1 Corinthians 15:20

In this passage the apostle establishes the truth of the resurrection of the dead, the holy dead, the dead in Christ,

I. On the resurrection of Christ. 1. Because he is indeed the first-fruits of those that slept, Co1 15:20. He has truly risen himself, and he has risen in this very quality and character, as the first-fruits of those who sleep in him. As he has assuredly risen, so in his resurrection there is as much an earnest given that the dead in him shall rise as there was that the Jewish harvest in general should be accepted and blessed by the offering and acceptance of the first-fruits. The whole lump was made holy by the consecration of the first-fruits (Rom 11:16), and the whole body of Christ, all that are by faith united to him, are by his resurrection assured of their own. As he has risen, they shall rise; just as the lump is holy because the first fruits are so. He has not risen merely for himself, but as head of the body, the church; and those that sleep in him God will bring with him, Th1 4:14. Note, Christ's resurrection is a pledge and earnest of ours, if we are true believers in him; because he has risen, we shall rise. We are a part of the consecrated lump, and shall partake of the acceptance and favour vouchsafed the first-fruits. This is the first argument used by the apostle in confirmation of the truth; and it is, 2. Illustrated by a parallel between the first and second Adam. For, since by man came death, it was every way proper that by man should come deliverance from it, or, which is all one, a resurrection, Co1 15:21. And so, as in Adam all die, in Christ shall all be made alive; as through the sin of the first Adam all men became mortal, because all derived from him the same sinful nature, so through the merit and resurrection of Christ shall all who are made to partake of the Spirit, and the spiritual nature, revive, and become immortal. All who die die through the sin of Adam; all who are raised, in the sense of the apostle, rise through the merit and power of Christ. But the meaning is not that, as all men died in Adam, so all men, without exception, shall be made alive in Christ; for the scope of the apostle's argument restrains the general meaning. Christ rose as the first-fruits; therefore those that are Christ's (Co1 15:23) shall rise too. Hence it will not follow that all men without exception shall rise too; but it will fitly follow that all who thus rise, rise in virtue of Christ's resurrection, and so that their revival is owing to the man Christ Jesus, as the mortality of all mankind was owing to the first man; and so, as by man came death, by man came deliverance. Thus it seemed fit to the divine wisdom that, as the first Adam ruined his posterity by sin, the second Adam should raise his seed to a glorious immortality. 3. Before he leaves the argument he states that there will be an order observed in their resurrection. What that precisely will be we are nowhere told, but in the general only here that there will be order observed. Possibly those may rise first who have held the highest rank, and done the most eminent service, or suffered the most grievous evils, or cruel deaths, for Christ's sake. It is only here said that the first-fruits are supposed to rise first, and afterwards all who are Christ's, when he shall come again. Not that Christ's resurrection must in fact go before the resurrection of any of his, but it must be laid as the foundation: as it was not necessary that those who lived remote from Jerusalem must go thither and offer the first-fruits before they could account the lump holy, yet they must be set apart for this purpose, till they could be offered, which might be done at any time from pentecost till the feast of dedication. See Bishop Patrick on Num 24:2. The offering of the first-fruits was what made the lump holy; and the lump was made holy by this offering, though it was not made before the harvest was gathered in, so it were set apart for that end, and duly offered afterwards. So Christ's resurrection must, in order of nature, precede that of his saints, though some of these might rise in order of time before him. It is because he has risen that they rise. Note, Those that are Christ's must rise, because of their relation to him.

II. He argues from the continuance of the mediatorial kingdom till all Christ's enemies are destroyed, the last of which is death, Co1 15:24-26. He has risen, and, upon his resurrection, was invested with sovereign empire, had all power in heaven and earth put into his hands (Mat 28:18), had a name given him above every name, that every knee might bow to him, and every tongue confess him Lord. Phi 2:9-11. And the administration of this kingdom must continue in his hands till all opposing power, and rule, and authority, be put down (Co1 15:24), till all enemies are put under his feet (Co1 15:25), and till the last enemy is destroyed, which is death, Co1 15:26.

1. This argument implies in it all these particulars: - (1.) That our Saviour rose from the dead to have all power put into his hands, and have and administer a kingdom, as Mediator: For this end he died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living, Rom 14:9. (2.) That this mediatorial kingdom is to have an end, at least as far as it is concerned in bringing his people safely to glory, and subduing all his and their enemies: Then cometh the end, Co1 15:24. (3.) That it is not to have an end till all opposing power be put down, and all enemies brought to his feet, Co1 15:24, Co1 15:25. (4.) That, among other enemies, death must be destroyed (Co1 15:26) or abolished; its powers over its members must be disannulled. Thus far the apostle is express; but he leaves us to make the inference that therefore the saints must rise, else death and the grave would have power over them, nor would our Saviour's kingly power prevail against the last enemy of his people and annul its power. When saints shall live again, and die no more, then, and not till then, will death be abolished, which must be brought about before our Saviour's mediatorial kingdom is delivered up, which yet must be in due time. The saints therefore shall live again and die no more. This is the scope of the argument; but,

2. The apostle drops several hints in the course of it which it will be proper to notice: as, (1.) That our Saviour, as man and mediator between God and man, has a delegated royalty, a kingdom given: All things are put under him, he excepted that did put all things under him, Co1 15:27. As man, all his authority must be delegated. And, though his mediation supposes his divine nature, yet as Mediator he does not so explicitly sustain the character of God, but a middle person between God and man, partaking of both natures, human and divine, as he was to reconcile both parties, God and man, and receiving commission and authority from God the Father to act in this office. The Father appears, in this whole dispensation, in the majesty and with the authority of God: the Son, made man, appears as the minister of the Father, though he is God as well as the Father. Nor is this passage to be understood of the eternal dominion over all his creatures which belongs to him as God, but of a kingdom committed to him as Mediator and God-man, and that chiefly after his resurrection, when, having overcome, he sat down with his Father on his throne, Rev 3:21. Then was the prediction verified, I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion (Psa 2:6), placed him on his throne. This is meant by the phrase so frequent in the writings of the New Testament, of sitting at the right hand of God (Mar 16:19; Rom 8:34; Col 3:1 etc.), on the right hand of power (Mar 14:62; Luk 22:69), on the right hand of the throne of God (Heb 12:2), on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, Heb 8:1. Sitting down in this seat is taking upon him the exercise of his mediatorial power and royalty, which was done upon his ascension into heaven, Mar 16:19. And it is spoken of in scripture as a recompence made him for his deep humiliation and self-abasement, in becoming man, and dying for man the accursed death of the cross, Phi 2:6-12. Upon his ascension, he was made head over all things to the church, had power given him to govern and protect it against all its enemies, and in the end destroy them and complete the salvation of all that believe in him. This is not a power appertaining to Godhead as such; it is not original and unlimited power, but power given and limited to special purposes. And though he who has it is God, yet, inasmuch as he is somewhat else besides God, and in this whole dispensation acts not as God, but as Mediator, not as the offended Majesty, but as one interposing in favour of his offending creatures, and this by virtue of his consent and commission who acts and appears always in that character, he may properly be said to have this power given him; he may reign as God, with power unlimited, and yet may reign as Mediator, with a power delegated, and limited to these particular purposes. (2.) That this delegated royalty must at length be delivered up to the Father, from whom it was received (Co1 15:24); for it is a power received for particular ends and purposes, a power to govern and protect his church till all the members of it be gathered in, and the enemies of it for ever subdued and destroyed (Co1 15:25, Co1 15:26), and when these ends shall be obtained the power and authority will not need to be continued. The Redeemer must reign till his enemies be destroyed, and the salvation of his church and people accomplished; and, when this end is attained, then will he deliver up the power which he had only for this purpose, though he may continue to reign over his glorified church and body in heaven; and in this sense it may notwithstanding be said that he shall reign for ever and ever (Rev 11:15), that he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end (Luk 1:33), that his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, Dan 7:14. See also Mic 4:7. (3.) The Redeemer shall certainly reign till the last enemy of his people be destroyed, till death itself be abolished, till his saints revive and recover perfect life, never to be in fear and danger of dying any more. He shall have all power in heaven and earth till then - he who loved us, and gave himself for us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood - he who is so nearly related to us, and so much concerned for us. What support should this be to his saints in every hour of distress and temptation! He is alive who was dead, and liveth for ever, and doth reign, and will continue to reign, till the redemption of his people be completed, and the utter ruin of their enemies effected. (4.) When this is done, and all things are put under his feet, then shall the Son become subject to him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all, Co1 15:28. The meaning of this I take to be that then the man Christ Jesus, who hath appeared in so much majesty during the whole administration of his kingdom, shall appear upon giving it up to be a subject of the Father. Things are in scripture many times said to be when they are manifested and made to appear; and this delivering up of the kingdom will make it manifest that he who appeared in the majesty of the sovereign king was, during this administration, a subject of God. The glorified humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ, with all the dignity and power conferred on it, was no more than a glorious creature. This will appear when the kingdom shall be delivered up; and it will appear to the divine glory, that God may be all in all, that the accomplishment of our salvation may appear altogether divine, and God alone may have the honour of it. Note, Though the human nature must be employed in the work of our redemption, yet God was all in all in it. It was the Lord's doing and should be marvellous in our eyes.

III. He argues for the resurrection, from the case of those who were baptized for the dead (Co1 15:29): What shall those do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they baptized for the dead? What shall they do if the dead rise not? What have they done? How vain a thing hath their baptism been! Must they stand by it, or renounce it? why are they baptized for huper the dead, if the dead rise not? tō nekrōn. But what is this baptism for the dead? It is necessary to be known, that the apostle's argument may be understood; whether it be only argumentum ad hominem, or ad rem; that is, whether it conclude for the thing in dispute universally, or only against the particular persons who were baptized for the dead. But who shall interpret this very obscure passage, which, though it consists of no more than three words, besides the articles, has had more than three times three senses put on it by interpreters? It is not agreed what is meant by baptism, whether it is to be taken in a proper or figurative sense, and, if in a proper sense, whether it is to be understood or Christian baptism properly so called, or some other ablution. And as little is it agreed who are the dead, or in what sense the preposition huper is to be taken. Some understand the dead of our Saviour himself; vide Whitby in loc. Why are persons baptized in the name of a dead Saviour, a Saviour who remains among the dead, if the dead rise not? But it is, I believe, and instance perfectly singular for hoi nekroi to mean no more than one dead person; it is a signification which the words have nowhere else. And the hoi baptizomenoi (the baptized) seem plainly to mean some particular persons, not Christians in general, which yet must be the signification if the hoi nekroi (the dead) be understood of our Saviour. Some understand the passage of the martyrs: Why do they suffer martyrdom for their religion? This is sometimes called the baptism of blood by ancients, and, by our Saviour himself, baptism indefinitely, Mat 20:22; Luk 12:50. But in what sense can those who die martyrs for their religion be said to be baptized (that is, die martyrs) for the dead? Some understand it of a custom that was observed, as some of the ancients tell us, among many who professed the Christian name in the first ages, of baptizing some in the name and stead of catechumens dying without baptism. But this savoured of such superstition that, if the custom had prevailed in the church so soon, the apostle would hardly have mentioned it without signifying a dislike of it. Some understand it of baptizing over the dead, which was a custom, they tell us, that early obtained; and this to testify their hope of the resurrection. This sense is pertinent to the apostle's argument, but it appears not that any such practice was in use in the apostle's time. Others understand it of those who have been baptized for the sake, or on occasion, of the martyrs, that is, the constancy with which they died for their religion. Some were doubtless converted to Christianity by observing this: and it would have been a vain thing for persons to have become Christians upon this motive, if the martyrs, by losing their lives for religion, became utterly extinct, and were to live no more. But the church at Corinth had not, in all probability, suffered much persecution at this time, or seem many instances of martyrdom among them, nor had many converts been made by the constancy and firmness which the martyrs discovered. Not to observe that hoi nekroi seems to be too general an expression to mean only the martyred dead. It is as easy an explication of the phrase as any I have met with, and as pertinent to the argument, to suppose the hoi nekroi to mean some among the Corinthians, who had been taken off by the hand of God. We read that many were sickly among them, and many slept (Co1 11:30), because of their disorderly behaviour at the Lord's table. These executions might terrify some into Christianity; as the miraculous earthquake did the jailer, Act 16:29, Act 16:30, etc. Persons baptized on such an occasion might be properly said to be baptized for the dead, that is, on their account. And the hoi baptizomenoi (the baptized) and the hoi nekroi (the dead) answer to one another; and upon this supposition the Corinthians could not mistake the apostle's meaning. "Now," says he, "what shall they do, and why were they baptized, if the dead rise not? You have a general persuasion that these men have done right, and acted wisely, and as they ought, on this occasion; but why, if the dead rise not, seeing they may perhaps hasten their death, by provoking a jealous God, and have no hopes beyond it?" But whether this be the meaning, or whatever else be, doubtless the apostle's argument was good and intelligible to the Corinthians. And his next is as plain to us.

IV. He argues from the absurdity of his own conduct and that of other Christians upon this supposition,

1. It would be a foolish thing for them to run so many hazards (Co1 15:30): "Why stand we in jeopardy every hour? Why do we expose ourselves to continual peril - we Christians, especially we apostles?" Every one knows that it was dangerous being a Christian, and much more a preacher and an apostle, at that time. "Now," says the apostle, "what fools are we to run these hazards, if we have no better hopes beyond death, if when we die we die wholly, and revive no more!" Note, Christianity were a foolish profession if it proposed no hopes beyond this life, at least in such hazardous times as attended the first profession of it; it required men to risk all the blessings and comforts of this life, and to face and endure all the evils of it, without any future prospects. And is this a character of his religion fit for a Christian to endure? And must he not fix this character on it if he give up his future hopes, and deny the resurrection of the dead? This argument the apostle brings home to himself: "I protest," says he, "by your rejoicing in Jesus Christ, by all the comforts of Christianity, and all the peculiar succours and supports of our holy faith, that I die daily," Co1 15:31. He was in continual danger of death, and carried his life, as we say, in his hand. And why should he thus expose himself, if he had no hopes after life? To live in daily view and expectation of death, and yet have no prospect beyond it, must be very heartless and uncomfortable, and his case, upon this account, a very melancholy one. He had need be very well assured of the resurrection of the dead, or he was guilty of extreme weakness, in hazarding all that was dear to him in this world, and his life into the bargain. He had encountered very great difficulties and fierce enemies; he had fought with beasts at Ephesus (Co1 15:32), and was in danger of being pulled to pieces by an enraged multitude, stirred up by Demetrius and the other craftsmen (Act 19:24, etc.), though some understand this literally of Paul's being exposed to fight with wild beasts in the amphitheatre, at a Roman show in that city. And Nicephorus tells a formal story to this purport, and of the miraculous complaisance of the lions to him when they came near him. But so remarkable a trial and circumstance of his life, methinks, would not have been passed over by Luke, and much less by himself, when he gives us so large and particular a detail of his sufferings, Co2 11:24, ad fin. When he mentioned that he was five times scourged of the Jews, thrice beaten with rods, once stoned, thrice shipwrecked, it is strange that he should not have said that he was once exposed to fight with the beasts. I take it, therefore, that this fighting with beasts is a figurative expression, that the beasts intended were men of a fierce and ferine disposition, and that this refers to the passage above cited. "Now," says he, "what advantage have I from such contests, if the dead rise not? Why should I die daily, expose myself daily to the danger of dying by violent hands, if the dead rise not? And if post mortem nihil - if I am to perish by death, and expect nothing after it, could any thing be more weak?" Was Paul so senseless? Had he given the Corinthians any ground to entertain such a thought of him? If he had not been well assured that death would have been to his advantage, would he, in this stupid manner, have thrown away his life? Could any thing but the sure hopes of a better life after death have extinguished the love of life in him to this degree? "What advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? What can I propose to myself?" Note, It is very lawful and fit for a Christian to propose advantage to himself by his fidelity to God. Thus did Paul. Thus did our blessed Lord himself, Heb 12:2. And thus we are bidden to do after his example, and have our fruit to holiness, that our end may be everlasting life. This is the very end of our faith, even the salvation of our souls (Pe1 1:9), not only what it will issue in, but what we should aim at.

2. It would be a much wiser thing to take the comforts of this life: Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die (Co1 15:32); let us turn epicures. Thus this sentence means in the prophet, Isa 22:13. Let us even live like beasts, if we must die like them. This would be a wiser course, if there were no resurrection, no after-life or state, than to abandon all the pleasures of life, and offer and expose ourselves to all the miseries of life, and live in continual peril of perishing by savage rage and cruelty. This passage also plainly implies, as I have hinted above, that those who denied the resurrection among the Corinthians were perfect Sadducees, of whose principles we have this account in the holy writings, that they say, There is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit (Act 23:8), that is, "Man is all body, there is nothing in him to survive the body, nor will that, when once he is dead, ever revive again." Such Sadducees were the men against whom the apostle argued; otherwise his arguments had no force in them; for, though the body should never revive, yet, as long as the mind survived it, he might have much advantage from all the hazards he ran for Christ's sake. Nay, it is certain that the mind is to be the principal seat and subject of the heavenly glory and happiness. But, if there were no hopes after death, would not every wise man prefer an easy comfortable life before such a wretched one as the apostle led; nay, and endeavour to enjoy the comforts of life as fast as possible, because the continuance of it is short? Note, Nothing but the hopes of better things hereafter can enable a man to forego all the comforts and pleasures here, and embrace poverty, contempt, misery, and death. Thus did the apostles and primitive Christians; but how wretched was their case, and how foolish their conduct, if they deceived themselves, and abused the world with vain and false hopes!

