Matthew 26:17

Now on the first day of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, Where wilt thou that we make ready the passover?

Just what day of the week this was could never be known with positive certainty unless the exact year of the crucifixion could be determined. The first day of unleavened bread was the day before the preparation for the passover, namely the 13th of Nisan; and whether the Lord ate his last meal with the disciples on Wednesday or Thursday does not really matter. We do know that, in any case, the day on which he was crucified corresponded to the day the paschal lambs were slain, Christ thus fulfilling, even in his death, the figure of the "lamb slain from the foundation of the world." Technically, his last meal occurred on the day of his crucifixion, although actually it occurred the night before, a fact derived from the Jewish method of reckoning time and marking the day as beginning at sunset and ending at sunset the following day. Thus, we also are able to understand that the 15th of Nisan (first full day of Passover that technically began at sundown on the 14th of Nisan) really started at sundown of the day Christ was crucified on the 14th. We shall leave it to the scholars to make endless arguments as to the exact day of the week. That Christ was crucified, not on the 15th Nisan but on the 14th, is plain from these considerations:

1. The 15th of Nisan would not be called merely the preparation (John 19:31). Yet that was the day Christ's body was upon the cross; and the concern of the leaders in hastening his death by the breaking of his legs (as they intended) was precisely for the purpose of preventing his body from remaining upon the cross over the Passover (15th Nisan), which began technically at sundown the day he suffered (14th Nisan).

2. If the day of the crucifixion had been the Passover (15th Nisan), the officers and men who arrested Jesus the night before (after the Passover had legally begun) would not have borne arms on such a high day.

3. If the day of the crucifixion had been the Passover proper, Joseph of Arimathea would not have prepared spices on that day (Mark 15:46; Luke 23:56).

In view of the above, Christ's last meal, called the Passover, was not actually that. At least, it was not on that Passover day. It preceded the Passover. There is no evidence that a lamb was prepared and eaten by the Lord and his disciples. The true Lamb was present with them, and he would be slain on the morrow of this same 14th Nisan, fulfilling the type to the letter. No one should be disturbed by the designation of this last meal as the Passover by the synoptics, for without doubt the term was used in an accommodative sense because it so resembled and so nearly coincided with the actual Passover. John's gospel makes it impossible to believe that it was actually the ordinary Passover. Furthermore, Christ did not refer to it as the Passover until the disciples had suggested it; and even then he referred to "keeping" rather than "eating" it.