On the cross Jesus himself serves the role of Isaiah’s end-of-exile new Passover lamb. In his resurrection and ascension Jesus has reentered the presence of God, the House of David is raised up and reenthroned, and a new temple is built that fills the world—all of which marks the dawn of the prophetically forecasted end-of-exile new creation.
It is impossible to overstate the theological magnitude of Israel’s historic exile.[1] It sits like a gravitational loadstar in the middle of sacred history. Everything prior is drawn towards it, and everything after it is trying to climb out of it. For the exile is not only an expulsion from the land of promise (though that of course is bad enough), but the exile also marks the destruction of Israel’s temple and the toppling of David’s royal line. Insofar as those three theological icons—land, David, and temple—form the emblems that reassure that “God is with us . . .”, the exile amounts to the devastating conclusion (as Hosea 1:9 puts it) that Israel is “Not my People.” Just devastating!
No wonder Israel’s prophets are obsessed with the exile—what it means, how to endure it, how it will end, and what the world will look like when it does. In so doing, the prophets reach for many metaphors so that readers experience something of the catastrophe that is the exile. It is a prison for the nation (2 Kgs. 24:11–16). It is a reversal of creation (Jer. 4:23–26). It is darkness (Isa. 8:22). It is Egypt all over again (Hos 8:13). In short it is death (Ezek. 37:1–2). Not surprisingly, therefore, the return from exile can be described as nothing less than release (Isa. 42:7; 61:1), new creation (Amos 9:13–15), light (Isa. 9:2), and a new exodus (Hos. 11:11). Indeed, it will be resurrection (Ezek. 37:12–14).
In turning to the Gospels readers should be struck with the kind of return-from-exile language that pervades the evangelists’ descriptions of Jesus’s birth, teachings, and miracles. In him “light is shining upon those who sit in darkness” (Matt. 4:12–17). He himself traverses a new exodus (Matt. 3:13–4:11) and begins to call others to follow him on his road to redemption (Matt. 4:18–25). This essay focuses particularly on that redemption: the cross and resurrection as the necessary exile-ending sacrifice and concomitant end-of-exile resurrection from the dead. In sum, the cross and resurrection were for Jesus a personal exile and return, vicariously accomplished on behalf of his people. He himself enters into the curse of exile in order to lift his people out!
What follows here is a slight revision of a chapter in my book Return from Exile and the Renewal of God’s People (Crossway, 2025). It builds upon several Old Testament ideas that deserve a quick mention here at the outset. First, there is a theological relationship between the function of Eden and the role of the temple in the Old Testament.[2] To come into the Most Holy Place—as the High Priest does every Day of Atonement—is to return liturgically to the Garden of Eden.[3] Second, Israel’s prophets portray the exile as a form of death and the return from exile as a resurrection.[4] Third, the end of the exile is also described in the Old Testament as an ultimate and international new exodus.[5] And fourth, Israel’s exile is theologically nestled within the larger context of all humanity’s exile from the Garden of Eden.[6] The resolution to Israel’s exile, therefore, is the harbinger to all the nations returning to their primordial earthly dwelling with God.
With that, we turn our attention to the return from exile theology surrounding the cross and resurrection in the Gospels. While the evangelists portray Jesus’s birth, teachings, and miracles as end-of-exile tremors, each book climaxes in Jesus’s death and resurrection, the sine qua non of return from exile. Jesus’s death is the necessary sacrifice that effects the release from exile foretold in Isaiah 52–53 and constitutes his own personal exile from the presence of God. He himself goes into exile, “cut off from the land of the living . . . for the transgression of [God’s] people” (Isa. 53:8). Equally, Jesus’s literal bodily resurrection marks his own personal return from exile, initiating the new creation wherein one man has reentered the very presence of God. As such, he leads his people on their own return from exile.
The Death of Jesus Christ: The New Passover of the New Exodus
After the prologue, the first half of Matthew focuses on Jesus’s teaching and miracles (Matt. 4:17–16:20). Then, beginning in Matthew 16:21 the focus turns to Jesus’s death and resurrection, and it stays there until the end of the Gospel.[7] Jesus speaks of it three times on the way to Jerusalem (Matt. 16:21; 17:22–23; 20:17–19). Then, right before entering Jerusalem, he says this:
“The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (20:28).
