The Easter Wine Story: Five Glasses, Four Promises, and One Very Famous Dinner

Egg hunts and chocolate bunnies weren't a part of Easter originally but did you know Easter and a great bottle of wine have gone together for longer than most of us realize. Drinking wine on Holy week is a tradition that stretches back thousands of years and the story behind it is far richer than most people know.

That bottle on your Easter table connects directly to the ancient Passover feast, a debate among rabbis that was never quite resolved, and one of the most pivotal moments in human history.

Wine at the Easter feast

The story of Easter wine begins with Passover. Most historians and theologians agree that the Last Supper was, in fact, a Passover Seder — a traditional Jewish feast celebrating God's deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt. The Seder is one of the most intentional meals in human history. Understanding that meal will help us unlock the Easter story in a whole new way, so let's dive into a quick cultural lesson.

A traditional Passover feast, is a choreographed combination of tastes, sounds, sensations, and smells - with every element set in a specific order. Throughout the evening, participants drink four cups of wine (did someone say PARRRRTAY?!?!), each one representing one of God's four promises to the Israelites in Exodus 6:

Cup	God's promise	Name
1	"I will bring you out" — set apart as God's own people	Cup of Sanctification
2	"I will deliver you" — freed from physical bondage	Cup of Praise
3	"I will redeem you" — purchased and restored	Cup of Redemption / Cup of Blessing
4	"I will take you as my people" — full belonging and relationship	Cup of Acceptance

The evening begins with the head of the household reciting a blessing over the first cup of wine, sanctifying the night as set apart. Throughout the Seder, participants drink wine while reclining — a deliberate posture symbolizing freedom, the position of royalty rather than slaves. Between the first and second cups, the youngest child asks the famous question: "Why is this night different from all other nights?" — and the entire Exodus story is told in response. Bitter herbs are eaten to remember the bitterness of slavery. Unleavened bread is broken. Songs are sung. At one point, the door is opened and a fifth cup, the Cup of Elijah is filled, more on that later. 

It is a meal designed not just to commemorate history, but to make every person at the table feel as though they themselves came out of Egypt. If you want to see this tradition beautifully brought to life on screen, The Chosen Season 5 devotes its entire final season to the events of Holy Week, weaving scenes from the Passover meal through every episode, including the prayers, the washing of feet, and the practices of a traditional Seder that scripture doesn't explicitly mention but history confirms. 

The third cup changes everything

At the Last Supper, Jesus and the disciples enjoyed the Passover just as tradition had specified up until the third cup and then things took a turn... Usually it takes a turn for me at the 3rd glass too! ;) This turn was a different, more eternal one.

After taking the bread, blessing it, and eating the Gospels tell us that Jesus took a cup. In the flow of Seder this would be the third cup — the Cup of Redemption, or more formally the Cup of Blessing — represented God's promise to purchase and restore his people.

What happened in that moment was a profound reordering of a very old idea. The idea of redemption, of buying back or paying for someone's freedom. In this case the freedom from sin. As we have been taught the wages of sin is death. In the Bible wine is sometimes associated with God's judgement and wrath.

In Leviticus, God associates the life of an animal with it's blood and sets up the Levitical system where animals are sacrificed as a substitute in a life-for-life redemption for our sins. The original Passover itself was marked by a lamb's blood on the doorpost. This system was weighty, solemn, and ultimately, as the Book of Hebrews puts it, temporary.

When Jesus raised that third cup and said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood," he was preparing a new way. The symbolism of the wine as His blood signaling the life-for-life redemption but the use of wine brought a new meaning, one pointing to God's goodness, blessings, abundance and joy.

You see in the Bible wine had a dichotomous symbolism. On the one hand in some instances it was associated with God's judgement and wrath. One the other, wine represented God's goodness, His blessings, abundance, and joy (see Psalm 104, Isaiah 25, Deuteronomy 7, Proverbs 3). The cup of judgment became a cup of blessing; death reframed as life, solemnity softened into communion.

A thread that runs even deeper

Would you be surprised to learn that the thread runs deeper than the Passover story? The connection between wine, covenant, and blessing didn't begin at the Last Supper or even at Passover. It stretches all the way back to one of the most mysterious figures in the entire Bible: Melchizedek, a priest-king of Salem who appears in Genesis 14, roughly 2,000 years before the Last Supper.

