Luke 22:16

“For I say to you, I will not eat it, until it be fulfilled in the Kingly Rule of God.”

And the reason for this great desire was that this last Passover would usher in the Kingly Rule of God. Indeed what was now to occur at this Passover, which symbolised the giving of His body and blood, was what would cause its fulfilment in the Kingly Rule of God. We must note here that there is a twofold stress in this Passover meal. The first is in order to fix their eyes on the end at which He is aiming (Luke 22:16), the establishment of the Kingly Rule of God on earth which would be composed of all Who responded to Him and His words. To this end, in the first part of the meal He stresses that He will neither eat the Passover, nor drink the fruit of the vine, until its fulfilment is come about in the Kingly Rule of God (Luke 22:16), that is, until the Kingly Rule of God comes (Luke 22:18). Once this meal is over the final process of establishing for ever the Kingly Rule of God, for which Israel and the world so long has waited, and for which He has been laying the foundation, will begin and go on to fruition. (As we have seen above reference to the ‘coming of the Kingly Rule of God' always refers to the present manifestation of that Kingly Rule on earth).

In the second part which then follows (Luke 22:19) He fixes their eyes and their thoughts on the means. It is they who must now do the eating and the drinking, while He serves them. And He lays great stress on the two symbols of bread and wine (again indicating eating and drinking) which indicate how in the process of this fulfilment His body is to be ‘given' and His blood shed in the establishment of the new covenant. This will be His greatest service. It is by continual participation in this latter feast, which will bind them to Him, that they will be able to ensure the fulfilment of the former, the establishment of the Kingly Rule of God.

This contrast between His not eating and drinking, and the requirement on them to eat and drink, must be seen as deliberate. It is a clear pattern (a pattern which serves to help to confirm the longer version of the text). It brings out His uniqueness as the Supplier and not the recipient, and His independence of the means of salvation in contrast to their total dependence on them. And yet they will all be one, He as the One who makes holy and the Trek-leader of their salvation, and they as those who are made holy (Hebrews 2:10). It also stresses that shortly He will Himself be elsewhere engaged. He will no longer be physically with them. He will no longer be able to eat and drink with them physically.

So the reason for His burning desire here was because He would not be able to eat this memorial feast with them again on earth. It was to be His last Passover with these men who had come to mean so much to Him. And it was the last Passover meal that He would have until the coming of the Kingly Rule of God. By this He was indicating how close was the coming of this Kingly Rule of God. It would be fulfilled firstly and primarily as a result of His crucifixion, resurrection and enthronement, in its manifestation as the word went out in and from Jerusalem bringing deliverance to the world and establishing the Kingly Rule of God among men,, and it would come to its final fruition at His second coming. And while He would no longer be with them in His physical presence, from now on they must go on drawing on His spiritual power as they go about establishing His Kingly Rule.

In other words He is trying to inculcate the excitement of the first Passover. Then Israel had spent a night of excitement in expectancy of the coming day, which would commence their deliverance, would result in battles to come, and was then intended to be finalised in the establishing of the Kingly Rule of God in Canaan. Now He wants them to recognise that this is a new Passover, a special Passover, and that this too will lead on to battles to come and a fulfilment in the final establishing of the Kingly Rule of God.

For He alone knew at this point in time that this Passover was introducing the most crucial moment in the history of the world. It was the time that was introducing the offering of Himself as the great Passover Lamb (John 1:29; 1 Corinthians 5:7; Revelation 5:6; Revelation 5:9; Revelation 5:12) and as commencing the continuing process of the wider establishment of the Kingly Rule of God, which would finally end in the permanent and total establishment of the Kingly Rule of God in Heaven where the Lamb as it had been slain would be seated on the throne (Revelation 5:6). It was the Exodus deliverance not only being repeated, but being multiplied a hundred time over (compare Luke 9:31 where His death is called an ‘exodus'). The previous Exodus had been intended to result in a kingly rule of God on earth in Canaan. This one would result in an extending of the Kingly Rule of God on earth which would finalise itself in an eternal Kingly Rule of God in Heaven and the new earth, (as prophesied by Ezekiel and others in terms that the people could then appreciate - Ezekiel 37:27; Isaiah 11:1; Isaiah 65:17).

He was now aware that He would never see another Passover on earth. The first Passover had been eaten by Israel with the prospect of the coming kingly rule of God lying before them when they entered Canaan. They knew then that they would face warfare and suffering, and the need to go out and conquer, but once the conquest was over the kingly rule of God over all Canaan would have come about and all Israel would be then be able to come together in triumph (this was the ideal although in the end it never fully materialised due to disobedience).

Thus we can see why this Passover symbolised to Jesus the coming of the greater Kingly Rule of God. Through what He was about to suffer the whole process would be begun and then brought to completion, but, as with the first Passover, there would be the preliminary establishing of a Kingly Rule, but the final success would only be once the battles and the suffering were over. Meanwhile they (the people of God) would be able to continue partaking in the Passover to the full, once they recognised in it its true significance, that it was He who was the Passover Lamb, and that they must receive all the benefits of the new covenant through Him, by partaking of Him as the bread of life (John 6:35) through His death (John 6:51; John 6:53), and by receiving the benefits of what the shedding of His blood would accomplish. Then would He be celebrating the Passover with them again, with Himself as the Passover lamb.