V. The apostle closes his argument with a caution, exhortation, and reproof. 1. A caution against the dangerous conversation of bad men, men of loose lives and principles: Be not deceived, says he; evil communications corrupt good manners, Co1 15:33. Possibly, some of those who said that there was no resurrection of the dead were men of loose lives, and endeavoured to countenance their vicious practices by so corrupt a principle; and had that speech often in their mouths Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Now, the apostle grants that their talk was to the purpose if there was no future state. But, having confuted their principle, he now warns the Corinthians how dangerous such men's conversation must prove. He tells them that they would probably be corrupted by them, and fall in with their course of life, if they gave into their evil principles. Note, Bad company and conversation are likely to make bad men. Those who would keep their innocence must keep good company. Error and vice are infectious: and, if we would avoid the contagion, we must keep clear of those who have taken it. He that walketh with wise men shall be wise; but a companion of fools shall be destroyed, Pro 13:20. 2. Here is an exhortation to break off their sins, and rouse themselves, and lead a more holy and righteous life (Co1 15:34): Awake to righteousness, or awake righteously, eknēpsate dikaiōs, and sin not, or sin no more. "Rouse yourselves, break off your sins by repentance: renounce and forsake every evil way, correct whatever is amiss, and do not, by sloth and stupidity, be led away into such conversation and principles as will sap your Christian hopes, and corrupt your practice." The disbelief of a future state destroys all virtue and piety. But the best improvement to be made of the truth is to cease from sin, and set ourselves to the business of religion, and that in good earnest. If there will be a resurrection and a future life, we should live and act as those who believe it, and should not give into such senseless and sottish notions as will debauch our morals, and render us loose and sensual in our lives. 3. Here is a reproof, and a sharp one, to some at least among them: Some of you have not the knowledge of God; I speak this to your shame. Note, It is a shame in Christians not to have the knowledge of God. The Christian religion gives the best information that can be had about God, his nature, and grace, and government. Those who profess this religion reproach themselves, by remaining without the knowledge of God; for it must be owing to their own sloth, and slight of God, that they are ignorant of him. And is it not a horrid shame for a Christian to slight God, and be so wretchedly ignorant in matters that so nearly and highly concern him? Note, also, It must be ignorance of God that leads men into the disbelief of a resurrection and future life. Those who know God know that he will not abandon his faithful servants, nor leave them exposed to such hardships and sufferings without any recompence or reward. They know he is not unfaithful nor unkind, to forget their labour and patience, their faithful services and cheerful sufferings, or let their labour be in vain. But I am apt to think that the expression has a much stronger meaning; that there were atheistical people among them who hardly owned a God, or one who had any concern with or took cognizance of human affairs. These were indeed a scandal and shame to any Christian church. Note, Real atheism lies at the bottom of men's disbelief of a future state. Those who own a God and a providence, and observe how unequal the distributions of the present life are, and how frequently the best men fare worst, can hardly doubt an after state, where every thing will be set to rights.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

20. But now is Christ risen from the dead] St Paul considers it needless to argue the point further. He appeals not so much to the reason—on points like this (see ch. 1Co_2:14) it is likely to deceive us—as to the moral instincts of every human being. Of course a man has power to stifle them, but they tell him plainly enough that love of purity and truth, desire of immortality, belief in the love and justice of God, are no vain dreams, as they would be if the ‘wise man died as the fool’ (Ecc_2:16). Accordingly, the Apostle now (1Co_15:20-28) proceeds to unfold the laws of God’s spiritual kingdom as facts which cannot be gainsaid. He may appeal (as in 1Co_15:29-32) to his own practice and that of others as a confirmation of what he says. But from henceforth he speaks with authority. He wastes no more time in discussion.

and become the firstfruits of them that slept] The firstfruits (Lev_23:10) were the first ripe corn, under the Law, solemnly offered to God, a fit type of Him Who first presented our ripened humanity before the Throne of God, an earnest of the mighty harvest hereafter to be gathered.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

But now is Christ risen ... - This language is the bursting forth of a full heart and of overpowering conviction. It would seem as if Paul were impatient of the slow process of argument; weary of meeting objections, and of stating the consequences of a denial of the doctrine; and longing to give utterance to “what he knew,” that Christ was risen from the dead. That was a point on which he was certain. He had seen him after he was risen; and he could no more doubt this “fact” than he could any other which he had witnessed with his own eyes. He makes, therefore, this strong affirmation; and in doing it, he at the same time affirms that the dead will also rise, since he had shown 1Co 15:12-18 that all the objection to the doctrine of the resurrection was removed by the fact that Christ had risen, and had shown that his resurrection involved the certainty that his people also would rise. There is special force in the word “now” in this verse. The meaning may be thus expressed: “I have showed the consequences which would follow from the supposition that Christ was not raised up. I have shown how it would destroy all our hopes, plunge us into grief, annihilate our faith, make our preaching vain, and involve us in the belief that our pious friends have perished, and that we are yet in our sins. I have shown how it would produce the deepest disappointment and misery. But all this was mere supposition. There is no reason to apprehend any such consequences, or to be thus alarmed. “Christ” is “risen.” Of that there is no doubt. That is not to be called in question. It is established by irrefragable testimony; and consequently our hopes are not vain, our faith is not useless, our pious friends have not perished, and we shall not be disappointed.”

And become the first-fruits - The word rendered “first-fruits” (ἀπαρχὴ aparchē) occurs in the New Testament in the following places; Rom 8:23 (see the note on this place); Rom 11:16; Rom 16:5; 1Co 15:20, 1Co 15:23; 1Co 16:15; Jam 1:18; Rev 14:4. It occurs often in the Septuagint as the translations of חלב cheleb, “fat,” or “fatness” Num 18:12, Num 18:29-30, Num 18:32; as the translation of מצשׂרה ma‛asrah, “the tenth” or “the tithe” Deu 12:6; of צוון ‛awon, “iniquity” Num 18:1; of ראשׁית rē'shiyt, “the beginning, the commencement, the first” (Exo 23:19; Lev 23:1; Num 15:18-19, etc.): of תּרמה teruwmah, “oblation, offering; lifting up; of that which is lifted up or waved as the first sheaf of the harvest,” etc. Exo 25:2-3; Exo 35:5; Num 5:9; Num 18:8, etc. The first-fruits, or the first sheaf of ripe grain was required to be offered to the Lord, and was waved before him by the priest, as expressing the sense of gratitude by the husbandman, and his recognition of the fact that God had a right to all that he had; Lev 23:10-14. The word, therefore, comes to have two:

That which is “first,” the beginning, or that which has the priority of time; and, That which is apart and portion of the whole which is to follow, and which is the earnest or pledge of that; as the “first” sheaf of ripe grain was not only the first in order of time, but was the earnest or pledge of the entire harvest which was soon to succeed.

In allusion to this, Paul uses the word here. It was not merely or mainly that Christ was the first in order of time that rose from the dead, for Lazarus and the widow’s son had been raised before him; but it was that he was chief in regard to the dignity, value, and importance of his rising; he was connected with all that should rise, as the first sheaf of the harvest was with the crop; he was a “part” of the mighty harvest of the resurrection, and his rising was a “portion” of that great rising, as the sheaf was a portion of the harvest itself; and he was so connected with them all, and their rising so depended on his, that his resurrection was a demonstration that they would rise. It may also be implied here, as Grotius and Schoettgen have remarked, that he is the first of those who were raised so as not to die again; and that, therefore, those raised by Elisha and by the Saviour himself do not come into the account. They all died again; but the Saviour will not die, nor will those whom he will raise up in the resurrection die any more. He is, therefore, the first of those that thus rise, and a portion of that great host which shall be raised to die no more. May there not be another idea? The first sheaf of the harvest was consecrated to God, and then all the harvest was regarded as consecrated to him. May it not be implied that, by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, all those of whom he speaks are regarded as sacred to God, and as consecrated and accepted by the resurrection and acceptance of him who was the first-fruits?

Of them that slept - Of the pious dead; see the note on 1Co 15:6.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

1Co_15:20

But now is Christ risen from the dead … first-fruits of them that slept.

The resurrection of Christ

I. The resurrection of Christ as an historic fact. If Socrates died of the fatal hemlock in an Athenian prison; if Caesar died upon the Roman senate-floor, stricken down by the daggers of assassins; then Christ, our Redeemer, not only died on Golgotha, but on the third day rose again, leading captivity captive. This miracle of the resurrection, as Neander has remarked, is not of the class designed for the conviction of unbelievers. It was rather, in the first instance, for such as already believed in Christ, and now needed only that their faith should be sealed and confirmed.

II. The resurrection of Christ in its relation to previous economies. There were two of these economics, and under each of them a miracle bearing some resemblance to the resurrection of Christ. Under the first, or patriarchal economy, there was the miracle of Enochs translation. Under the second, or Jewish economy, there was the miracle of Elijahs being taken up into heaven in a chariot of fire. Precisely what befel these men, it is impossible to say. But so much at least is certain, that these translations were not resurrections: for the men did not die. The fact proclaimed, and the doctrine illustrated by their departure, was simply the continued existence of the soul in a higher realm; in a word, the immortality of the soul, and not the resurrection of the body. So, also, of the resurrections which occurred under the Jewish economy. Elijah, it is true, restored again to life the widows son at Zarephath; Elisha, the son of the Shunemite; and even Elishas bones quickened the corpse which touched them. But these persons, thus recalled to life, all died again. Like the translations already spoken of, they attested rather the presence of a soul in man, destined to survive the striking of its tent of flesh. They attested the reality of a world of spirits, not so far removed but that those who had passed behind its curtain might be summoned back. That the body, reduced to ashes, should rise again, never more to be subject to decay, had only been proclaimed, not proved. The resurrection of Christ was, therefore, a new phenomenon. He was literally the first-fruits of them that slept; rising as none had ever risen before.

III. The resurrection of Christ in its relation to ourselves. (R. D. Hitchcock, D.D.)

Christ the first fruits

We might take occasion hence to consider the great fact--Christ is risen, the symbolical figure by which that fact might be illustrated--the first-fruits--and the favour which follows--the resurrection of the pious dead. Refer to Lev_23:10, etc. The first-fruits were a typical representation of Christ presented to God after His resurrection.

1. The first-fruits were of the same nature as the after fruits. Let this remind us that Christ is of the same nature as His people. He took a real human nature, that in that nature He might sanctify us, as the harvest was sanctified by offering the first-fruits to God. For both He that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are all of one; for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren. Had Christ died and risen in a different nature from ours, it would not have been conquering death for us. We could have derived no benefit or consolation from it. The Man Christ; that Man whom He hath ordained; a Man approved of God; in all things made like unto His brethren. He had real flesh. He felt hunger, thirst, and weariness, which a mere spirit could not; and He had a real human soul, which could rejoice, grieve, be amazed, and angry. Being a Man, His resurrection to immortal life is the first-fruits of the human race from the grave.

2. The first-fruits were of superior excellence, being the best--most early ripe, and therefore stronger and more vigorous. Let this remind us of the excellency of Christs human nature. He transcends all His brethren. He is without sin, and so excels in perfect purity. His soul had no base passions, His will no rebellion, His understanding was not obscured by mistakes, errors, or prejudices; His body was not influenced by bad habits, nor led astray by sensual appetites. Nor was He only free from sin; there were all the excellences which are comprised in perfection itself. He was, of all the sons of men, the first ripe for heaven--His ripeness was perfect, rich, delightful holiness and love.

3. As the first-fruits, being first ripe, were of superior excellence, and so were a shadow of Christ, so they were to be first gathered in. And thus they resembled Christ as the first born from the dead, the first of all those who rose from the grave to immortality. It was fit that the Captain should lead the way to the soldiers, that the Conqueror of death should be the first to take possession of life, that He who was first in the perfection of holiness and grace should be first in the perfect possession of life and glory.

4. As the first-fruits were gathered on the morrow after the Sabbath, it is remarkable that our Lord rose, as the first-fruits of them that slept, on the morrow after the Sabbath.

5. The sheaf of first-fruits was lifted up by the priest, and waved to and fro in the air, as an offering presented to the Lord. Christ, as a Priest, presented Himself as the First-fruits to God. The sheaf was waved, to be accepted:for Israel, and Christ presents Himself to God that we may be accepted before Him. As the first-fruits were presented to God, so our risen Lord rose to Him. In that He died, He died unto sin once; but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God.

6. The corn of the first-fruits was threshed out and winnowed, and the pure corn was pounded, roasted, and, together with the oil and frankincense, was waved before God. Then part of it was made an offering by fire and the rest was the priests. When Christ arose, He left all that was mean, humiliating, and mortal, left our sins, with His grave-clothes, in the sepulchre, as new corn separated from chaff. And the oil and frankincense may remind us of the oil of gladness with which the risen Saviour was anointed above His fellows, and the sweet frankincense of His intercession, which is sweet to God; and He offers Himself to God in flames of love, as the first-fruits, with oil and frankincense, was offered on the altar (a handful of them). The rest was for the priests, intimating that Christ, as raised from the dead, is the sweet and pure food of faith to which the spiritual priesthood are entitled. On earth and in heaven, Christ is immortal Bread, living Bread, and souls feast on Him and live and grow.

7. The first-fruits sanctified the whole crop. It might then be gathered in, but not before. Christ the first fruits being raised, such is the power of His resurrection, that the saints through Him have right to rise to a blessed immortality. But for that, they that are fallen asleep in Christ had perished. But by His resurrection they are sanctified for life and glory.

8. The first-fruits being accepted of the Lord for Israel, not only sanctified the harvest, but were a pledge that the harvest should follow. He is called the First-fruits, to convey the idea that the rest must come after. This is the doctrine and argument of this whole chapter. The favour pledged to the Church by the resurrection of Christ is the resurrection of all her members in the last day to fellowship with Christ in life, glory, and a blessed immortality. That state to which He arose, do they arise to also in their measure and order. As a prelude to this, some arose alter His resurrection. This shows that the resurrection of Christ has a retrospective influence, and sheds the dew of heaven on the graves of all who died in faith from the beginning.

As He died for the sins under the first testament, so shall the ancient believers arise by virtue of His resurrection. It has also a prospective influence on the believing multitudes yet unborn.

1. The same power is employed in raising Christ and His people. The exceeding greatness of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead. The utmost ability in man cannot re-kindle the vital spark. As no creature was employed to awaken Christ, so none shall quicken them. Here Omnipotence will work without means, and the heavenly house will be a house not made with hands.

2. As it was the same Christ and the same body that arose, so the very bodies which fall asleep in Christ will again awake. The harvest will resemble the first-fruits in this also. It may not be every particle. This mortal shall put, on immortality.

3. The same Spirit that quickened Christ will quicken us. It is spoken of as a privilege to be quickened by the Spirit (Rom_8:1-39.). The wicked may be raised by mere power, the saints by a holy and gracious influence. The Holy Spirit will then put forth His influence in its fullest display of power, sweetness, and glory like the influences of the spring on the vegetable world.

4. The whole Trinity concurred in Christs, and shall also in our resurrection.

5. Sin lay on Christ before His death; and there was still some portion of the curse on Him while He lay in His grave. But He arose free from the burden. Saints have to contend with sin while in the body; but they will rise free and pure.

6. Christ wept in His last sufferings. He rose to weep no more. So from the eyes of risen Saints God shall wipe away all tears. It is a resurrection to joy.

7. Christ; rose with His human soul full of love to His people, and they shall rise in the perfection of attachment to all who love the Lord. All envy, hatred, and alienation--all discord, strife, and evil surmisings will be destroyed for ever.

8. Christ rose with a body fit for heaven; and so shall they. Raised in power, spirituality, and glory, all marks of their fallen and degraded estate shall disappear. Their bodies shall be fashioned like unto Christs glorious body. Contemplate, then, the end of the world as the Redeemers harvest. See the angels gathering the sheaves into the garner after the first-fruits. (The Evangelist.)

The Resurrection

I. The fact of the Resurrection.

1. This event is indisputable.

(1) Heaven attested it (see Mat_28:2; Luk_24:2; Luk_24:4-7).

(2) Earth also bare her testimony (Mat_28:2; Mat_27:52-53).

(3) Enemies who were obliged to acknowledge that the body was no longer in the sepulchre, and could only produce the testimony of sleeping witnesses against it.

2. The agency by which it was effected.

(1) Infidels perceive that the Christian system is signed and sealed by a miracle that requires one of the mightiest displays of omnipotence; they cannot affirm that God has affixed the broad seal of heavens approbation to a lie. Since, then, it is so manifest that God alone could effect it, they do not presume, like the magicians of Pharaoh, to stretch forth the hand in bold and impious imitation.

(2) We often find it ascribed to God without any distinction of persons (Act_2:23-24; Act_3:13-15). At other times, however, it is referred to the Father (Rom_6:4); at others to the Son (Joh_2:19; Joh_2:21); at others to the Spirit (Rom_8:11).

3. Its necessity. It was necessary--

(1) Because Christ had Himself made His resurrection a test of His claims (Mat_12:1-50).

(2) Without it credence must be withheld from the teachings of His apostles (1Co_15:14).

(3) That He might make efficacious intercession for His people, and secure to them all the blessings of the everlasting covenant (Rom_5:10; Heb_7:24-25). Remember you have not a dead Saviour, but one who has triumphed over death and all your foes. When Suwarrow, the Russian general, was being borne wounded from the battle-field, his soldiers, discouraged by the disappearance of their beloved commander, fell into confusion and fled; when the hardy veteran perceived it he leapt from his litter, mounted his horse, bleeding as he was, and exclaiming, My children, I am still alive, rallied them, and led them back to victory! And shall not the discouraged Christian rouse every energy anew, when he hears Jesus, the great Captain of his salvation, exclaim, I am He that liveth, and was dead, and, behold I am alive for evermore.

