It is rare to read a book that both illuminates your minds and emboldens your heart. Let alone when it’s by a professor. But that’s just what Dr. Scott Hahn’s book, The Fourth Cup: Unveiling the Mystery of the Last Supper and the Cross, does. Now, it isn’t exactly a secret that Dr. Hahn is a Presbyterian convert to Catholicism. He is a passionate, learned, and staunch defender of the Catholic Church and Her teachings. However, The Fourth Cup provides insights and wisdom that all Christians can benefit from.

What Did Jesus Mean When He Said ‘It is Finished’?

If you ask most Christians what Jesus meant when, just before dying on the Christ, he said “It is finished,” you’ll get an answer like “He finished our salvation.” “He finished His work of redemption.” “He finished His saving work on the Cross.”

According to Dr. Hahn, all of these are good guesses, but ultimately wrong.

The reasoning goes like this. All Christians would acknowledge that “justification” is a critical component of how we are brought into right-standing with God. Obviously there is a wide array of opinions on the specifics. But no one doubts the key importance of justification.

And that is why Dr. Hahn contends that when Jesus said “It is finished,” he could not have been referring to his complete work of redemption. The reason is pretty straightforward.

In Romans 4:25, Paul says that Jesus “was delivered up for our trespasses, and raised for our justification.” This concurs with Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15, when he says: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain … if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.”

Thus, when Jesus said “it is finished” on the cross, he could not have been referring to the completed work of salvation, because our justification/salvation wasn’t complete until the Resurrection. The Cross, as vital as it is, required the Resurrection to be fully effective.

The Passover Meal

So what was Jesus referring to then? This is where Dr. Hahn’s book, written with his typical enthusiasm, good-nature, and impressive learning, shines through. As Dr. Hahn shows, most scholars today acknowledge that the “Last Supper” recorded in the Gospel accounts was a Passover meal. Jesus and His disciples were faithful Jews. They came to Jerusalem for the Passover feast, and appropriately celebrated the festival of Unleavened Bread (the other name for the Passover).

This is where it gets very interesting. The Passover “Seder” (the meal) is a ritualized, liturgical meal, and has been among Jews for thousands of years. In Jesus’ time, the various rituals that were eventually written down in documents such as the Mishnah, etc. were largely in place. One of the most important of these was the drinking of four glasses of wine.

The first glass, the Kiddush, is the cup of blessing, and begins the Passover. The second remembers the Exodus and the departure of the Jews from Egypt. After this cup, the meal is eaten. Then the diners partake of the third cup, which is accompanied by the singing of “the great Hallel” (which came from the book of Psalms). But this is where it gets even more interesting.

The Gospel accounts observe that when Jesus raised the third cup, he called it the cup of “the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you” (Luke 22:20). This cup was also known in Jewish tradition as the “Cup of Redemption.” We know it was the third cup because it was eaten after the meal. Paul calls this “the cup of blessing which we bless” and “the cup of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 10:16, 21).

After blessing and drinking from this third cup, the Gospel of Matthew records Jesus saying “I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine [wine] until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” (Matthew 26:29) The meal then abruptly ends with Jesus and the disciples departing for Gethsemane, which to a Jewish audience would have been startling and discomforting — the Passover meal wasn’t complete!

Jesus then prays in the Garden, and asks “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.” (Luke 22:42) What cup is he referring to? Dr. Hahn answers: the fourth cup of the Passover meal!

The Meaning of the Fourth Cup 

The fourth cup of the Passover meal was also known as the “Cup of Praise,” and commemorates the covenant God made with the Jewish people at Mount Sinai — the culmination of the Exodus. Thus, in the context of Jesus, who informs the disciples with the third cup that he is inaugurating a new covenant, the fourth cup would represent the consummation of that new covenant, and the formation of a new holy people: the Church.

But when did Jesus consume this fourth cup? The Gospel of John tells us. Jesus says to the Roman soldiers, “I thirst.” And what do they give him? “A jar full of sour wine [“the fruit of the vine”] stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth.”

John points out something that none of the other Gospel writers do, namely that Jesus received the wine from a hyssop branch — the very same plant by which the Israelites applied the blood of lambs to their doorposts in Egypt. And in the very next verse, we arrive at the famous words: “It is finished.” (John 19:30) The fourth cup was the final cup of the new Passover, which is what Jesus finished on the Cross. The Passover of the New Covenant, which all Christians are commanded to remember and memorialize, was completed with Christ’s drinking of the fourth cup. It was this cup he so lovingly drank for us, and by which He established a new holy nation where there is neither Jew nor Gentile, nor male nor female, nor slave nor free, but all are one in Christ Jesus.

This is, to put it bluntly, merely a skeletal outline of Dr. Hahn’s profound book. It’s full of a wealth of insights on the meaning of Jesus’ death, the meaning of the Cross, and its deeper significance in the biblical narrative. If you’re interested in the Jewish roots of Christianity, you could do no better than this book.

Paul declares to us “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival.” (1 Corinthians 5:7-8) That is the deeper meaning of the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, Communion, that Dr. Hahn so brilliantly unveils for the benefit of all Christians. The Fourth Cup can therefore maybe, just maybe, inspire Christians to continue working toward the unity of Christ, and perhaps one day again find themselves at the same Table of the Lord.