Life From Death

These ceremonies are to be observed through all generations as a reminder, in this case a graphic reminder, of the lengths God will go to save His children---his firstborn son, Israel.  We see, then, a hint of what becomes clearer almost fifteen hundred years later on a cross near Jerusalem: Life comes from death, or better, life can only come from death.  The tenth plague was not a divine temper tantrum where God flexes His muscles before the Egyptians and really lets them have it.  It is the necessary implementation of a redemptive pattern, one that requires death as a means to fuller life.  The consecration of the firstborn, therefore, is a reminder of the once-for-all substitutionary death of the beloved firstborn son who is to come.


--Peter Enns