II. The relationship which, by virtue of His resurrection, is formed between Christ and His people--that which exists between the first-fruits and the entire harvest. Christ the first-fruits, His people the plentitude of the ingathering. Hence we learn that the resurrection of Christ is inseparable from that of His people. Christ cannot be complete without His people. He is the Vine, but where were the perfection of the vine without the branches? He is the Head, but where were the perfection of the head without the members? Where shall we find completeness, perfection, beauty, in the Husband without the bride, in the Foundation without the superstructure, in the First-fruits without the fulness of the ingathering? Notice--

1. That Christ is the first-fruits of the Resurrection of His believing people only. It is true that by His power all shall rise again. But it is with believers only that this relationship will be recognised. The term employed is, them that slept, which evidently refers to the children of God (1Co_15:18). As He was the first-fruits of them that slept on the resurrection morning (Mat_27:53), so also them which sleep in Jesus to the end of time, will God bring with Him. But ere you can fall asleep in Jesus, you must live a life of holiness in Jesus. If you go down to the grave with a heart unrenewed, you will rise again, indeed; but it will be to the resurrection of damnation.

2. The order of the Resurrection. The righteous and the wicked will simultaneously rise from their graves. One common resurrection will precede one common judgment (Joh_5:28-29; Mat_25:31-34; Mat_25:41-46; 2Th_1:7-10; Revelaiton 20:12, 13).

3. The nature of the change which will pass on the bodies of the saints. It will be a change from all that is earthly and gross and vile to that which is heavenly and holy and refined (1Co_15:35, etc.). By what mode this marvellous change shall be effected we know not. It is enough for us to know that our present vile and wasting body shall undergo a great and ennobling change, divesting it of all that is gross and fading, and clothing it in a robe of brilliance and majesty which shall make it shine as the brightness of the firmament, as the stars for ever and ever.

Conclusion: The subject affords ground of consolation--

1. For those who are suffering from bereavement.

2. To those whose lot is sickness and poverty in this vale of tears. (J. Gaskin, M.A.)

The certainty and joy of the Resurrection

The apostle has been contemplating the dismal consequences which would arise if we only had a dead Christ. Then he turns away from that dreary picture, and with a change of key, from the wailing minors of the preceding verses, he breaks into this burst of triumph.

I. The certainty of Christs resurrection. Now is Christ risen. The way to prove a fact is by the evidence of witnesses. I, therefore, protest against confusing the issues which is popular nowadays, when we are told that miracle is impossible, and therefore there has been no Resurrection, or that death is the end of human existence, and that therefore there has been no Resurrection. The men who argue thus are no more logical than the reasoner who, when told that facts were against him, with sublime confidence in his own infallibility, said, So much the worse for the facts. Let us deal with evidence, and not with theory.

1. In this chapter we have a record of the resurrection of Christ, older than, and altogether independent of, the Gospels; that this Epistle is one of the four undisputed Epistles of the apostle; that, therefore, this chapter, written at the latest, some twenty-seven years after the Crucifixion, carries us up very close to that went; that it shows that the Resurrection was believed all over the Church, and therefore must have then been long believed; that it enables us to trace the same belief among the Churches at the time of Pauls conversion, some five or six years after the Crucifixion, and that so we have absolutely contemporaneous testimony. This is not a case in which a belief slowly and gradually grew up.

2. And the witnesses are reliable and competent. It would be an anomaly, far greater than the Resurrection, to believe that these people were conspirators in a lie, and that the fairest morality and the noblest consecration grew up out of a fraud. But the apostle avers that that is the only tenable alternative. If Christ be not risen, then are we men who are lying to please God. The fashionable modern theory, that it was hallucination is preposterous. Hallucinations that five hundred people at once shared; that lasted all through long talks, spread at intervals over more than a month; that included eating, drinking, the clasp of the hand, and the feeling of the breath; that culminated in the fancy that a gathered multitude of them saw Him going up into heaven! The hallucination is on the other side, I think.

3. Another valuable way of establishing facts is to point to others which indispensably require them for their explanation. I do not understand how it was possible for the Church to exist for a week after the Crucifixion, unless Jesus Christ rose again. How came it that these people, with their Master taken away, and their bond of union removed, and all their hopes crushed, did not say, We have made a mistake, let us take to our fishing again, and try and forget our bright illusions. That is what John the Baptists followers did when he died. Why did not Christs do the same? Because Christ rose again and re-knit them together. Christianity with a dead Christ, and a Church gathered round a grave from which the stone has not been rolled away, is more unbelievable than the miracle, for it is an absurdity.

4. Then there is another thing. Suppose, after the execution of Charles I, a pretender had sprung up and said, I am the king! the way to end that would have been for the Puritan leaders to have taken people to Westminster Abbey, and said, Look! there is the coffin, there is the body, is that the king or is it not? Jesus Christ was said to have risen again. The rulers could have put an end to the nonsense in two minutes, if it had been nonsense, by the simple process of saying, Go and look at the tomb and you will see Him there. But this question has never been answered, and never will be, What became of that sacred corpse if Christ did not rise again from the dead? The clumsy lie, that the disciples had stolen away the body, was the acknowledgment that the grave was empty. If the grave were empty, either His servants were impostors, which we have seen is incredible, or the Christ was risen again.

II. The triumph in the certitude of that resurrection. The apostle has been speaking about the consequences which would follow from the fact that Christ was not raised. If we take these and reverse them, we understand this great burst of triumph from the apostles lips.

1. The risen Christ gives us a complete gospel. A dead Christ annihilates it. If Christ be not risen, our preaching is vain, i.e., empty--a blown bladder; nothing in it but wind. Strike the Resurrection out, and what have you left? Some beautiful bits of moral teaching, a lovely life, marred by tremendous mistakes about Himself and His relation to men and to God; but you have got nothing left that is worth calling a gospel.

2. A living Christ gives faith something to lay hold of. A dead Christ makes our faith vain, i.e., of none effect or powerless.

(1) The risen Christ gives something for faith to lay hold of. Who can trust a dead Christ, or a human Christ? It is only when we recognise Him as declared to be the Son of God, and that by the Resurrection, that our faith has anything round which it can twine, and to which it can cleave.

(2) If Christ be dead our faith, if it could exist, would be as devoid of effect as it would be empty of substance. It would be like an infant seeking nourishment at a dead mothers breast, or men trying to kindle their torches at an extinguished lamp. It would fail to bring deliverance from sin.

3. The risen Christ gives us the certitude of our Resurrection. Many men talked about a western continent, but Colunbus went there and came back again, and that ended doubt. Many men before, and apart from Jesus, have cherished thoughts of an immortal life, but He has been there and returned. And that only puts the doctrine of immortality upon an irrefragable foundation.

Conclusion: If you will let Him, He will make you partakers of His own immortal life.

1. The first-fruits of them that slept is the pledge and the prophecy of all the waving abundance of golden grain that shall be gathered into the great husbandmans barns. The apostle goes on to represent the resurrection of them that are Christs as a consequence of their union to Jesus. He has conquered for us all.

2. There are two resurrections; one, that of Christs servants; one, that of others. They are not the same in principle--and, alas! they are awfully different in issue. Some shall awake to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. (A. Maclaren, D.D.)

The law of the resurrection

1. Our common ideas and fears of death are more Pagan than Christian. Death to many men is the blank wall around life beyond which they look or plan for nothing. But physical death does not hold the first place in the economy of redemption. The Bible assigns it a subordinate place. Sin, indeed, entailed the certainty of death for man; but Adam was not commanded by the Lord to live every day a slave bound under the fear of death. Man is to work out his time here, and to pass through death, as born under the higher law of the Spirit, and with the possibility of eternal life always before him. And in the New Testament the chief use made of the fact of death is as a metaphor. Sin is death; the maid whom the people, thought dead Christ said sleepeth. The importance of natural death falls into the background, and the new birth of the Spirit comes into the foreground.

2. The Christian doctrine of the Resurrection is a stumbling-block to faith because of this exaggerated estimate of death. We speak as though death were the ultimate law of life, and thus we have to smuggle in our hope of the resurrection as a miraculous exception. Exactly the opposite is true. Life is the law of nature, and death a natural means to more life and better. The resurrection of Jesus was not the great exception to natural law; it is an exemplification of the higher, universal law of life. In the opinion of the apostle the resurrection of Jesus was no more out of the Divine order of things than the first-fruits of the summer are exceptions to the general law which in the autumn shall show its universal power in every harvest-field.

3. The resurrection of Jesus is the great miracle of history, the corner-stone of the evidences of supernatural religion. But the miracle was not the fact itself, but in that He was raised before the last great day, and that He should be seen by men in His intermediate state between earth and heaven. And the God of the living had His own sufficient reason for making this one exception. It was partly for our sakes, that the world might believe. Was it not due also to the person of Jesus that He should not wait with all the saints for the day of final redemption? The miraculous thus in Jesus resurrection pertains to the manner and time of it rather than to the essential fact of it. It was an exceptional fruit appearing before the harvest, which is the end of the world. If you should see a tree blossom, and the next morning find the fruit already ripe, you would say, That is extraordinary! It is not indeed contrary to the nature of the tree that fruit should ripen, yet contrary to all our experience of growth that the fruit should ripen in a day. And it would not be impossible to conceive a quickening of natures forces which might cause a plant to break into fruitfulness contrary to our experience of its usual times and seasons. Somewhat so is Jesus resurrection a first-fruit of the tree of life; not in itself contrary to the law of life, but in its manner and time out of the common order.

I. There is no little Scriptural evidence for the belief that the resurrection of Jesus, although exceptional in time and manner, is an instance of a general law of resurrection.

1. This was Jesus teaching,. He answered the Sadducees by asserting that the dead shall be raised, but He placed the fact of the Resurrection upon the fundamental principle that life, not death, is Gods first law. The highest law of human nature according to Christ is that it should live unto God; if there is to be eternal death, that death must come in as the exception, as the falling back of a soul from the kind of life for which it was created to the lower powers of corruption. It is born for freedom and life in constant relation to the living God; if it is to perish it can only be by making itself, through some inner falsehood, subject to corruption.

2. The Lords own resurrection is set forth as an event which could not possibly have failed to occur (Act_2:24; Act_2:27). How can holiness see corruption? how can life itself be given over to death? Impossible! It would have been a miracle had not Jesus risen from the dead--a miracle without reason, a miracle against the living God, had He not risen from the dead--the first-fruits of this power and order of Divine life in the creation.

3. The same truth comes out grandly in the apostolic gospel of the Resurrection. What is this wonderful chapter but a setting forth of the glorious law of the resurrection? First the historical fact that Jesus was seen after His death is solemnly attested; then Jesus resurrection is declared to be the first-fruits of the whole harvest of life which is to follow; and then this process of the resurrection is shown to be in the largest and profoundest sense natural. It is a spiritual outgrowth from this body of death.

(1) The nature of the resurrection is in accordance with law. If there is a natural body there is also a spiritual body--the latter is just as much in the Divine order of things as is the former--the creation is made and constituted for the higher spiritual body as much as for the lower natural body.

(2) Its method is in accordance with law. First the God-given seed, then its quickening in the earth, then its springing up out of its earthliness into its own element, and its being clothed upon with its own proper form and texture, as God gives to each seed a body of its own.

(3) Its whole process is in accordance with law (1Co_15:46-47). The apostle was not standing dazed before a miracle. He has caught a glimpse into the first principles of life which go deeper than death. He has learned that the resurrection is the promised fulfilment of the laws of life which have been with God from before the foundation of the world. The stars which differ in glory are no more miracles in the sky than is the resurrection of the dead to the apostle who had seen the risen Lord. The sun and the moon are no more exceptions to the ancient order of the heavens than the souls of men raised from the dead, and clothed upon with the shining glory of the celestial, are out of the Divine order and harmony to the eye of the apostle who has seen the risen Lord.

II. The Biblical teaching of the resurrection is that it is in accordance with law. Why should it seem otherwise to us?

1. Why should we regard it as a thing incredible that God should raise the dead? Is there anything which we have seen upon this earth which contradicts the spiritual law of our full redemption? Apparent con.tradictions to this gospel there are, but not one which is real. On the other hand, there are positive facts arranging themselves now in lengthening lines, over which we look straight out into the unseen and the eternal. As I cannot think of a star except as I think of it as in the sky, so I cannot think of this visible sphere of things or nature except as existing in some invisible realm and larger presence. And particularly in confirmation of this Scriptural faith in the Divine orderliness of the resurrection and eternal life, let me now merely suggest these considerations.

(1) We do know this, that death is not the only law of nature; there is also the law of life.

(2) It is a fact that of the two laws life, not death, is the higher and prevailing power so far as we can see. The earth was dead, so they tell us, ages ago. Now how this earth lives!

(3) Even here, where death reigns, life has been growing higher, more complex, more capable of larger correspondences with things. Between the lowest living thing and the brain of man there is a difference of life wide as the distance between the earth and the heavens. Plainly, then, without any doubt, life is something stronger thus far upon this earth than death. Notwithstanding death, life grows to be more and richer.

2. But this is not all. What is death, so far as we can see? Here is a minute living thing in a glass of water. You turn the water out. That living particle is now mere dust upon the glass. Dead--that is, it is no longer moving in an element corresponding to its capacity of vital movements. Death, then, is simply some wrong or imperfect adjustment of life to external conditions. But death may be partial, then, not entire. A part of the body may be dead. A man may be dead in some relations, and still live in others. There is a sense in which we die daily. Life is the principle, the force, the law; death the limitation, the accident, the partial negation of Gods great affirmation of life in things. Now see where this thought leads.

(1) Death is the sundering of certain relations of life towards outward things.

(2) Therefore, when the body finally is wholly dead and buried, when all these physical relations are wholly broken off, so much of life is certainly gone, but nothing else in a man, if there is anything more of him, is dead. You may catch me if you can find me, said Socrates, as he let his body go. And the Scripture says, God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

3. This view of the partial and negative power and function of death opens up a further rational possibility of life. We have only to suppose a living soul in perfect adjustment to God, and all Gods laws of things, to conceive of a being possessing eternal life. This is life eternal that they might know Thee, etc. In such perfect adjustment of being to God and His laws the finite spirit would exist in its final spiritual embodiment. Eternal life would be the perfect harmony of the inward and outward conditions--the final union of the spirit of the just made perfect with God and His universe. Conclusion: If these things be so it follows that our true life consists in our coming at once into the right correspondence with that which is the real and eternal element of life--with God and His righteousness. We are made to live in perfect harmony with all good, beautiful, and true things, or in communion with God. The only thing to be feared is spiritual death. That is non-adjustment of our hearts to God. There is one thing which I cannot but fear, and that is the loss of ones own soul. And I am afraid of the death which I see already going beyond the physical man, benumbing the conscience, and chilling the very souls of men. He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. (Newman Smyth, D.D.)

The resurrection of Christ

Contemplate this as--

I. An established fact. It is established--

1. On the testimony of the most competent witnesses--those who had a thorough knowledge of the facts, and such an invincible love for truth as would render it impossible for them to misrepresent them.

2. On the very existence of Christendom. What gave birth to Christendom? The gospel; and the truth of the gospel rests on the resurrection of Christ.

3. On the consciousness of genuine disciples. Such consciousness attests that they are not in their sins, and they feel that this deliverance came from the gospel.

II. A significant fact. The reference here is to the first-fruits of the harvest (see Lev_23:12-19). Those first-fruits were both an earnest and a sample of the full harvest at hand. Hence Christs resurrection was regarded--

1. As a pledge of the resurrection. As He rose so will all rise.

2. As a pattern. The sheaf waved before the Lord was a specimen or sample of what remained in the field to be gathered in. Our vile bodies shall be fashioned and made like unto His glorious body (1Co_15:21-22).

III. An influential fact. Between the influence of Adam and that of Christ on the race there is--

1. A resemblance. The resemblance is in its extensibility. Though Adams influence upon the race is more extensive at present than that of Christ, it is not more extensible. It has in it the power of extending over the whole race down through all times, and it will do so.

2. A contrast. The influence of the one is destructive, the influence of the other quickening. If by death here bodily death is meant, then the idea is that Christ will quicken to life all that have died. But what does it mean to be in Adam and in Christ. In the sense of character. All men live in the characters of others; children in the character of their parents, pupils in their masters, the present generation in the preceding. The characters of the men of past ages constitute the moral atmosphere of existing men. In Adams character--the character of selfishness, carnality, unbelief--all unregenerate men live to-day, his principles pulsate in all hearts. In the character of Christ, in His self-sacrificing love, spotless purity, and godly devotion, all the godly live to-day. Now those who live in the character of Adam must die, not merely in the sense of the dissolution of the soul from the body, but in the more awful sense of the dissolution of the soul from God; whereas those who live in the character of Christ live by a vital connection with the Eternal Fountain of all life. (D. Thomas, D.D.)

Christs resurrection

I. Our Lords resurrection from the dead is the pledge and earnest of all Christian hope.

1. That it should be the corner-stone of Christian doctrine strikes at the root of all religious theories which ignore the miraculous in Christianity. The story of Christ begins and closes with the supernatural--the incarnation and the resurrection.

2. It is constantly represented as the supreme fact in Christianity.

(1) Christ often foretells it as such (Mat_17:9; Mar_8:31; Luk_9:22; Mat_12:40; Joh_2:19; Joh_11:25, etc.). He thus committed Himself to a test by which His claims might be proved, or the reverse.

(a) If He did not rise men would know He was a self-deceiver, if not an impostor.

(b) As the Holy Son of God He could not remain in the power of death, which is a penalty for sin.

(c) As such, moreover, He might give Himself up to death for a time, to secure a great end in the economy of salvation, but He must have life, indestructible, in Himself--must rise.

(2) The apostles made it the supreme fact in their preaching (Act_4:2; Act_1:22; Act_4:33; Act_23:6; Rom_4:1; Rom_6:5; Php_3:10; 1Pe_1:3; 1Pe_3:21).

3. It was established by evidence which admitted no question in the mind of St. Paul, long the bitter opponent of Christianity (1Co_15:5-8).

II. Why so much stress is laid on the resurrection of Christ.

1. It was the confirmation of all His promises as the founder of a new religion.

(1) Had He lain in the grave the proof to which He appealed, of being sent to save men, would have been wanting.

(2) His resurrection was a confirmation of His claims by the Eternal Father.

(a) Of His claims to be an atoning sacrifice for sin. Of His being, in reality, the Son of God. Declared to be the Son of God, with power, etc.

