The primitive passover sacrifice was an offering of blood by the head of
the household on the threshold of his home, as a token of his welcome to
the guest who would cross over that blood and thereby become one with
the family within. It was not an outsider or a stranger who proffered a
threshold sacrifice, but it was the house-father who thus extended a
welcome to one who was yet outside. The welcoming love was measured by
the preciousness of the sacrifice. The richer the offering, the heartier
the welcome.[584]
In the Egyptian passover the threshold sacrifice was a proffer of
welcome to Jehovah by the collective family in each Hebrew home. In the
Christian passover it was the sacrifice of the Son of God on the
threshold of the Father’s home, the home of the family of the redeemed,
as a proffer of welcome to whoever outside would cross the outpoured
blood, and become a member of the family within. Therefore it is
written: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal
life.”[585] And “for this cause,” says Paul, “I bow my knees unto the
Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.”[586]
Among primitive peoples, as among the Jews, no indignity could equal the
refusal of a proffered guest-welcome, in a rude trampling on the blood
of the threshold sacrifice, instead of crossing over it reverently as a
mode of its acceptance. Hence the peculiar force of the words of the
Jewish-Christian writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, concerning the
mistreatment of God’s threshold sacrifice, in the Son of God offered as
our passover: “A man that hath set at nought Moses’ law dieth without
compassion on the word of two or three witnesses: of how much sorer
punishment, think ye, shall he be judged worthy, who hath _trodden under
foot the Son of God_, and hath counted the blood of the covenant,
wherewith he was sanctified [separated from the outside world], an
unholy [a common] thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of
grace?”[587]