you righteous. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You were made a sinner through Adam and you have now been made righteous through Christ (Romans 5: 17 – 19) this is why Easter is so special and so I shall forever be grateful for the cross.

● Dr Doug Mamvura is a graduate of Charis Bible School. Feedback: or Twitter change, the global economy, political turmoil, the impact of the new technology – far too little is said or thought about education, and even when it is, it focuses on the wrong things, such as technical skills.

Education is the single most important determinant of the future of the human race, and what and how we teach our children is the most important decision we can make.

We have to teach our children that freedom only comes when you respect the freedom of others, that it involves responsibilities as well as rights and that it means making sacrifices for the common good.

God, the supreme power, intervened in history long ago to help the supremely powerless, a nation of slaves, and ever since, His work must be ours.

Nor can we teach these things without giving children the space to ask, question and challenge, thereby learning the dignity of dissent, itself one of the elements of freedom.

Liberty is born not on the battlefield but in homes, schools and houses of study.

That is the message of the world’s oldest ritual, Passover, and its force remains undiminished today.