(b) Of His having entered into His glory at the head of the new spiritual kingdom He had founded.

(3) In the presence of His resurrection all doubts vanish from the minds of the apostles as to His being able to save to the uttermost all who come to God through Him (1Co_15:14; 1Co_15:17-19; cf. Rom_8:34).

(4) But, now that He is risen, all is bright with a glorious hope. He was raised for our justification, having obtained eternal redemption for us. We have an advocate with the Father. He ever liveth to make intercession for us.

2. It was the pledge of our own resurrection and future happiness. The words spoken over the tomb of Lazarus come back with awful power from the heavens now Christ is risen … I am the resurrection and the life. Those, also, spoken to His disciples--Because I live ye shall live also.

(1) In Him humanity conquered death. The destiny of man linked with Him. He is the first-fruits the streamer that heralds the day. The bud of spring that foretells the glory of June.

(2) He has thus brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. The contrast between the darkness of the future before Christ and its holy radiance since. Caesar demanding that Cataline should be spared since death ended existence. Cicero bewailing his daughters death without a ray of hope beyond earth.

(3) Christs resurrection has begotten us again to a lively hope. It has attracted us to the eternal world as the home of our Elder Brother.

3. It is the constraining impulse to a holy life.

(1) To be like Christ the ideal of His followers, since He showed us the path by which alone we can gain a happy immortality. Gratitude and love draws out the heart to an absolute devotion to His service, that service being a holy life. As He has risen, so we are constrained to seek a spiritual resurrection from our old selves to newness of life, to be like Him, and hereafter rejoin Him.

(2) His resurrection has secured us heavenly grace to assist us on this course (Act_2:23 : Joh_16:7).

(3) The resurrection of Christ is a pledge of the future triumph of His kingdom. All power given Him in heaven and on earth. He must reign. (Cunningham Geikie, D.D.)

The resurrection: Christ the first-fruits

I. The pictures here given of the death of the saints.

1. As a sleep. Not that the soul sleeps, but the body in its lonely bed of earth, beneath the coverlet of grass, with the cold clay for its pillow.

(1) With sleep we associate the ideas--

(a) Rest. On yonder couch, however hard, the labourer shakes off his toil, the merchant his care, the thinker his difficulties, and the sufferer his pains. Sleep makes each night a Sabbath for the day. So is it with the body while it sleeps in the tomb. The weary are at rest; the servant is as much at ease as his lord.

(b) Forgetfulness. The soul forgets not, and we have no reason to believe that the glorified are ignorant of what is going on below. But what do their bodies know? Take up the skull, see if there be memory there. See where once the heart was if there be any emotion there. Gather the bones, see if they are still obedient to muscles which could be moved at will as passing events might affect the mind.

(c) Benefit. In the old tradition Medet, the enchantress, cast the limbs of old men into her cauldron that they might come forth young again. Sleep does all this in its fashion. The righteous are put into their graves all weary and worn, but such they will not rise.

(2) The sleep of death is not--

(a) A dreamy slumber. The involuntary action of the mind prevents us at times from taking rest in sleep. But not so with the dear departed. In that sleep of death no dreams can come.

(b) A hopeless sleep. We have seen persons sleep who have been long emaciated by sickness, when we have said, That eye will never open again; he will sleep himself into eternity. But it is not so here. They sleep a healthy sleep--they sleep to wake, and not to die the second death; go wake in joyous fellowship when the Redeemer stands in the latter day upon the earth.

(3) Ought not this view of death to prevent our looking upon it in so repulsive a light? Did you ever feel horror at a sleeping child or husband or wife? And do not wish the departed back again. Would you wake your friend who has fallen asleep after excruciating pain?

2. As a sowing. The mould has been ploughed, and the husbandman scatters his seeds. They fall into the earth, the clods are raked over them, and they disappear. So it is with us. We call Death a reaper--I call him a sower. He takes these bodies and sows us broadcast in the ground. And if this is so let us have done with all faithless sorrow. The granary is empty, says the farmer. Yes, but he does not sigh over it; for the seed is put into the ground in order that the granary may be filled again. Our family circle has been broken, say you. Yes, but only broken that it may be re-formed. The stars are setting here to rise in other skies to set no more.

II. The connection between the resurrection of Christ and that of believers. Some take very great delight in the hope that they may be alive and remain at the coming of Christ, but not to die would be to lose the great privilege of relationship with Christ as the first-fruits. The allusion is to the Jewish feast, when the first sheaf was brought out from the harvest as a token of the whole, and first of all heaved upward as a heave-offering, and then waived to and fro as a waive-offering, being thus dedicated to God in testimony of the gratitude for the harvest. The Passover was celebrated first, then came a Sabbath-day, then after that came the feast of first-fruits. So Christ died on the Passover day, the next day was the Sabbatic rest. Christs body therefore tarried in the grave; then early in the morning of the first day, the feast of the first-fruits, Christ rose. Christ was the first that rose--

1. In order of time. All who were raised before died again, and, with the exception of Lazarus, none were ever buried. Christ was the first who really rose no more to die. He leads the vanguard through the dark defile, and His brow first salutes the light of heaven, We admire the man who discovers a new country. Christ is the first who returned from the jaws of death to tell of immortality and light.

2. In point of cause; for as He comes back from the grave He brings all His followers behind Him in one glorious train. We read of Hercules descending into Hades and bringing up his friend. Verily went Christ thither, and He gave no sop to Cerberus, but cut off his head.

3. In point of pledge. The first-fruits were a pledge of the harvest.

4. As the representative of the whole. When the first-fruit sheaf had been waved before God it was considered that all the harvest had been brought into the sanctuary. So when Christ rose He consecrated the whole harvest. All the righteous dead were virtually risen in Him.

III. The influence of this doctrine.

1. Let us look well to the holiness of our bodies. Know ye not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost? Now if our eyes look upon vanity we have defiled the windows of Gods house; if our tongues speak evil we have desecrated its gates. Let us see to it that our feet carry us nowhere but where our Master can go with us, and that our hands be outstretched for naught but that which is pure and lovely.

2. Are we among those for whom Christ stands as first-fruits? (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Christ the first-fruits

All shall rise at the last day, and be clothed with their bodies again. But will all that rise enter into Christs joy? Only if they rise after His likeness. The crop from which the first-fruits were picked was not all of the same quality. There may have been wild grapes and fruit of brambles amid the crop of the vineyard, and there may have been tares and thistles among the crop of corn. These would be cast into the fire, and none but what are of the same kind as the first-fruits, grapes and corn, laid up in store. So it will be at the resurrection harvest. None but such as are like to Christ, the first-fruits, will be admitted into the kingdom of heaven. There is, therefore, much to warn us here. That which goes into the ground as seed of bramble or thistle will rise bromide or thistle, so he that goes into the grave a child of wrath will rise a child of wrath. Note--

I. That which is the grand property of everything that bears fruit, growth. As all men bear fruit of some kind, they are growing up from something and to something.

1. What, then, is the seed in our hearts from which we are growing? Is it the good seed of the Word of God? It is easy to determine. The manner of the plants growth declares its seed.

(1) Is there in the heart--

(a) A spreading forth of the love of God?

(b) A continual rise, as if of lively sap, of the sense of the mercies in Christ, of the experience of the earnest of His promises, of the motions of the Holy Spirit, of the promptings of good thoughts, godly meditations, heavenly affections?

(c) The shooting upwards of the stem of the seeking of God, the believing in Christ, the hoping of the good things to come, the raising of the desires?

(d) The shooting downward of a good hold of faith, of a rooting in love, of a seeking of spiritual nourishment?

(e) Shooting sideways into branches of love toward the brethren, of exercise in good works, of example to edification? Who can doubt the seed of such a plant?

(2) But, on the contrary, if the heart--

(a) Rise and swell with the motions of ungodliness.

(b) Shooting upward in rebellion against God.

(c) Shoot downward in carnal desires, earthly affections, devilish inclinations.

(d) Shoot sideways in carelessness of living, bad example, indifference to Gods honour and glory--who does not know that it is the bad seed sown by the devil in the heart of man when he was asleep in the unwatchfulness of this world?

And who is not certain of the nature of its fruit, that it will be a poisonous berry, to the shame and scandal of the vineyard and field of God in which he has been suffered to grow up?

2. What is the fruit to which we are growing. There can be no doubt of a plant bearing its natural fruit, but there may be a doubt of its bearing fruit at all. But we hardly ever see worthless plants disabled from bearing fruit. Who ever saw the thistle blighted? It is the valuable fruits that are so uncertain, and the more precious they are so much the more tender they are, and require greater care to bring them to perfection, for they are not in their natural climate. And is the sinful world the natural climate for the precious fruits of holiness? No; all ungodliness thrives in it, blossoms without fail and in all abundance, and brings forth fruit most plentifully. But how different is it with the plant which comes up in the heart from the seed of the Word of God. The heat of temptation, the cold of indifference, the blight of unbelief, the floods of ungodliness, are all against it, and it requires to be nursed carefully, watched continually.

II. On our growth, whether for good or for evil fruit, depends our place on the day of the harvest of which Christ is the first-fruits. Our characters are decided for holy or unholy when we go into the grave; our place is decided, for happiness or misery, on the day that we rise out of it. It is astonishing how watchful some men are in keeping out such thoughts; it would be well if others would be as watchful in keeping them in. A person may indeed look forward to a happy resurrection without attaining it, because he may delude himself with false hopes; but no one will ever attain a happy resurrection without looking forward to it. (R. W. Evans, D.D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co 15:20-22. But now is Christ risen — Here the apostle declares that Christians have hope not in this life only. His proof of the resurrection lies in a narrow compass, 1Co 15:12-19. Almost all the rest of the chapter is taken up in illustrating, vindicating, and applying it. The proof is short, but solid and convincing, namely, that which arose from Christ’s resurrection. Now this not only proved a resurrection possible, but, as it proved him to be a divine teacher, it proved also the certainty of a general resurrection, which he so expressly taught. The first-fruits of them that slept — The pledge, earnest, and assurance of the resurrection of those who sleep in him, even of all the righteous, of the resurrection of whom, at least chiefly, if not only, the apostle speaks throughout the chapter. As to the term first- fruits, in explanation thereof it may be proper to observe, that “the Israelites were commanded to bring on the morrow after the sabbath, with which the passover week began, a sheaf of the first-fruits of their harvest to the priest, to be waved before the Lord, who, by accepting it, made it an example and a pledge of the future harvest. In allusion to that rite, Christ, who arose on the very day on which the first-fruits were offered, is called the first-fruits of them who slept, because he is the first who was raised from the dead to die no more, and because his resurrection is an example and an earnest of the resurrection of the righteous.” For since by man came death — Since death came on the whole human race by means of one man, who brought mortality on all his posterity in consequence of one great and wilful transgression; by man came also, &c. — That is, by means of another man came likewise the resurrection of the dead — And our happy relation to him abundantly repairs the damage we sustain by our fatal relation to the former. For as in Adam all — Even the righteous; die, so in — Or through; Christ shall all these be made alive — He does not say shall revive, (as naturally as they die,) but shall be made alive, namely, by a power not their own. See on Rom 5:18, a passage which is a good comment on this verse.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL NOTES

1Co_15:20. Hath.—Emphasis here, not on “now” or “Christ.” Over against their doubts, and speculations, and “impossibilities,” Paul sets the one conclusive fact. Firstfruits.—Read in the light of Rom_11:16; Jas_1:18; Rev_14:4; Mat_27:52-53. With a variant figure the thought is in Col_1:18; Rev_1:5.

1Co_15:20-23. By man … by man.—Resurrection actually comes “by man”; we may almost say must so come, and so He became man. He the Judge also because “the Son of Man” (Joh_5:27). All … All.—How wide is the second “all”? Is the verse to read,

(1) “All (men) … (we believers) all”? Not exegetically very natural. Is it

(2) “(We believers) all … (we believers) all”? True; but the first member of the sentence is narrower than the fact, and scarcely worthy of the race-wide view here taken of the two Adams and their connected “posterities.” Urged, from Augustine downwards, that Paul’s argument throughout has only those “in Christ” in view [true]; that the Resurrection existence of these out of Him is never called “life” [true]; also that 1Co_15:23 limits the argument to believers. The Greek fathers [Ellicott] read 1Co_15:22 of physical quickening, and make the verse,

(3) “All (men) … all (men)”; and bring in the limitation of the scope at 1Co_15:23. [One obvious qualification of “all die” is found in 1Th_4:17.] [“The great resurrection chapter is, as it were, an expansion of the Lord’s own word, ‘Because I live, ye shall live also’ ” (Pope).] See Homiletic Analysis. The resurrection of the unsaved is asserted, on the highest authority, in Joh_5:28-29.

1Co_15:23. Order.—Quite another detail as to “order” in the Resurrection is revealed in 1Th_4:16-17 : “first … then.” Order here is “troop.” The race defiles before us, an army in three divisions: First Division—The Lord (Heb_12:2); Second Division—The Church of the Redeemed, some following Him already nearly two millenniums in the rear; Third Division—The rest of mankind (Evans). At His coming.—Note the (exegetical) comma. See Appended Note.

1Co_15:24. The end.—Derived perhaps from Christ’s words, reported in Mat_24:13. “What [this] may signify cannot be determined; alii alia; in all likelihood ‘the end’ is its own [and only] interpreter.” So, wisely, Evans, who adds, with most: “It seems probable that the kingship will be handed over by the Incarnate Son to Him who is God and Father; but the kingdom of His own founding, in its contents of citizens, … Php_3:10, will continue; so that ‘His kingdom shall have no end’ (Dan_7:13-14).” “The only expression about which there may reasonably be some doubt is kingdom. That it is more inclusive than the ‘regnum gratiœ’ in its ordinary acceptance, and that it may have some reference to the millennial kingdom, is probably to be inferred from the wide horizon of this holy revelation. This kingdom the Eternal Son … delivers up to the Eternal Father, not as though He were Himself thereby divested of the kingdom, but as a sharer in it for evermore.” (Ellicott.) “Then” viz. “when,.… (or, again) when.” All the consecrated words re the Second Advent are found in 2Th_1:7; 2Th_2:17 : Parousia, Epiphany, Apocalypse. The kingdom.—Rev_19:15-16. Put down.—, “abolished,” as in 2Ti_1:10 (A.V.). “Not total destruction, but absolute subjugation.” Favourite word of Paul’s; nine times in this Epistle, with various shades of the one meaning: “to reduce to such practical unimportance, or non-importance, that it may be left out of the account altogether.” Rule, authority, power.—Abstract, for personal concretes, as in Eph_1:21; Eph_3:10; Eph_6:13; Col_1:16; Rom_8:38. He.—Viz. Christ.

1Co_15:25. He … He.—Christ … the Father (1Co_15:27, end).

1Co_15:26.—Observe the present tense of a dateless event that is, as it were, seen to be happening.

1Co_15:27.—Combine in exposition Psa_2:6-9; Psa_8:6; (Heb_2:8); Psa_110:1.; (Heb_1:13); Mat_22:44; Act_2:34-35; (Psa_45:6). Observe the margin, “shall have said,”—a solemn announcement to the listening world, by God Himself, parallel to that of Pa. 1Co_2:7-8, the “decree” of the Son’s investiture with His mediatorial royalty.

1Co_15:28. All in all.—Cf. Col_3:11, an anticipatory, suggestive fulfilment of the idea.

1Co_15:29.—Very obscure to us; obviously well known to, and understood by, the Corinthians. An ad homines argument entirely. Q.d. “You deny or question the resurrection; I take you, then, on the ground of your own practice: why, then, do you baptize?” etc. There is some patristic tradition, but of uncertain value even to the Fathers who report it, of a practice of baptizing a “representative” of a man who, as yet only a catechumen, had died without baptism, lest he should for want of it be lost. [Some say putting the living man under the bed, and letting him give answers to the usual questions, addressed to the corpse!] A question is raised whether this very expression of Paul’s did not in some cases occasion such a practice. [Certainly no fair homiletic use is to be made of these words in any sense of appealing to the survivors in a Church to come forward and seek a new baptism of the Spirit, that they may fill the place, and do the work, of some who have died.]

1Co_15:30.—Another ad hominem (or ab homine) argument, but this time of abiding, real value. We.—Primarily the apostles (2Co_1:8-10; 2Co_4:10, etc.); but all Christians, sooner or later, had a taste of peril.

1Co_15:31. Your rejoicing.—As text. Q.d. “I say emphatically, brethren—and to you of whom I so constantly make my boast, should I be likely to say anything but what is the simple fact? You will believe me—I die daily.”

1Co_15:32. After the manner of men.—I.e. “With no better hopes or prospect of the future, than ‘natural’ men, and men without even the Gospel revelation, have when they endure risk, and face conflict and danger.” The converse case is put in 1Co_15:58, “Wherefore,” i.e. “Seeing you have such hopes,” etc. Fought with beasts.—Cf. the unrecorded, perhaps identical, peril of 2Co_1:8. All one word in Greek; no specialising of literal “beasts,” such as the English suggests: “I was like a beast-fighting gladiator in an amphitheatre.” [Precisely similar idealising of the fact in Psa_22:11-13. Also, Ignatius writes of his guards (“leopards,” he calls them): “All the way from Syria to Rome (on his way to martyrdom) did I beast-fight by land and sea.”] Observe the varying connection by punctuation in A.V. and; either good, A.V. better. Quotation from Isa_22:13, of Jerusalem profligacy when Sennacherib was at hand.

1Co_15:33.—Perhaps the fall into immorality in the Church at Corinth had been facilitated by a weakened faith in the Resurrection.

1Co_15:34. “Arouse yourselves,” as if from the sleep after the orgies of Isa_22:13, “and show yourselves, and bear yourselves, righteously.” Well expounded by 1Th_5:2-8. “I speak this, in order to your shaming.” (So 1Co_6:5.)

HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.—1Co_15:20-34

The Divine Goal of Creation History.

I. Contrasts.—This section divides at 1Co_15:29. In the one half and in the other we are at two levels, in two worlds. [Cf. Raphael’s “Transfiguration,” where literal truth is sacrificed to the higher truth of the nearness and close relation between the upper, mountain-top world of calm, light, heaven, glory, and the lower world of scoffing Pharisees, bewildered disciples, and demon-possessed humanity.] In 1Co_15:20-28 we are amongst the most sublime disclosures of all the Christian Scriptures—disclosures which with their very excess of glory almost cease to disclose anything. They are sublime almost to being obscure. The horizon is so bright, and the facts are so far away and so low down towards it, that we can scarcely make out anything. We hear such words as 1Co_15:28; we repeat the words; but we can scarcely do more than let our hearts ponder, and reverently and soberly imagine; we can make nothing precise. Paul is borne up and along in soaring flights of confident strength, where we can hardly follow, even with our eyes. On the other hand, in 1Co_15:29-34, we are on a very earthly level indeed. There is mystery here, but only such as wraps around an obscure, superstitious practice of a few half Christianised Corinthians. The rest is plain enough! A Paul in the midst of men who are like the very “beasts” of the amphitheatre. Corinthians sinking into a drunken sleep of unrighteousness, from which he seeks to “awaken” them to “righteousness,” or, at the least, to “shame.” [Such revelations to be first given to the world in a letter to such “Christians”! “Kind to the unthankful and to the evil” indeed (Luk_6:35).] So near, also, are the two worlds always. The evil closely enfolds the holy. Or is it the holy which enfolds the evil? The salt is—just where it is wanted—in the midst of what but for it would be corruption. We live in both worlds. In the seclusion of the mountain-top sometimes; oftener at the mountain-foot amongst the enemies and the demons, or in the arena amongst the beasts. Happy if the memories of the upper level are our strength down on the lower. Happy if such truths as are in 1Co_15:20-28 may keep our souls from the infection of “evil communications,” or from the “sleep” of the intoxication of scepticism or sin. So, again, are the two worlds near together, the two levels not very remote, in the inner life of the soul. Glorious revelations; miserable superstitions. Soaring hopes of victories; battles for very life with the “beast” within our nature. Standing by the side of our Lord, with our foot placed where His has first been, on the neck of some foe of our soul’s Life; sinking into the perilous, criminal sloth or torpor induced by an atmosphere of “evil communications.” And thus we knit together the two ends of the paragraph. “Now is Christ risen.” Spite of all the theorisers and speculators and keen creators of “insuperable” difficulties, the fact is sure. Paul stands by the slothful, sleeping, drunken-souled Corinthians, and shouts his cry into the drowsy ear: “Christ is risen! Do ye arise; awake; shake off your sleep; arouse yourselves and be righteous! Righteous! Why you are past shaming. You have not the knowledge of God.” I.e. they are back again in, and of, the “world which knew not God” (1Co_1:21). If Regeneration was an upward development, there has now been Degeneration; these men who “knew God” were only a variation wrought and sustained by Grace. They have now sinned against grace; in them nature has “reverted to type.” “You have not the knowledge of God.” [Observe the close connection between unrighteousness and the loss of the knowledge of God. Cf. Rom_1:18-23.]

II. Christ.—Like the Russians and Greeks on Easter morning, Paul is ready to go up and down, saying with a holy cheerfulness of salutation to every fellow-Christian, “Brother, now is Christ risen!” This is a perpetual Easter-morning age for the Church of the Risen Christ. Every Christian may look every other in the face with the glad cry, “He is risen.” But why should not He be simply treated as an isolated case? Why should we not believe in His rising, whilst disbelieving or doubting any other, or our own?

1. Because He is another “Adam”—The race is not made up of aggregated units. There is a solidarity in the history and fortunes of mankind. Contrast the angels. So far as we know, they are each one an independent creation; probably they have been contemporaries in age from the first; each living a natural life complete within itself, dependent only upon God. But any one generation of mankind owes life to the preceding, and these to another preceding them, and so on till “Adam” [= Adam + Eve] is reached. The angels are an aggregate of individuals only. Each might stand or fall alone. The human race is a unity; it is a tree, where branch springs out of branch in periodic succession. [It is a Vine, a wild vine.] The old theologians called this a federal principle. There is a law of dealing with great Unities in God’s administration of His rule over our race. “Abraham” means for some purposes Abraham and his descendants; “Christ” means Christ and His people; Adam stood for himself and mankind. And so the authorised, official, inspired, “prophetic” exposition of history here given makes it clear that the human race may be summarised in two “Adams.” Or, to change the aspect of the truth, without affecting its substance, there are two Mankinds, each with its Adam, each with its close-knit unity and continuity of life, each with its solidarity of history and fortunes. But the link which forms the unity is in the one case a physical derivation and succession, in the other a spiritual unity and succession. [A real sense in which the Christians of any one age are the descendants of, and owe their life to, those of the next, and all, preceding.] The first, dying Adam involved a race of natural descendants in his death—in all its senses. The Risen Adam includes in His resurrection victory another race in whom His Spirit is the link of continuous, corporate life, quickening even their “mortal bodies.” No man stands or falls alone; isolation, independence, is not the “law” of the history of Humanity. The Christ did not die or rise alone; that is not the law of the new Humanity, of which he is the new “Adam.” To change the figure again,

2. Because He is the Firstfruits of the harvest of rising humanity.—“Sown” through long ages, in all nooks and corners of earth’s field. The field is full of its human seed. The seed is waiting for the touch of the Eternal Springtide. The call of Spring yearly awakens sleeping Nature into bud, and flower, and fruit, and harvest. That other Spring shall come with a “trumpet” call,—

[“Tuba mirum spargens sonum,

Per sepulchra regionum”],—

and every buried seed shall start forth into perfect and eternally mature life. The “firstfruits” says that there is a harvest behind; it promises a harvest; it pledges a harvest; it “samples” the following harvest; the offering of the firstfruits consecrates the coming harvest. [As in another application, the firstfruits of the week, the Sunday, is no quittance paid to God that then we may claim and use the six remaining for ourselves, as if our own. The firstfruits of the week thus given to Him acknowledge that all the days are His, all to be spent as He will approve, whilst He lends us six and keeps only one exclusively for Himself.]

3. Captain of a host.—

(1) Heb_2:10 [which is in closest connection with the quotation here given of Psa_8:6] makes the “perfection” of our “Captain” to lie just here, that He is not isolated as He leads the host, but has been partaker with them of “flesh and blood” and “sufferings.” Else would they who follow look forward “where their Chief precedes them” with a feeling that the Captain knew nothing of the life of the common soldier, that He alone of all the great “sacramental host” had never known the fighting and the “roughing” of their lot. Here the “partaking” looks forward into the future. The great host defiles in glorious resurrection review; each company and rank passes in its “order” before the throne of God. (See the review illustration followed somewhat further in the Homiletic Analysis of whole chapter.)

(2) If no resurrection, it has been seen (1Co_15:16-19) that, hoping to be partakers with Christ, we wake up to find ourselves partakers of nothing! No. “Now is Christ risen,” and we are partakers of His victory. Our resurrection is part of our victory. We rise, that so in that fact the finishing stroke may be given to the dominion of death over our redeemed human nature. A mortal body was the last fetter of death, the last token of our sometime bondage. We rise, that so the last fetter may be stricken off. No part of our nature, spirit, soul, body, that is not delivered. It is part of His victory. We now dare, every one of us, to put our foot on the neck of Goliath, when our David has first brought him down, and planted His victorious foot upon our foe and His. This particular victory is part of a larger victory, by which is regained a lost lordship belonging to mankind. In Psa_8:6 the opened eye of the prophet sees into the heart of things—into the inner secret of the order of Creation as it existed in the mind of the Creator. The geological history of the earth leads up to an earth fitted to be man’s home. A palæontological history can be made out, whether it be an ideal sequence only, or an historical and physical one, leading up to man. And when the home was ready, and the tenant was ready, the investiture of occupancy ran, “Let them have dominion,” etc. (Gen_1:8). Thus he who was the goal of all the earliest history, the climax (and indeed the summation) of all the series of animate creaturely structures, the crown of creation, was also its King. [Perhaps also its High Priest, voicing the praise, the thanksgiving, the prayers, of the mute, unintelligent creation, which found in Him a brain and a heart and a voice.] Yet even this royalty is not the thought of God in its furthest reach. We speak of ascending from this to a higher. Yet it would be the truer order to work backwards and downwards, from the higher to this; as God did. We ascend from the earliest creature-life to man, the ruler of all; nor do we stop there, but go forward and upward to the Son of Man. But though we reverently so shape our thought, God began there, began with Him. He is the mediation between God and the creature, between Spirit and Matter. He is the Link. “In Him all things were created.” Man’s original royalty was but the adumbration of His. As the lower creatures had shadowed Man forth, so did he shadow the Son forth. After all, he was not the last link, but the last but one, in the chain which led up from some quasi-eozoic form to the Incarnate Son. [The Gospel is Creation’s order over again. “All things man’s. Man is Christ’s. Christ is God’s.”] But sin entered. Creation’s course had so far gone true and straight to man; now, when it should have gone true and straight through him to God, it swerved aside and was sinfully deflected. The race “missed its mark.” The race no longer rose to the Son; the Son’s garment of royalty no longer descended on man. But, ever since, slowly, piecemeal, has the lost dominion, the forfeited position, been recovered by all those who are “in” the Second Adam. The first note of the recovered victory is in the Protevangelion (Gen_3:15); fulfilled most gloriously in the Wilderness and the Garden and at Calvary, no doubt; yet even there only anticipating the last crowning triumph of a long series of triumphs for our Captain. And with a heel sore wounded, very often does each Christian soldier step upon his foe and go on to conquer, with the heartening word ringing in his ears, “God shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly” (Rom_16:20). There is an enemy within him, whose dominion is broken [in closest connection with his Lord’s resurrection once more (Rom_6:10-11)]: “Sin shall not have dominion over you” (ib. 1Co_15:14). The very world with all its trials, difficulties, opposition, is a subject thing to them who are in the Man Who has never lost, who has more abundantly fulfilled, the Royalty of Man. “In jeopardy every hour;” “dying daily,” yet “all things work together for good” to men. The world is “under their feet.” [Nor need there be hesitation in seeing more than merely the relics of the original dominion, but a real mediatorially-recovered dominion, in the growing mastery wielded by man over the physical forces of the natural world, subjecting all to his daily service. Certainly in the power of Christ over even His pre-resurrection body, making it vanish from amongst His foes or walk upon the waters,—a power which was once even communicated to Peter,—we get a little opening, giving us largest views into a world of vast, dim possibilities of the power of man’s spirit, itself enfranchised from the dominion of sin, over even the material world.] There is a “last enemy” for him, as for the race,—Death. “Death is his” (1Co_3:22) already; it comes to him conquered by his Captain, and made to run on his Captain’s errand, and bear his Captain’s summons to him to a more glorious life. He is delivered from the bondage to its fear: the fear is “put under his feet”; when at last he meets it, he finds that he has but to deal with a “stingless” serpent, on whose head he can “put his foot” boldly. He is meeting nothing but the Shadow of a great Name, the Shadow of a great Dread, a thing whose substantial power is “abolished,” “destroyed.” And this detailed victory of His dying people, in succession, is part of His own (cf. Luk_10:18), which by-and-by shall be consummated in one grand public demonstration of His triumph, in the day when even the very bodies of His people have death’s yoke struck off and death itself underfoot. “All things under His feet.”

III. Consummation.—What is this “end” and the subjection of even the “Son Himself”? Answer as one did who was asked, “What is heaven like?” “I will tell you when we meet there.”

APPENDED NOTES

1Co_15:23-24. “The coming; the end.”—This “coming” of Christ is not, merely or exclusively, to establish His kingdom, but to judge the quick and the dead … (compare 1Th_2:19; 1Th_3:13; 1Th_4:15; 1Th_5:23, al.). Whether any, and, if any, what interval is to be supposed to exist between this “coming” and “the end” of the following verse—in fact, between “then” and “then”—the sober interpreter cannot presume even to attempt to indicate. This only may be said, that the language seems to imply a kind of interval; but that there is nothing in the particles or in the passage to warrant our conceiving it to be longer than would include the subjugation of every foe and every power of evil, and all that may be immediately associated with the mighty “end” which is specified in the succeeding verse.… It must be carefully remembered that the Apostle is here dealing with a single subject, the resurrection of the dead, and not with the connected details of eschatology. These must be gathered from other passages and other portions of Scripture.… The great difficulty in Christian eschatology is the exact position which all that is specified in Rev_20:4 is to be supposed to hold in the sequences of the unfolding future.… Perhaps all that can be safely said is, that neither here nor in 1Th_4:16 does the Apostle preclude the conception of a resurrection of the just (compare Luk_14:14)—possibly gradual; that in some passages (consider Rom_11:12-15) he does seem to have looked for a “flowering time” of the Church prior to the close of human history; and that here he distinctly implies a closing conflict with all the powers of evil (compare Rev_20:7; Rev_20:15) immediately prior to the end. That the millennial binding of Satan is to be dated from the death and resurrection of our Lord has been recently urged, … but to the detriment, as it would seem, of the distinctive idea of the millennium.—Bishop Ellicott.

1Co_15:23. “His coming.”—Parousia, indicating that when He comes He will always be present; the time of His absence will have passed away for ever.… His presence, which will then be so different from what it is now that the change from the one to the other is no less than a coming again.—Pope.

1Co_15:24. “The end.”—There will be an end and beginning of the Redeemer’s Kingdom, as it is a kingdom of grace translated into glory.

I. The mediatorial economy will cease in its relation to the Triune God; the redemptional Trinity which introduced the economy of subordination in the Two Persons will be again the absolute Trinity. The Son Incarnate will cease to mediate; as Incarnate He will be for ever subordinate, but there will be nothing to declare His subordination: no mediatorial rule over enemies, no mediatorial service or worship of His people. The Triune God will be seen by all mankind in the face of Jesus Christ, and the mediation of grace will become the mediation of glory. The Intercessor will pray for us no more, but will reveal the Father openly for ever.… The prayer of our Lord (Joh_17:21) will then have been fulfilled, “one in Us.” Man taken up into the Us of the Triune God will need a mediator no more.

II. The kingdom will cease because its ends will have been attained. “Then cometh the end” … to the Father as the Representative of the Trinity; “when He shall have put down.” … The process of His victories is declared in the Apocalypse: first and last, the Anti-Christ, which is a spirit of infidelity, Against Christ, having many forms, such as the Beast and the Man of Sin, and also a final personal manifestation; every description of heathenism to the ends of the earth; the corruption of Christianity, exhibited in Babylon and the Second Beast and the Harlot; and finally Death, the last enemy that shall be destroyed. In all these conflicts the Church is the fellowship of companions in “tribulation,” etc. (Rev_1:9). We are one with our Lord, and He is one with us, in this progressive warfare and final victory. It is as “Head over all things to the Church” that the Redeemer exercises now and will end then His rule; nor is any other supression of authority alluded to than that which opposed the designs of His mediatorial kingdom. Moreover, there is nothing said of the destruction, only of the putting down of all hostile authority and power.

III. The kingdom will have a new beginning: new as the kingdom of the “new heavens,” etc.… The Spirit of Christ will be the immanent bond between Him and us, between us and the Holy Trinity (1Co_6:17). The Incarnate Person will then be glorified as never before; His personality as Divine will be no more veiled or obscured by any humiliation, nor will it be intermittently revealed. God shall be all in all, first in the Holy Trinity and then through Christ in us.—Pope, “Compend. of Theology,” iii. 425, 426.

1Co_15:27. “He hath put all things under His feet.”—It has often been asked whether David, in ascribing such dignity as he here does to man, was speaking of man in his present condition, degraded from his supremacy by the fall, or of man as originally made in the image of God and gifted with dominion over the lower creation. Now the language of the Psalm certainly points to the present. There is no trait in it of any difference between man’s original destiny and his present condition, between the ideal and the actual. Man is king of this lower world; though, because he has cast off his allegiance to the King of kings, his own subjects have renounced their allegiance to him, so that he rules by force, or manifold arts, rather than by right acknowledged and respected. But were there any higher thoughts in David’s mind? Was he thinking of man as redeemed and restored in the second Adam to his rightful supremacy?… We, who read these words in the light of the Incarnation, may see in them a significance which to his own mind they would hardly have possessed. Twice in the New Testament passages of this Psalm are applied to Christ: once by St. Paul rather in the way of allusion than of direct quotation (1Co_15:27), where he teaches that what was said by David of man is in its truest and highest sense applicable to Christ as the Great Head of Mankind; and, again, by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (1Co_2:6-9), who, arguing that the words [of our verse] have not yet been literally fulfilled of man, declares that their proper fulfilment is to be seen only in Jesus … “crowned with glory and honour.” He does not say that the Psalm is a direct prophecy of Christ; but he shows that man’s destiny as depicted in the Psalm is not and cannot be accomplished out of Christ. He is the true Lord of all. In Him man recovers his rightful lordship, and shall really be in the new world of Redemption what now he is very imperfectly, God’s vicegerent ruling a subject creation in peace and harmony and love.—Perowne, “Psalms,” Psalms 8.

[Much also of the following passage is illustrative of 1Co_15:27 :] “The use made of this Psalm in the Epistle to the Hebrews proceeds on the understanding that it describes ideal humanity. Where, then, says the writer of the Epistle, shall we look for the realisation of that ideal? Do not the grand words sound liker irony than truth? Is this poor creature that crawls about the world, its slave, discrowned and sure to die, the Man whom the Psalmist saw? No. Then was the fair vision a baseless fabric, and is there nothing to be looked for but a dreary continuance of such abortions dragging out their futile being through hopeless generations? No; the promise shall be fulfilled for humanity, because it has been fulfilled in one man, the Man Christ Jesus. He is the realised ideal, and in Him is a life which will be communicated to all who trust and obey Him, and they, too, will become all that God meant man to be. The Psalm was not intended as a prophecy, but every clear vision of God’s purpose is a prophecy, for none of His purposes remain unfulfilled. It was not intended as a picture of the Christ, but it is so; for He and He alone is the Man who answers to that fair Divine Ideal, and He will make all His people partakers of His royalty and perfect Manhood.”—Maclaren, “Psalms,” Expositor’s Bible.