Jesus’s language is drawn from Isaiah 52–53, where the theology of the Passover is employed to describe the new servant-lamb as the necessary substitutionary sacrifice of the new exodus.[8] In Isaiah 52–53 one called “the servant” of the Lord (Isa 52:13; 53:11) gives his life (Isa 53:5, 8–10a) “like a lamb that is led to the slaughter” (Isa 53:7; cf. Exod 12:1–28) in order to bear the sins of “many” (Isa 52:15; 53:12). Jesus is clearly drawing upon this climactic moment in Isaiah’s end-of-exile vision so that readers can equally understanding the meaning of the Gospel’s own climactic moment: his own long-predicted death. Jesus is the Passover lamb and the end-times servant-lamb whose death atones for sins and releases his people from exile.[9]
Jesus reiterates the same idea the night before his death. In Matthew 26:26–29 Jesus and his disciples are eating a Passover meal (cf. 26:17) when he takes bread, breaks it, and says, “this is my body.” He then takes a cup and says,
“this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28).
He then gives this bread and cup to his disciples to eat and drink (cf. Exod 12:8). So much is going on in this moment. For our purposes, we need only to observe that Jesus is applying the meaning of the Passover meal to his coming death, again refracted through the expectations of Isaiah 53:12 where the end-of-exile servant-lamb “poured out his soul to death…[and] bore the sins of many”[10] (note the same bolded words in each passage). Once again, we see that Jesus understands his death as the end-times realization of the Passover meal that Isaiah foretold would commence the release of his people from exile.[11]
Finally in Matthew, the cataclysmic events surrounding Jesus’s death—darkness, torn temple veil, earthquake, splitting rocks, open tombs (Matt. 27:45, 51–54)—are Old Testament images of exile and restoration.[12] Jesus’s death is the most earth-shattering event in all of history! If humanity’s ultimate problem is exile and alienation from God because of sin, it is no surprise to see such cosmic upheaval at the ultimate moment of atonement and release from exile.
Luke helpfully adds an additional layer of understanding when he records the same Passover meal (Luke 22:14). There Jesus says, “This cup which is poured for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20).[13] The only place in the Old Testament that uses the language of “new covenant” is Jeremiah 31:31, where the Lord promises forgiveness of sins at the end of the exile. Here again we see Jesus’s understanding of his death in the language of another prophet’s end-of-exile expectations.
Luke’s account of the transfiguration also stands out by calling Jesus’s death and resurrection “his exodus, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31; cf. 9:22, 44, 51). Most translations render this as “departure,” but the word is clearly exodon (ἔξοδον), just as in the Greek translation (LXX) of Exodus 19:1. On the calendar of prophetic expectation, the next “exodus” is the end-times return from exile. Thus, the road out of exile passes necessarily through Jesus’s death, followed inexorably by his resurrection.[14]
The fourth Gospel also applies the prophets’ end-of-exile expectations to Jesus’s death. In John 10 Jesus calls himself “the good shepherd” (John 10:11), clearly drawing upon Ezekiel 34, which describes the Lord God as the shepherd who gathers his exile-scattered sheep.[15] And in the very next breath Jesus adds, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11; cf. also 10:15). Thus, Jesus has linked the laying down of his life to Ezekiel 34’s vision for the end of Israel’s exile. Furthermore, in John 10:16 Jesus adds, “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” Surely this is a reference to Gentiles.[16] He will gather them too through the same life-giving sacrifice. And just as in the other Gospels, here too Jesus immediately also speaks of his resurrection: “I lay down my life that I may take it up again” (John 10:17–18). Jesus’s death and resurrection are inseparable for his sheep-gathering end-of-exile mission.
Moreover, like the other Gospels, John also has a clear new exodus theology (John 1:14–17). Thus, much of the Gospel takes place in the context of Passover celebrations (John 2:13; 6:4; 11:55; 12:1), including the entirety of chapters 13–20 leading up to his death. John absolutely insists, therefore, that we read Jesus’s death against the backdrop of the Passover (cf. esp. John 13:1) and that we theologically align the crucifixion with the ceremonially slaughtered lambs (John 19:14–16).[17] In fact, 13:1 shows how the Passover provides the theological reference point for the very reason Jesus came into the world. When Jesus says, “It is finished” at the moment of his death (John 19:30) he means (among other things) that the telos and culmination of the original exodus is now complete![18] Thus in his death, Jesus has “finished” the exile through a new exodus self-sacrifice.[19]