It was thus a reaffirmation of His shortly having to experience suffering and death, and a declaration of the work of conquest that had to be accomplished as the Kingly Rule of God gradually came to fruition through them (as it began to do in Acts), and it was a guarantee of the glorious hope for the future when the final everlasting Kingly Rule of God would finally be established. All this was within His view at this time. We can compare with it how the Servant knew that after His death as a guilt offering all would finally come to successful fruition (Isaiah 53:10). The Servant had the same certainty of victory and of what God would accomplish. But Jesus' words were not just a prophecy looking ahead, but a recognition that now, from this time on, the last battle was beginning that would result in everlasting triumph once the dark days were over, a battle that could not fail to be won, for, ‘From henceforth the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God' (Luke 22:69), something of which Stephen would also shortly become aware (Acts 7:55).

The Passover was in fact also linked with the coming Kingly Rule of God in Jewish eyes. For they too saw it as symbolising their future deliverance. But the problem lay in the fact that the eyes of the unbelieving among the Jews were closed to the realisation that the One Who would bring it about had come. They had missed what they had been awaiting for so long because their hearts were actually closed towards God, and too set on their own ideas. And while the Kingly Rule of God did still from that time continue to spread throughout the earth, they are still blindly waiting for it to come. But if they too will open their eyes, as their fathers failed to do, they too can even now enter under His Kingly Rule in Christ.

‘I will not eat it until it be fulfilled in the Kingly Rule of God.' ‘It' naturally refers to the Passover. Thus He was making clear that this was His last Passover on earth. They had shared with Him in a number of Passovers (as John's Gospel makes especially clear) but this was to be the last in which He would be with them. And yet it was not to be seen as a tragedy, but as a triumphant proclamation that He would one day return (1 Corinthians 11:26). For it would lead to its ‘being fulfilled' in the establishing of the Kingly Rule of God. The deliverance by the power of God, which Passover spoke of, would finally be accomplished. Firstly because through His sacrifice as God's Passover Lamb the Kingly Rule of God would become a reality on earth through the power of the Holy Spirit at work through His Apostles, and through the cleansing effect of the blood of Jesus, and secondly because as a result the eternal Kingly Rule of God would finally be established in ‘Heaven'. The deliverance symbolised by the Passover would be fulfilled in both the near and the more distant future. Jesus' intention had never been to form a Kingly Rule of God of which the earth was its permanent base. The prophets had spoken like that because they and their hearers had had no conception of a heavenly existence for men. But Jesus' purpose had always been to form a heavenly Kingly Rule of God which would first be entered by initially believing on earth (John 3:3), and which would then continue for ever. The Kingly Rule of God thus consists of all in both Heaven and earth who truly believe (Hebrews 12:22).

‘I will not eat it until.' The real aim of these words is in order to stress that the Kingly Rule of God was really coming, and was coming soon, as it did at Pentecost. Passover would be ‘fulfilled' in the Kingly Rule of God because it would lead on to Pentecost, and the march to victory would have begun. And He wanted them to know that it would happen before there could be another Passover at which He could eat.

But it may rightly be asked in what way He could eat the Passover in the future? Perhaps in fact He did not really mean that He would ever again eat of it, but was using it as a way of emphasising that these were His last days on earth. Possibly He simply meant that what He was promising would occur before there could be another Passover for Him to eat at. Or possibly He was hinting at the idea of a spiritual fulfilment of Passover when they sat at His Table in the future and they again enjoyed Passover, together with Him, along with all His people, in the eating of the bread and the wine at the Lord's Supper. And that that would also be when He, as it were, spiritually drank of the fruit of the vine in company with them (‘where two or three are gathered in My Name there am I among them' - Matthew 18:20) once the Kingly Rule of God had come at Pentecost. Thus He would again both eat and drink with them once the Kingly Rule of God was fully established on earth by the Holy Spirit over His people.

Others who see this coming Kingly Rule of God as referring to the coming of the everlasting Kingdom see the possibility of this ‘eating of the Passover' by Jesus as something fulfilled in eternity. It must be remembered in this regard that the Passover was a memorial of deliverance, and a declaration that the people were protected by sacrificial blood, and His point could therefore be that in Heaven and the new earth there will always be a memorial to the cross and a reminder that we have been redeemed by His blood. That He will always be ‘the Lamb as it had been slain' (Revelation 5:6). That all will continue to glory in the cross. Thus He could have been saying that there will in Heaven be a spiritual equivalent to the eating of the Passover, when His people will eat heavenly food and drink heavenly wine in His presence. That there will then be a kind of Messianic Banquet. But it would, as we have seen, not fit in with the whole passage.

In that case He would be telling them that eternity would be taken up with their continually partaking of Him (compare Revelation 21:22; Revelation 22:3), and that He would continually be with them in whatever would, in the new Heaven and earth, be the equivalent of feasting (see Revelation 21:6; Revelation 22:1). Compare how in Zechariah 14 Heaven can be depicted in terms of the annual Feast of Tabernacles. The idea there is not that we must expect a literal fulfilment, a going back to the old, a literal slaughtering of beasts, (or in this case an observance of the Passover with the sacrifice of a lamb), so that the only things that lambs, who were then able to lie down with lions and wolves (Isaiah 11:6), would fear would be humans, but rather a fuller non-sacrificial fulfilment in the heavenly realm. It would be a feast which represented God's triumph.