Who does not know how the tone of evil has communicated itself? Worldly minds, irreverent minds, licentious minds, leaven Society. You cannot be long with persons who by innuendo, double meaning, or lax language show an acquaintance with evil, without feeling in some degree assimilated to them, nor can you easily retain enthusiasm for right amongst those who detract and scoff at goodness. None but Christ could remain with the impenitent and be untainted.—Robertson, “Expos. Lectures,” on 1Co_5:6.

SEPARATE HOMILIES

1Co_15:33. “Evil communications corrupt good manners.”

I.

1. Hasty, crude thinking would say: “But that is not Scripture, though it is in Scripture. That is a verse from a heathen poet; not an inspired saying at all.” [As might similarly be said of the letter of Claudius Lysias (Act_23:26-30).] But wherever an architect gets his materials, from whatever quarry he gets a stone, and whatever therefore be its varying quality or character, if he puts it into his building, he makes it his own. It becomes part of his embodiment of his design and idea. He is responsible for its selection and presence and use. He is the author of the whole structure and of every part of it, whether he obtained the constituent parts “ready made” to his hand and purpose, or had to find them in the rough and fashion them himself. This sentence, like the pillars of St. Sophia at Constantinople, the spoils of many more ancient temples, is fetched from another earlier building, where it had its fitness and its strength. This is a stone from a heathen quarry. But the wise builder, Paul, working at the growing, and nearly completed, structure of Revelation, under the direction of its Divine Architect works it into the fabric, and when it is once there the Directing Mind is responsible for it; He has made it His own; it serves His purpose of conveying with authority His mind and will to men. [No knowledge—not even of heathen proverbs—comes amiss to a Christian teacher; everything may be made available. All the quarries, all the kingdoms, of the earth belong to our Christ. He will guide His servants how wisely to lay toll on them all!]

2. Whatever be its origin, the saying is truth. He who said it formulated the bitter experience of many a benevolent social reformer, of many a parent filled with the sorrow of hopes for his children blighted into worse than failure, of many an amiable theorist starting with some “natural goodness of human nature,” only to find that his theory is no cadre into which he can fit all the facts. [Take only a limited amount of mental luggage; pack away into the portmanteau of your theory just a few selected facts—just those you need—and you may walk away comfortably, triumphantly, in your path of hope and endeavour. But] take entire, universal human nature; take entire, universal experiment and its results; and human nature is not to be trusted to love and follow and struggle for Good. It may approve it, applaud it, love it with a very platonic sort of devotion; but it is divided against itself, and what seems, unhappily, the stronger part gravitates too easily toward evil. There is not even an even balance; the scale turning for evil is loaded.

3. Classical literature has its many familiar confessions of the innate downward drag of human nature. Indeed, never had every experiment that man could suggest for man’s elevation been more exhaustively tried, and with larger advantage of conditions for the experiment, than in Grecian and Roman society in the centuries just before Christ. Philosophy, art, government, material refinement, and cultured civilisation, had practically done all that has ever been possible to do; later ages scarcely do more than go the round of the old experiment; man had done his best for man; and the universal consent of those who know best the age of the world into which God thrust the leaven of the Gospel of Christ is that never was the failure more complete, never were the world’s “manners” more utterly and hopelessly “corrupt.” Every man who repeats the experiment upon himself comes at last to the same result, and to the same sorrowful confession (his pride may not always suffer him to make the avowal aloud), that man unaided by grace cannot keep man pure. He finds that human nature in itself has its affinities, toward evil, not good, nor God; that it has a ready assimilative power for evil; that the evil leaven soon enters, and spreads widely, whilst God’s leaven of a new life is slowly admitted, and finds resistance more probable than reception and assimilation. “The dyer’s hand is subdued to what it works in.”

4. Yet no man very readily believes in the affinity of human nature for, and its inclination toward, evil; in himself, at any rate. Or if he half admit this, he will not consent to count himself in peril. His unformulated, unspoken thought is that he, at all events, is independent of the influences of his surroundings; he can stand firm; he can keep himself from corruption. From gross and open acts of evil he perhaps may; force of character and of will, pride, shame, self-interest, and the like, may enable him to keep free from, or to break off, acts and open habits. But sin is deeper seated in his nature; its presence is more subtle in its diffusion; the susceptibility is throughout. The graver danger is from subtle and pervasive evil; sin is most dangerous where it is only an influence, an environment, always present, unceasing in its deleterious power. It is most perilous as an atmosphere producing a languor, a torpor toward good, and predisposing the enfeebled spiritual life to receive the infection of disease. It is oftener a poison in the cup than an open wound in the battle. It speaks fair, smooth things, when its “communications” are most full of corruption and deadly mischief. Man will not believe it of Man; the parent will not believe it of the “nice” child; the man will not believe it of himself, spite of many a sharp, disappointing, disheartening lesson. Paul says, “Be not deceived.” All the marvellous, fairytale records of modern science as to the assimilative powers of living things in the presence of any particular environment, have their analogies in the facts of the spiritual realm. As the surroundings such—naturally, and but for the grace of God—is the man. “As the man thinketh in his heart so is he,” no doubt. The root of all evil character is ultimately within. But it may be held in check by a holy environment. “Holy communications”—especially between the soul and its Saviour—“sanctify evil manners” into good. But more commonly, and with greater facility, “evil communications corrupt,” etc. Let no man flatter himself that he shall be any exception. The best weapon of the adversary is the “deceitfulness of sin” (Heb_3:13). Therefore—

II. Mind what company you keep—

1. No doubt the grace of God can keep Obadiah in a court where Jezebel is queen, and in a place where a Nero follows a Tiberius, a Caligula, a Claudius, “saints” may be found. But even these need to be on their strictest guard. The very physician who goes into the midst of spiritual disease needs to have a care of his own health. Only One Physician had absolute immunity from danger. [All who do “rescue” work should keep within a full spiritual vigour, a heart that “hates even the garment spotted by the flesh” (Jud_1:23).] A Christian in worldly or distinctly evil company is a red-hot ball of iron in the midst of blocks of ice. No doubt he may melt them; there is grave danger lest they chill him.

2. For the average Christian; worldliness is a more real peril than open, shocking, repellent wickedness. It is also the more ordinary liability. The surface discrepancy between Christian and non-Christian is not perhaps great; non-Christian life is in many ways affected, shaped, restrained, by the moral standard obtaining, in a general way, in a Christian land. But there is a deep chasm of separation in all their underlying principles. The “counsel of the” non-godly can never coincide with the “law of the Lord” (Psalms 1) which is “in the heart” of the Christian man. Their lives may overlap, but they revolve in different circles, struck from distinct centres.

3. E.g. the whole standard according to which persons, motives, conduct, are habitually discussed and estimated in the home, is according to man, not according to God. “God is not in all their thoughts;” they may formulate no system of morals and philosophy, but their ethics of business and their view of life in the daily talk at the table and around the fire are practically without God. The interests consulted for, and by which are regulated the planning and execution of their life-work, lie within the narrow range of the horizon of the earthly life; they know, and care to know, nothing of the readjustment of values and proportions which is inevitable as soon as life is seen running on in unbroken continuity into an eternal duration. E.g. in the education of their children, or their placing out in life, in their marriages, the soul and its interests have no consideration given to them; society interests, good prospects, natural congeniality and affection—however high and worthy the type of these may be—are all. The Christian visitor in such a home is struck, not so much by what is said or done, but rather by what he misses from the customary talk and action and judgments of the family. They are on another, a lower, plane; they are in in closest daily association with him; but they and he live in different worlds of thought and feeling and judgment.

4. He may “endure as seeing Him Who is invisible” (Heb_11:27). If he begin each day by getting into very real rapport with the Unseen, and if, by often intercourse with it during the progress of the hours, he keep his windows open towards it—keep the eyesight of his soul keen and clear to see it—he may pass through unharmed. But the danger for the young, of half-formed principles, or of no definite principles whatever, is that their world should contract to the narrow limits of that of those around them; that their eye should lose its keenness of vision, or that the world’s smoke and mists should besmirch their windows until they cannot see out into the Infinite, nor can the world of the Infinities, the Eternities, the Divinities, reach through to them. The danger is that the standard of judgment, the scales by which they weigh persons, character, motives, aims, should receive—by slight, but continually repeated contacts and impressions—an unhappy, ungodly adjustment. It is natural, and far easier, by little and little to fall into worldling ways of thinking and speaking and action, more than the Christian man is aware; until one day some sudden arrest of circumstance, or some more glaring, startling discrepancy between the worldly and the godly habit and standard, “pulls him up,” and reveals to him how far he has travelled, and how widely he has diverged from the love of the law of God and of the ethics of the Gospel of Christ. To the Christian man, who of necessity must spend much of his time with the people of the world, the text comes as a warning lest his spirit catch the infection of their spirit, lest with a fatal plasticity his conscience take their impress and mould. He must keep the resilience, the resistant power, the rigidity, which comes of indwelling grace. “ ‘Be not deceived’; do not be ‘liberal,’ ‘broad,’ till you become a true worldling in temper and spirit and habit and judgment. ‘Evil communications’—not least the daily talk (ὁμιλίαι); which goes on around you, in the office, in the street, in the house—‘corrupt good manners!’ ” (See Appended Note from Robertson.)

III. Mind what books yon read, and what literature.—

1. In a word, mind the mental companionships you form, or allow to yourself. Openly vicious literature will scarcely come in the way of the bulk of decent, ordinary English people. If it did, the first dose would probably create nausea and moral revulsion—though, unhappily, even this may pass away with use. Here again the peril is rather from the literature which the Christian instinct does not so much condemn for what is present as for what is missing. The literature of the world, at its best, “says in its heart, No God.”

2. The Puritan code and the practice of the men and women of all the Churches which felt, and still feel, the impress of the Evangelical revival of the eighteenth century, were strict, “narrow”—for themselves and for those whose opinions and habits they could control—in the range of literature they permitted for ordinary reading. They found that to “glorify their God below and find their way to heaven” [by no means forgetting that, whilst the living stream is making its pure, bright way to the Ocean, it needs to be, and cannot help being, a joy and a blessing to all the dwellers along its banks and course] needed all their best energies and all the help they could obtain. At their best, the novel, the play, most of the poetry, of their day demanded the time and gave no help. Their intensely serious view of life was the basis of adjustment for all their standard of permission and perusal. The very newspaper was often looked at askance. The reaction is upon us, in our time, and is carrying Christian people quite far enough in the direction of freedom. All the fields of literature are not full of food-bearing, health-producing growth; yet the tendency is to throw them open to the free range of even the youngest, most inexperienced readers. And without keeping up the old strictness of prohibition, the Christian readers of to-day need to hear, “Be not deceived, evil communications,” etc.

3. In fiction, for example, the social code, the valuation of men and character, is seldom that of the New Testament; in some, widely read and favourably reviewed, it is hardly Ten Commandment morality. The masters of fiction, or the great playwrights, are not found working on distinctively Christian lines; they never have done. The relations between man and woman in (say) a masterpiece of art like Middlemarch are not according to Christ’s law. Vanity Fair is drawn by one who is himself a stall-holder in the Fair—so far as its code for character shows. The Christian of strong, “spiritual” instincts, in whom is answered the prayer of Php_1:9-11, is not at home in his mental company, as he reads. He is in continual mental and heart protest against what they say and do, and still more against their principles of action and judgment. And the danger is analogous to that of actually living in such an atmosphere and such company; the danger of adjustment little by little, of assimilation by almost imperceptible degrees—only recognisable in their total result—to the standards and practice and heart of those around him. [“Some (poets) will tune their harps to sensual pleasures, and by the enchantment of their genius will well-nigh commend their unholy themes to the imagination of saints” (Edward Irving, Div. Oracles, Oration I.).]

4. Most of the reviewing press, most of the influential literary judgment, is at its best non-Christian in its motives and its standards of appeal. The younger, the unstable, the ill-instructed Christian reader needs be on his guard, lest he “be deceived”; lest he be swept away by the strong set of the prevalent current into habits of judgment and esteem which would not be those of “life in Christ.” Beauty, masterly workmanship, in art or poetry must not excuse or glorify moral evil. To a Christian instinct art cannot be non-moral; as a fact, it is not. The master-workman of the modern world, Goethe, is a great heathen. Shakespeare, colossal in his power, embodies, like his mistress Elizabeth [see Green, History of the English People, ii. 499, “a brilliant, fanciful, unscrupulous child of earth and of the Renaissance”], the spirit and code, not of the Reformation, but of the Renaissance, in his attitude towards the moralities; it needs a strong, clear, healthy, spiritual tone to read him without some moral soil, and even some of the insensible mental adjustment which is the great peril. The young heart needs to read with Paul’s caution even in the ears, “Evil communications,” etc. Breadth, liberality, which cultivates “toleration,” indifference to all such aspects of literature, and appreciates and approves all equally if only power be there,—these belong to a life which lives and moves in another world than that which is circumscribed by the sacred limit: “in Christ.” The “man in Christ” needs in even his mental companionships to be on his strictest guard when he passes into the “world” beyond. It is apt to be “corrupt” and “corrupting.” [Similarly the evolutionary exposition of the facts of the natural world has so got possession of the press, emphemeral and more permanent alike; has so got current in the speech and thought of the leaders of the mind of the world to-day; has so boldly been carried through as a working explanation of the facts dealt with in mental and moral science; that it is difficult not to escape the infection of what, in its extremest interpreters, is a materialism without a God; difficult to come back to, and keep, one’s position at the Great Teacher’s feet, making His words, “My Father worketh hitherto,” the key to one’s interpretation and system of Nature. Facts are welcome, whoever discovers, reports, systematises them. The interpretation of the facts needs watching lest it “corrupt” the habitual, instinctive thought of the heart, which like Christ sees a world whose “laws” are simply God’s rules for His own ordinary, orderly action and government; whose “Force” is ultimately will force—that of His will; a world full of a personal God.]

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

1 Corinthians

THE DEATH OF DEATH

THE CERTAINTY AND JOY OF THE RESURRECTION

1Co 15:20.

The Apostle has been contemplating the long train of dismal consequences which he sees would arise if we only had a dead Christ. He thinks that he, the Apostle, would have nothing to preach, and we, nothing to believe. He thinks that all hope of deliverance from sin would fade away. He thinks that the one fact which gives assurance of immortality having vanished, the dead who had nurtured the assurance have perished. And he thinks that if things were so, then Christian men, who had believed a false gospel, and nourished an empty faith, and died clinging to a baseless hope, were far more to be pitied than men who had had less splendid dreams and less utter illusions.

Then, with a swift revulsion of feeling, he turns away from that dreary picture, and with a change of key, which the dullest ear can appreciate, from the wailing minors of the preceding verses, he breaks into this burst of triumph. ‘Now’-things being as they are, for it is the logical ‘now,’ and not the temporal one-things being as they are, ‘Christ is risen from the dead, and that as the first fruits of them that slept.’

Part of the ceremonial of the Passover was the presentation in the Temple of a barley sheaf, the first of the harvest, waved before the Lord in dedication to Him, and in sign of thankful confidence that all the fields would be reaped and their blessing gathered. There may be some allusion to that ceremony, which coincided in time with the Resurrection of our Lord, in the words here, which regard that one solitary Resurrection as the early ripe and early reaped sheaf, the pledge and the prophecy of the whole ingathering.

Now there seem to me, in these words, to ring out mainly two things-an expression of absolute certainty in the fact, and an expression of unbounded triumph in the certainty of the fact.

And if we look at these two things, I think we shall get the main thoughts that the Apostle would impress upon our minds.

I. The certainty of Christ’s Resurrection.

‘Now is Christ risen,’ says he, defying, as it were, doubt and negation, and basing himself upon the firm assurance which he possesses of that historical fact. ‘Ah!’ you say, ‘seeing is believing; and he had evidence such as we can never have.’ Well! let us see. Is it possible for us, nineteen centuries nearly after that day, to catch some echo of this assured confidence, and in the face of modern doubts and disbeliefs, to reiterate with as unfaltering assurance as that with which they came from his glowing lips, the great words of my text? Can we, logically and reasonably, as men who are guided by evidence and not by feeling, stand up before the world, and take for ours the ancient confession: ‘I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. The third day He rose again from the dead’ ? I think we can.

The way to prove a fact is by the evidence of witnesses. You cannot argue that it would be very convenient, if such and such a thing should be true; that great moral effects would follow if we believed it was true, and so on. The way to do is to put people who have seen it into the witness-box, and to make sure that their evidence is worth accepting.

And at the beginning of my remarks I wish to protest, in a sentence, against confusing the issues about this question of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ in that fashion which is popular nowadays, when we are told that miracle is impossible, and therefore there has been no Resurrection, or that death is the end of human existence, and that therefore there has been no Resurrection. That is not the way to go about ascertaining the truth as to asserted facts. Let us hear the evidence. The men who brush aside the testimony of the New Testament writers, in obedience to a theory, either about the impossibility of the supernatural, or about the fatal and final issues of human death, are victims of prejudice, in the strictest meaning of the word; and are no more logical than the well-known and proverbial reasoner who, when told that facts were against him, with sublime confidence in his own infallibility, is reported to have said, ‘So much the worse for the facts.’ Let us deal with evidence, and not with theory, when we are talking about alleged facts of history.