After Abraham returned from battle, this enigmatic figure came out to meet him and brought bread and wine. No explanation. Just bread, wine, and a blessing. The author of Hebrews later identifies Melchizedek as a foreshadowing of Christ himself, and notes that Jesus came as "a priest in the order of Melchizedek."  The bread-and-wine covenant didn't originate in an upper room in Jerusalem. It was already ancient by the time Jesus raised that third cup.

Savor the story this Easter

So this Easter, when you pour your Easter wine, take a moment with it to remember. Remember God's goodness. Remember His promises. Remember that He loves you so much that He left his throne in Heaven to join you here and to trade His life for us even while we were still sinners. You're holding a small piece of a very long story — one that winds through ancient Passover tables, a famous rabbinic debate, an upper room in Jerusalem, and two thousand years of shared meals since.

Cheers to renewal, to the people around your table, and to great wine.

But wait, what about the 4th cup? And didn't your title also make mention of a 5th cup?

I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED!!!!

🤓 NERD ALERT ⚠️ The unfinished cup: what Jesus left on the table — and where he drank it

Join us for a delightfully dorky deep dive into the 4th cup at the Last Supper.

The fourth cup and what it meant

Each of the four Passover cups corresponds to one of God's four promises in Exodus 6. The first three move in escalating acts of rescue — God bringing his people out of Egypt, delivering them from bondage, and redeeming them with power. But the fourth cup is different in kind, not just degree.

The fourth promise is: "I will take you as my people, and I will be your God." Not another act of rescue — a declaration of relationship. You are mine. I am yours. The fourth cup, the Cup of Acceptance, was the toast to belonging itself. And notably, that exact phrase appears more than ten times in the Old Testament outside of Exodus, and every single one of those instances points forward, to a future moment of final restoration not yet fully realized. Every time the rabbis raised the fourth cup, they were toasting a promise that hadn't completely come true yet.

Jesus stops the meal short

At the Last Supper, Jesus blessed and shared the third cup — the Cup of Redemption — and then did something that would have been shocking to every person in that room. He stopped. He did not drink the fourth cup. Instead, he said: 

"I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." - Matthew 26:29

For a rabbi to deliberately leave the Passover Seder unfinished, to stop just short of the climactic final cup on the most sacred night of the Jewish year, was extraordinary. He wasn't forgetting. He was making a statement: the story isn't finished. The full belonging, the final "you are my people," hadn't arrived yet. Something had to happen first.

The cup in the garden

After the 3rd cup, Jesus went directly to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he prayed three times that "this cup" might pass from him. Readers often take that as a general metaphor for suffering — and it is that. But it's also strikingly specific. He had just left a literal cup on the table an hour earlier and told his disciples he wouldn't drink it until the kingdom came. The cup he was agonizing over in the garden wasn't only a symbol of suffering in the abstract. It was the fourth cup — and he knew what drinking it would cost.

The cross and the cup of acceptance

John's account of the crucifixion contains a detail that reads differently once you know all of this. As Jesus neared death, he said "I thirst." A sponge soaked in wine was lifted to his mouth on a branch of hyssop (the same plant used in the original Passover to spread the lamb's blood on the doorpost). When Jesus received the wine, he said: "It is finished." And he died.

"It is finished" is almost universally read as referring to his life, his mission, his atoning work. All of that is true. But in John's telling, it is also the completion of a meal that began the night before in an upper room. The Passover Seder, interrupted at the third cup, was now complete. The fourth cup — the Cup of Acceptance, the toast to full belonging — had been drunk. Not at a warm table with friends, but on a cross, at the cost of everything.

The cup still on the table

Which brings us to the fifth cup — the one nobody drinks. Every Passover Seder table has a 5th cup as well. One that is poured, but never drank. For the promise God gave to Moses that "I will bring you into the land." It's called the Cup of Elijah, left in anticipation of the prophet who Jewish tradition says will arrive to herald the coming of the Messiah. The drinking of the fifth cup is for the final and ultimate redemption.

The cup Jesus promised to drink new with his people in the Kingdom — the one still ahead, the wedding feast, the final restoration — that cup is still being poured. Still waiting.

Our Jewish brothers and sisters open their door for Elijah at every Passover, not knowing when he'll come. Us Christians believe the door has already been opened. Either way, the cup on the table is the most hopeful one in the world: a promise not yet fulfilled, held open by a God who keeps his word.

Cheers to His faithfulness, steadfast love, and to drinking the fifth cup when He returns!

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