So then, let me remind you that, in this chapter from which my text is taken, we have a record of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, older than, and altogether independent of, the records contained in the gospels, which are all subsequent in date to it; that this Epistle to the Corinthians is one of the four undisputed Epistles of the Apostle, which not the most advanced school of modern criticism has a word to say against; that, therefore, this chapter, written, at the latest, some seven and twenty years after the date of the Crucifixion, carries us up very close to that event; that it shows that the Resurrection was universally believed all over the Church, and therefore must have then been long believed; that it enables us to trace the same belief as universal, and in undisputed possession of the field among the churches, at the time of Paul’s conversion, which cannot be put down at much more than five or six years after the Crucifixion, and that so we are standing in the presence of absolutely contemporaneous testimony. This is not a case in which a belief slowly and gradually grew up. Whether we accept the evidence or not, we are bound to admit that it is strictly contemporaneous testimony to the fact of Christ’s Resurrection.

And the witnesses are reliable and competent, as well as contemporaneous. The old belief that their testimony was imposture is dead long ago; as, indeed, how could it live? It would be an anomaly, far greater than the Resurrection, to believe that these people, Mary, Peter, John, Paul, and all the rest of them, were conspirators in a lie, and that the fairest system of morality and the noblest consecration that the world has ever seen, grew up out of a fraud, like flowers upon a dunghill. That theory will not hold water; and even those who will not accept the testimony have long since confessed that it will not. But the Apostle, in my context, seems to think that that is the only tenable alternative to the other theory that the witnesses were veracious, and I am disposed to believe that he is right. He says, ‘If Christ be not risen, then, are we’ the utterly impossible thing of ‘false witnesses to God,’ devout perjurers, as the phrase might be paraphrased: men who are lying to please God. If Christ be not risen, they have sworn to a thing that they know to be untrue, in order to advance His cause and His kingdom. If that theory be not accepted, there is no other about these men and their message that will hold water for a minute, except the admission of its truth.

The fashionable modern one, that it was hallucination, is preposterous. Hallucinations that five hundred people at once shared! Hallucinations that lasted all through long talks, spread at intervals over more than a month! Hallucinations that included eating and drinking, speech and answer; the clasp of the hand and the feeling of the breath! Hallucinations that brought instruction! Hallucinations that culminated in the fancy that a gathered multitude of them saw Him going up into heaven! The hallucination is on the other side, I think. They have got the saddle on the wrong horse when they talk about the Apostolic witnesses being the victims of hallucination. It is the people who believe it possible that they should be who are so. The old argument against miracles used to say that it is more consonant with experience that testimony should be false, than that a miracle should be true. I venture to say it is a much greater strain on a man’s credulity, to believe that such evidence is false than that such a miracle, so attested, is true. And I, for my part, venture to think that the reasonable men are the men who listen to these eye-witnesses when they say, ‘We saw Him rise’; and echo back in answer the triumphant certitude, ‘Christ is risen indeed!’

There is another consideration that I might put briefly. A very valuable way of establishing facts is to point to the existence of other facts, which indispensably require the previous ones for their explanation. Let me give you an illustration of what I mean. I believe in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, amongst other reasons, because I do not understand how it was possible for the Church to exist for a week after the Crucifixion, unless Jesus Christ rose again. Why was it that they did not all scatter? Why was it that the spirit of despondency and the tendency to separation, which were beginning to creep over them when they were saying: ‘Ah! it is all up! We trusted that this had been He,’ did not go on to their natural issue? How came it that these people, with their Master taken away from the midst of them, and the bond of union between them removed, and all their hopes crushed did not say: ‘We have made a mistake, let us go back to Gennesareth and take to our fishing again, and try and forget our bright illusions’ ? That is what John the Baptist’s followers did when he died. Why did not Christ’s do the same? Because Christ rose again and re-knit them together. When the Shepherd was smitten, the flock would have been scattered, and never drawn together any more, unless there had been just such a thing as the Resurrection asserts there was, to reunite the dispersed and to encourage the depressed. And so I say, Christianity with a dead Christ, and a Church gathered round a grave from which the stone has not been rolled away, is more unbelievable than the miracle, for it is an absurdity.

Then there is another thing that I would say in a word. Let me put an illustration to explain what I mean. Suppose, after the execution of King Charles I., in some corner of the country a Pretender had sprung up and said, ‘I am the King!’ the way to end that would have been for the Puritan leaders to have taken people to St. George’s Chapel, and said, ‘Look! there is the coffin, there is the body, is that the king, or is it not?’ Jesus Christ was said to have risen again, within a week of the time of His death. The rulers of the nation had the grave, the watch, the stone, the seal. They could have put an end to the pestilent nonsense in two minutes, if it had been nonsense, by the simple process of saying, ‘Go and look at the tomb, and you will see Him there.’ But this question has never been answered, and never will be-What became of that sacred corpse if Jesus Christ did not rise again from the dead? The clumsy lie that the rulers told, that the disciples had stolen away the body, was only their acknowledgment that the grave was empty. If the grave were empty, either His servants were impostors, which we have seen it is incredible that they were, or the Christ was risen again.

And so, dear brethren, for many other reasons besides this handful that I have ventured to gather and put before you, and in spite of the prejudices of modern theories, I lift up here once more, with unfaltering certitude, the glad message which I beseech you to accept: ‘Christ is risen, the first fruits of them that slept.’

II. So much, then, for the first point in this passage. A word or two about the second-the triumph in the certitude of that Resurrection.

As I remarked at a previous point of this discourse, the Apostle has been speaking about the consequences which would follow from the fact that Christ was not raised. If we take all these consequences and reverse them, we get the glad issues of His Resurrection, and understand why it was that this great burst of triumph comes from the Apostle’s lips. And though I must necessarily treat this part of my subject very inadequately, let me try to gather together the various points on which, as I think, our Easter gladness ought to be built.

First, then, I say, the risen Christ gives us a complete Gospel. A dead Christ annihilates the Gospel. ‘If Christ be not risen,’ says the Apostle, ‘our preaching,’ by which he means not the act but the substance of his preaching, ‘is vain.’ Or, as the word might be more accurately rendered, ‘empty.’ There is nothing in it; no contents. It is a blown bladder; nothing in it but wind.

What was Paul’s ‘preaching’ ? It all turned upon these points-that Jesus Christ was the Son of God; that He was Incarnate in the flesh for us men; that He died on the Cross for our offences; that He was raised again, and had ascended into Heaven, ruling the world and breathing His presence into believing hearts; and that He would come again to be our Judge. These were the elements of what Paul called ‘his Gospel.’ He faces the supposition of a dead Christ, and he says, ‘It is all gone! It is all vanished into thin air. I have nothing to preach if I have not a Cross to preach which is man’s deliverance from sin, because on it the Son of God hath died, and I only know that Jesus Christ’s sacrifice is accepted and sufficient, because I have it attested to me in His rising again from the dead.’

Dear brethren, on the fact of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is suspended everything which makes the Gospel a gospel. Strike that out, and what have you left? Some beautiful bits of moral teaching, a lovely life, marred by tremendous mistakes about Himself and His own importance and His relation to men and to God; but you have got nothing left that is worth calling a gospel. You have the cross rising there, gaunt, black, solitary; but, unless on the other side of the river you have the Resurrection, no bridge will ever be thrown across the black gulf, and the Cross remains ‘dead, being alone.’ You must have a Resurrection to explain the Cross, and then the Life and the Death tower up into the manifestation of God in the flesh and the propitiation for our sins. Without it we have nothing to preach which is worth calling a gospel.

Again, a living Christ gives faith something to lay hold of. The Apostle here in the context twice says, according to the Authorised Version, that a dead Christ makes our faith ‘vain.’ But he really uses two different words, the former of which is applied to ‘preaching,’ and means literally ‘empty,’ while the latter means ‘of none effect’ or ‘powerless.’ So there are two ideas suggested here which I can only touch with the lightest hand.

The risen Christ puts some contents, so to speak, into my faith; He gives me something for it to lay hold of.

Who can trust a dead Christ, or who can trust a human Christ? That would be as much a blasphemy as trusting any other man. It is only when we recognise Him as declared to be the Son of God, and that by the Resurrection from the dead, that our faith has anything round which it can twine, and to which it can cleave. That living Saviour will stretch out His hand to us if we look to Him, and if I put my poor, trembling little hand up towards Him, He will bend to me and clasp it. You cannot exercise faith unless you have a risen Saviour, and unless you exercise faith in Him your lives are marred and sad.

Again, if Christ be dead, our faith, if it could exist, would be as devoid of effect as it would be empty of substance. For such a faith would be like an infant seeking nourishment at a dead mother’s breast, or men trying to kindle their torches at an extinguished lamp. And chiefly would it fail to bring the first blessing which the believing soul receives through and from a risen Christ, namely, deliverance from sin. If He whom we believed to be our sacrifice by His death and our sanctification by His life has not risen, then, as we have seen, all which makes His death other than a martyr’s vanishes, and with it vanish forgiveness and purifying. Only when we recognise that in His Cross explained by His Resurrection, we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins, and by the communication of the risen life from the risen Lord possess that new nature which sets us free from the dominion of our evil, is faith operative in setting us free from our sins.

So, dear friends, the risen Christ gives us something for faith to lay hold of, and will make it the hand by which we grasp His strong hand, which lifts us ‘out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and sets our feet upon a rock.’ But if He lie dead in the grave your faith is vain, because it grasps nothing but a shadow; and it is vain as being purposeless; you are yet in your sins.

The last thought is that the risen Christ gives us the certitude of our Resurrection. I do not for a moment mean to say that, apart from the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the thought, be it a wish or a dread, of immortality, has not been found in men, but there is all the difference in the world between forebodings, aspirations, wishes it were so, fears that it might be so, and the calm certitude that it is so. Many men talked about a western continent, but Columbus went there and came back again, and that ended doubt. Many men before, and apart from Jesus, have cherished thoughts of an immortal life beyond the grave, but He has been there and returned. And that, and, as I believe, that only puts the doctrine of immortality upon an irrefragable foundation; and we can say, ‘Now, I know that there is that land beyond.’ They tell us that death ends everything. Modern materialism, in all its forms, asserts that it is the extinction of the personality. Jesus Christ died, and went through it, and came out of it the same, and I will trust Him. Brethren, the set of opinion amongst the educated and cultured classes in England, and all over Europe, at this moment, proves to anybody who has eyes to see, that for this generation, rejection of immortality will follow certainly on the rejection of Jesus Christ. And for England to-day, as for Greece when Paul sent his letter to Corinth, the one light of certitude in the great darkness is the fact that Jesus Christ hath died, and is risen again.

If you will let Him, He will make you partakers of His own immortal life. ‘The first fruits of them that slept’ is the pledge and the prophecy of all the waving abundance of golden grain that shall be gathered into the great husbandman’s barns. The Apostle goes on to represent the resurrection of ‘them that are Christ’s’ as a consequence of their union to Jesus. He has conquered for us all. He has entered the prison-house and come forth bearing its iron gates on His shoulders, and henceforth it is not possible that we should be holden of it. There are two resurrections-one, that of Christ’s servants, one that of others. They are not the same in principle-and, alas, they are awfully different in issue. ‘Some shall wake to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.’

Let me beseech you to make Jesus Christ the life of your dead souls, by humble, penitent trust in Him. And then, in due time, He will be the life of your transformed bodies, changing these into the likeness of the body of His glory, ‘according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself.’

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

15:20 In the Old Testament, the first crop was dedicated to God (see Exod 23:19). Christ’s resurrection is the first of a great harvest of God’s people who will be resurrected (see Col 1:18).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

1Co 15:20. Νυνί, now) Paul declares, that his preaching is not in vain, that their faith is not worthless, that their sins are taken away, that the dead in Christ are not annihilated, that the hope of Christians does not terminate with this life.—ἀπαρχὴ, the first fruit) viz. οὗσα or ὤν being. The mention of the first fruits admirably agrees with the time of the passover, at which, as we have observed above, this epistle was written; nay more, with the very day of Christ’s resurrection, which was likewise the day after the Sabbath, Lev 23:10-11.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co_15:20. No, we Christians are not in this unhappy condition; Christ is risen, καὶ τὴν τοῦ ἡμετέρου σωτῆρος ἀνάστασιν ἐχέγγυον (guarantee) τῆς ἡμετέρας ἔχομεν ἀναστάσεως, Theodoret. Several interpreters (Flatt, comp. Calvin on 1Co_15:29) have wrongly regarded 1Co_15:20-28 as an episode. See on 1Co_15:29.

νυνὶ δέ] jam vero, but now, as the case really stands. Comp. 1Co_13:13, 1Co_14:6, al.

ἀπαρχὴ τῶν κεκοιμ.] as first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep, predicative more precise definition to Χριστός, inasmuch as He is risen from the dead. Comp. as regards ἀπαρχή used of persons, 1Co_16:15; Rom_16:5; Jam_1:18; Plutarch, Thes. 16. The meaning is: Christ is risen, so that thereby He has made the holy beginning of the general resurrection of those who have fallen asleep (comp. 1Co_15:23; Col_1:18; Rev_1:5; Clement, Cor. 1Co_1:24). Whether in connection with ἀπαρχή Paul was thinking precisely of a definite offering of first-fruits as the concrete foil to his conception (comp. Rom_11:16), in particular of the sheaves of the Paschal feast, Lev_23:10 (Bengel, Osiander, and others), must, since he indicates nothing more minutely, remain undecided. The genitive is partitive. See on Rom_8:23.

That by τῶν κεκοιμ. we are to understand believers, is to be inferred both from the word itself, which in the New Testament is always used only of the death of the saints, and also from the fellowship with Christ denoted by ἀπαρχή. And in truth what is conceived of is the totality of departed believers, including, therefore, those too who shall still fall asleep up to the Parousia, and then belong also to the κεκοιμήμενοι (the sleeping); see 1Co_15:23. This does not exclude the fact that Christ is the raiser of the dead also for the unbelieving; He is not, however, their ἀπαρχή; but see on 1Co_15:22. That those, moreover, who were raised before Christ and by Christ Himself (as Lazarus), also those raised by apostles, do not make the ἀπαρχὴ τῶν κεκοιμ. untrue, is clear from the consideration that no one previously was raised to immortal life (to ἀφθαρσία); while Enoch and Elias (Gen_5:24; 2Ki_2:11) did not die at all. Christ thus remains πρῶτος ἐξ ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν, Act_26:23. But the ἀπαρχή allows us to look from the dawn of the eschatological order of salvation, as having taken place already, to the certainty of its future completion. Luthardt says well: The risen Christ is the beginning of the history of the end.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co 15:20-28 . § 52. THE FIRSTFRUIT OF THE RESURRECTION AND THE HARVEST. Paul has proved the actuality of Christ’s personal resurrection by the abundant and truthful testimony to the fact (1Co 15:5-15 ), and by the experimental reality of its effects (1Co 15:17 ). In 1Co 15:20 a he therefore amrms it unconditionally, having overthrown the contrary assertion that “there is no resurrection of the dead.” But Christ never stands alone; He forms “a body” with “many members” (1Co 12:12 ); He is “firstborn among many brothers” (Rom 8:29 , Col 1:18 , Joh 15:5 , etc.). His rising shows that bodily resurrection is possible; nay, it is inevitable for those who are in Him ( 1Co 15:18 ; 1Co 15:20 b , 1Co 15:23 ). In truth, the universal redemption of Christ’s people from the grave is indispensable for the realisation of human destiny and for the assured triumph of God’s kingdom (1Co 15:24-28 ). The Ap. thus advances from the experimental (§ 51) to the theological proof of his theorem, much as in Rom 5:1-21 .

1Co 15:20 . Νυνὶ δέ ( cf. 1Co 12:18 ) marks the logical point P. has reached by the reductio ad impossibile of the negative proposition attacked in 1Co 15:12 . Christ has been raised; therefore there is a resurrection of the dead (1Co 15:12-18 ): “now” the ground is cleared and the foundation laid for the declaration that the Christian dead shall rise in Him “Christ has been raised from the dead, a firstfruit of them that have fallen asleep ”; He has risen in this character and purpose, “not to remain alone in his estate of glory”(Gd [2335] ). ἀπαρχὴ τῶν κεκοιμημένων (pf. of abiding state: cf. Joh 11:11 f., Mat 27:52 ) = ἀρχή , πρωτότοκος ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν and πρωτότοκος τῶν νεκρῶν (Col 1:18 , Rev 1:5 ). Cm [2336] and Bg [2337] are surely right in seeing here an allusion to the first harvest-sheaf ( ἀπαρχὴν του θερισμοῦ ὑμῶν , Lev 23:10 : cf. in this connexion Mat 13:39 ff. with Joh 5:28 f. and Rev 14:14 ff.) of the Passover, which was presented in the Sanctuary on the 16th Nisan, probably the day of the resurrection of Jesus; this allusion is in the Easter strain of 1Co 5:6 ff. (see notes). The first ripe sheaf is an earnest and sample of the harvest, consecrated to God and laid up With Him ( cf. Rom 6:10 f.) in anticipation of the rest. The Resurrection has begun.

[2335] F. Godet’s Commentaire sur la prem. Ép. aux Corinthiens (Eng. Trans.).

[2336] John Chrysostom’s Homiliœ († 407).

[2337] Bengel’s Gnomon Novi Testamenti.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co_15:20

But now is Christ risen from the dead, (and) become the first-fruits of them that slept.

But now, νυνὶ δέ, i.e. as the matter actually stands. All the gloomy consequences presented in the preceding verses follow from the assumption that Christ did not rise from the dead. But as in point of fact he did rise, these things have no place. Our preaching is not vain, your faith is not vain, ye are not in your sins, the dead in Christ have not perished, we are not more miserable than other men. The reverse of all this is true. Christ has not only risen, but he has risen in a representative character. His resurrection is the pledge of the resurrection of his people. He rose as the first-fruits of them that slept, and not of them only, but as the first-fruits of all who are ever to sleep in Jesus. The apostle does not mean merely that the resurrection of Christ was to precede that of his people; but as the first sheaf of the harvest presented to God as a thank-offering, was the pledge and assurance of the ingathering of the whole harvest, so the resurrection of Christ is a pledge and proof of the resurrection of his people. In Rom_8:23 and Rom_11:16, the word ἀπαρξή, first-fruits, has the same force. Comp. also Col_1:18 where Christ is called the first begotten from the dead, and Rev_1:5. Of the great harvest of glorified bodies which our earth is to yield Christ is the first-fruits. As he rose, so all his people must; as certainly and as gloriously, Phi_3:21. The nature of this causal connection between the resurrection of Christ and that of his people, is explained in the following verses.

Charles Hodge — Commentary on Romans (1835), First Corinthians (1857), and Ephesians (1856) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

He putteth the last conclusion for the first proposition of the argument that followeth. Christ is risen again, Therefore shall we the faithful (for of them he speaketh) rise again: Then followeth the first reason of this consequent: for Christ is set forth unto us, to be considered of, not as a private man apart and by himself, but as the firstfruits: And he taketh that which was known, to all men, to wit, that the whole heap is sanctified in the firstfruits.

A conclusion of the former argument: Therefore Christ is risen again.

He alludeth to the firstfruits of corn, the offering whereof sanctified the rest of the fruits.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

now--as the case really is.

and become--omitted in the oldest manuscripts.

the first-fruits--the earnest or pledge, that the whole resurrection harvest will follow, so that our faith is not vain, nor our hope limited to this life. The time of writing this Epistle was probably about the Passover (Co1 5:7); the day after the Passover sabbath was that for offering the first-fruits (Lev 23:10-11), and the same was the day of Christ's resurrection: whence appears the appropriateness of the image.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 20. But now is Christ risen] On the contrary, Christ is raised from the dead, and is become the first fruits of them that slept. His resurrection has been demonstrated, and our resurrection necessarily follows; as sure as the first fruits are the proof that there is a harvest, so surely the resurrection of Christ is a proof of ours. The Judaizing teacher at Corinth would feel the force of this observation much sooner than we can, who are not much acquainted with Jewish customs. "Although," says Dr. Lightfoot, "the resurrection of Christ, compared with some first fruits, has very good harmony with them; yet especially it agrees with the offering of the sheaf, commonly called omer, not only as the thing itself, but also as to the circumstances of the time. For first there was the passover, and the day following was a Sabbatic day, and on the day following that the first fruits were offered. So Christ, our passover, was crucified: the day following his crucifixion was the Sabbath, and the day following that, He, the first fruits of them that slept, rose again. All who died before Christ, and were raised again to life, died afterwards; but Christ is the first fruits of all who shall be raised from the dead to die no more."

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(20) But now . . .—From the hopeless and ghastly conclusion in which the hypothetical propositions of the previous verse would logically land us, the Apostle turns, with the consciousness of truth, to the hopeful faith to which a belief in the resurrection leads. It cannot be so. Now is Christ risen from the dead. And that is no isolated fact. As the firstfruits were typical of the whole harvest (Lev_23:10-11), so is Christ. He rose, not to the exclusion but to the inclusion of all Humanity. If St. Paul wrote this Epistle about the time of Passover (see Introduction, and 1Co_5:6; 1Co_16:8), the fact that the Paschal Sabbath was immediately followed by the day of offering of firstfruits may have suggested this thought.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For since by man came death,.... The first man, by sin, was the cause of death; of its coming into the world, and upon all men, by which corporeal death is here meant; though the first man also by sin brought a moral death, or a death in sin on all his posterity; and rendered them liable to an eternal death, which is the just wages of sin; but since the apostle is treating of the resurrection of the body, a bodily death seems only intended:

by man came also the resurrection of the dead; so God, in his great goodness and infinite wisdom has thought fit, and he has so ordered it, that it should be, that as the first man was the cause of, and brought death into the world, the second man should be the cause of the resurrection of life. Christ is the meritorious and procuring cause of the resurrection of his people; he by dying has abolished death; and by rising from the dead has opened the graves of the saints, and procured their resurrection for them, obtained for them a right unto it, and made way for it: and he is the pattern and exemplar, according to which they will be raised; their vile bodies will be fashioned, and made like to his glorious body; and whereas both in life and in death they bear the image of the first and earthly man, in the resurrection they will bear the image of the second and heavenly one: he also will be the efficient cause of the resurrection; all the dead will be raised by his power, and at the hearing of his voice; though the saints only will be raised by him, in virtue of their union to him, and interest in him, being members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

20 But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.

Ver. 20. The firstfruits, &c.] As in the firstfruits offered to God, the Jews were assured of God’s blessing on the whole harvest; so by the resurrection of Christ, our resurrection is insured.

Christ is risen] This was wont to be the form of salutation among Christians of old, Christus resurrexit, Christ is risen from the dead.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The apostle returneth to his former argument, to discourse concerning the resurrection of Christ, who is by him called the

first-fruits of them that slept; not of all that shall rise, (as some think), for it will be hard to prove, that any benefit of Christ’s death or resurrection, after this life, belongs to wicked men: nor is it usual for the penmen of holy writ to express the death of unbelievers under the gentle notion of a sleep; and, Col 1:18, Christ is called the first-born from the dead, as he is the Head of the church. It is rather spoken with reference to believers; the resurrection of wicked men, flowing rather from God’s providence, in order to the manifestation of his justice in the last judgment, than from the mediation of Christ. But here a question ariseth: How Christ is said to be the first-fruits of those that sleep, whenas we read of divers in Scripture that were raised from the dead before Christ was so raised?

Answer.

1. Christ was the first that rose again by his own power and virtue.

2. He was the first who rose again, and died no more.

3. He was the first in respect of dignity.

4. He was the first-fruits of them that sleep, by his resurrection making a way for the resurrection of others, even of all such as were members of him; as the offering of the first-fruits, under the law, sanctified the whole crop.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

3. Reaffirmation of Christ’s resurrection, and statement of the place of the resurrection in the divine system, 20-28.

This sublime passage, preceded by 2Th_1:10, and followed by 1Co_15:51-57 of this chapter, forms a part of what we may call the Apocalypse of St. Paul. It differs from that of St. John as being briefer and more literal; and, because it is more literal, John is to be explained by Paul rather than Paul by John.

20. But now—After all these denials.

Is Christ risen—Reaffirmed with sublime emphasis.

Firstfruits—According to the Mosaic ritual the first product of the year from field, vineyard, etc., was sacred, and offered unto God. So Christ, as the first raised from the dead to die no more, was the firstfruits of the universal resurrection. Others, like Lazarus and the son of the widow of Nain, were raised from death; and that raising is called, in verb form, a resurrection; but they were raised in mortal body to die again. Their raising was no part of the organic universal resurrection. Christ was the first who went from the tomb to heaven.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vers. 20-28. Results to be deduced from the fact of Christ"s resurrection.

But now. Since the supposition that Christ has not risen involves so many suppositions which you will rightly reject as absurd, we may assume the eternal fact that Christ has been raised. And become the firstfruits of them that slept. As the wave sheaf, (Lev_23:10) which was the firstfruits of the harvest, is also a pledge of the harvest, so Christ is the firstfruits and pledge of the resurrection of all mankind.

Vers. 20-23.

The resurrection of Christ.

now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ"s at his coming." These verses lead us to contemplate the resurrection of Christ as an established fact, as a significant fact, and as an influential fact.

I AN ESTABLISHED FACT. Paul asserts this fact with a spirit of triumphant certitude. This her is established:

1. On the testimony of the most competent witnesses. A competent witness is one who has a thorough knowledge of the facts whereof he affirms, and such an invincible love for truth as would render it utterly impossible for him to misrepresent them. The apostles were witnesses of this type.

2. On the very existence of Christendom. What gave birth to that domain amongst the peoples of the race called Christendom? The gospel; and the truth of the gospel rests on the resurrection of Christ.

3. On the consciousness of genuine disciples. Such consciousness attests that they are "not in their sins," that they have got more or less free from their thraldom and dominion, and they feel that this deliverance came from the gospel.

II A SIGNIFICANT FACT. "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept." The reference here is to the "firstfruits" of the harvest which were offered by the priests unto the Lord. (Lev_23:12-19) Those firstfruits were both an earnest and a sample of the full harvest at hand. Hence Christ"s resurrection was regarded:

1. As a pledge of the resurrection of those who were dead. As he rose so will all rise.

2. As a pattern of the resurrection of those who were dead. The sheaf waved before the Lord was a specimen or sample of what remained in the field to be gathered in. "Our vile bodies shall be fashioned and made like unto his glorious body.

III AN INFLUENTIAL FACT. "For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Between the influence of Adam and that of Christ on the race, there is a resemblance and a contrast.

1. A resemblance. The resemblance is in its extensibility. Though Adam"s influence upon the race may be more extensive at present than that of Christ, it is not more extensible. It has in it the power of extending over the whole race down through all times, and it will so do.

2. A contrast. The influence of the one is destructive; the influence of the other, quickening. "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." If by death here bodily death is meant, then the idea is that Christ will quicken to life all that have died. But what does it mean to be in Adam and in Christ? There is, at any rate, one sense which we can understand in which we are in them; that is, in the sense of character. Without figure all men live in the characters of others children live in the character of their parents, pupils in their masters, the present generation in the preceding. The characters of the men of past ages constitute the moral atmosphere of existing men. In Adam"s character, the character of selfishness, carnality, unbelief, all unregenerate men live today; his principles pulsate in all hearts. In the character of Christ, in his self sacrificing love, spotless purity, and holy reverence, all the godly live today. Now, those who live in the character of Adam must die, not merely in the sense of the dissolution of the soul from the body, but in the more awful sense of the dissolution of the soul from God; whereas those who live in the character of Christ live by a vital connection with the eternal Fountain of all life. The influence of Adam"s character on the race is destructive; that of Christ"s is quickening and restorative. "All shall be made alive." Shall there be a universal restoration?

The firstfruits of life.

There is a perceptible change in the tone of the apostle"s writing just at this point. He has been reasoning upon the supposition, adopted by some even among the Corinthians, that the dead rise not, and showing that, if such is the case, the resurrection of Christ is a fable, and the faith of Christians vain and their hopes baseless. This course he has taken to show to his readers the awful consequences of the false doctrine introduced among them. But he suddenly breaks off; and commences in another strain. After all, the supposition discussed is incredible. For as a matter of fact, of history, of certainty, Christ has risen from the dead, and in doing so he has become the Firstfruits of them that slept.

I CHRIST"S RESURRECTION PRECEDES THAT OF HIS PEOPLE. The doctrine of the future life, obscure in the earlier periods of revelation, was made known with growing clearness as ages passed on. But it was Christ who "brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." Not only by his explicit teaching, but by his own victory over the grave, did our Saviour bring to mankind an assurance of eternal life. And, in point of time, he led the way for his faithful followers and friends.

II CHRIST"S RESURRECTION IS EVIDENCE OF THE DIVINE AND QUICKENING POWER WHICH SHALL RAISE HIS PEOPLE AFTER HIM. The presence of a Divine power of life was manifest when, on the third day, the Lord of glory rose victorious from the tomb. If before it was doubtful whether in the universe there resided such a life-giving energy, such doubt was now dispelled. The same Divine might which raised the Leader can raise the followers too. The sun which has ripened the sheaf which is presented as the firstfruits of the harvest has warmth and vital geniality to mature the crop that clothes the vastest plain; and the Spirit of life which quickened the crucified One will raise up us also to be glorified with him.

III CHRIST"S RESURRECTION IS UNTO THE SAME BLESSEDNESS OF LIFE WHICH IS APPOINTED FOR HIS PEOPLE. Our Lord did not rise to renew the humiliation and the sufferings of this earthly existence; he rose a Conqueror to live and reign in glory. And the purpose of infinite grace is that, where the Master is, there also shall his disciples and servants be. We may share his weakness and his woe, but we shall share also his might and his blessedness; we may bear his cross, but we shall also wear his crown.

IV CHRIST"S RESURRECTION IS THE EARNEST OF HIS PEOPLE"S IMMORTAL LIFE, "Death hath no more dominion over him." And those for whom he both died and rose again live in him and live forever. "There shall we ever be with the Lord." "They go no more out." It is to the glory of the Lord and Husbandman when the firstfruits are brought into the temple and offered upon the altar. But the glory of that day shall be yet greater when the harvest shall be completed, and when the garner of God shall be filled with the rich spiritual produce of the earth. T.

Vers. 20-28.

The resurrection.

I ITS CAUSE. Christ the second Adam. Through the first Adam, death; through the second Adam, the resurrection from the dead. We see how much depends upon Christ, how much upon his resurrection. Through him we expect to rise; but if he did not rise, how can we rise through him? "But now is Christ risen," and so our prospect is unclouded. He has passed through the grave to make a way for us. He found the bonds of death strong; we shall find them broken. He lives, and through him we shall live also. He has conquered the grave whilst in our nature, and now holds it as conquered for us to pass through.

II ITS UNIVERSALITY. "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Adam was the first head and representative of the human race; he fell, and one of the consequences of his fall was the grave for all men. Christ was the second Head and Representative, and through him comes to all the race deliverance from the grave. In neither has the personal, responsible act of men, apart from their representative heads, a place. The disadvantage through Adam and the advantage through Christ come to all men, apart from their choice or desert. But this only applies to physical death and the recovery from that death. Personal sin and personal repentance and faith have issues unaffected by the general headship of Adam and Christ. The just and the unjust die through Adam; the just and the unjust rise through Christ: but they do not rise to the same future. What follows upon personal transgression and impenitence will be borne in the body delivered from death; and, similarly, that which follows upon personal repentance and belief in Christ.

III ITS ORDER.

1. Christ. First, as the cause. He is "the Firstfruits the earliest and the most costly and the most precious of the harvest. And also the pledge of the general harvest. He is the Firstfruits presented and accepted, and we who are in him shall be accepted also, for we shall be "like him.

2. The saved. "They that are Christ"s." This is after the resurrection of Christ; how long after we are not told. But it will be "at his coming." In his first advent we have redemption; in his second advent, resurrection. "The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first". (1Th_4:16)

3. The rest of mankind. "Then cometh the end the end of the resurrection the rising of those that remain, as well as the end of the dispensation. The lost have the place of least honour. They were "first" in many things in life, but now they are "last.

IV ITS MODE.

1. By the sound of a trumpet. (Ver. 52; see Mat_24:31) The dead shall hear, for the summons shall be of God. Those who stopped their ears on earth will not then be able. "The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation". (Joh_5:28, Joh_5:29)

2. Sudden. This seems to be suggested by ver. 52. The change of the living will be sudden; the change of the dead also. Men generally die slowly; they will be raised from the dead instantly. The dead have been long in gathering how many centuries have passed, how many more, perhaps, to come! but probably in "the twinkling of an eye" will they be delivered fromdeath. This strikingly illustrates Christ"s power over the grave how completely he has conquered, and holds in subjection, death.

V ITS VICTORY. It will be a triumph. It will show forth the victorious might of Christ. He triumphed in his own resurrection; that triumph will be consummated in the completion of the resurrection, when all, of every race and colour, are raised by his power.

VI ITS CONCOMITANTS. The following seem here to be closely connected with the final resurrection:

1. The universal victory of Christ. He shall conquer, and conquer all that now oppose him. "All rule, all authority and power," must fall before him. All enemies shall presently be under his feet. The powers of evil now seem great and strong, the kingdom of righteousness comparatively small and feeble; but at that day Christ will be King, and to him "every knee shall bow.

2. The destruction of death. The destroyer shall be destroyed. The shock of the great resurrection will be too much for his kingdom. The death bonds long since broken by Christ shall then be burnt. Man"s mortality shall cease forever. Death shall die and know no resurrection.

3. The delivering up of the kingdom by Christ to the Father. Christ, as Mediator and Administrator of the kingdom of God, will then have completed his special work, and the direct rule of God as God will be reinaugurated. Christ will still remain as God Man, the Head of his own people, and as one in the Godhead will participate in the Divine reign.

4. The subjection of the Son to the Father. As he was before his mediatorial work began. One with the Father ("I and my Father are one") in nature, but voluntarily subordinate as a son to a father. The Son as such will not be conspicuous in rule as now, but God will be "all in all." The united Deity will reign as one, and in the Deity the Son is subordinate in position to the Father. H.

Christ the Firstfruits.

In the previous verses the apostle has fully illustrated this point, that the consequences of rejecting the truth of the resurrection are altogether more serious than any that can conceivably attend belief. If Christ be not risen, then our faith is vain, preaching is vain, even the apostles are false witnesses, the dead in Christ have perished, and we are yet in the misery and the peril of our sins. Our text is the revulsion from such an awful picture. It cannot be so. It must be true that "Christ is risen from the dead, and become the Firstfruits of them that slept." In speaking here of firstfruits, the apostle takes the general, rather than the special Old Testament, idea of them, though the fact of his writing at the time of the Passover no doubt suggested the figure.

I FIRSTFRUITS SHOW THE POSSIBILITY OF HARVEST. So Christ, as a human being, showed the possibility of resurrection. Imagine that the fields had never waved with harvest, and that in this springtime the seeds were first sown. How men would watch for the result! Some stalks may be ripened early in the sheltered warm corner. It is enough to rest our hearts: we know there can be golden grain waving over all the field. So the grave field is sown with the living seeds; and Christ is a seed sown among them. Lo! long before the others, one single blade appears. And the one says, "Wait patiently awhile." Man can rise. One day the grave fields of earth will be rich with the golden harvests of the resurrection life. This firstfruit comes to tell us that it can be so.

II FIRSTFRUITS ASSURE OF THE CERTAINTY OF HARVEST. So Christ, as the representative human Being, assures the certainty of resurrection. Take a handful of seeds say a handful of seemingly dead seeds from a mummy case. Try if they have life by placing one of them in the soil. If one lives, all will live. It is a firstfruit which pledges a harvest. So it is with Christ. The relation in which he stands to men makes him the test of their resurrection. "If a man die, shall he live again?" Who shall answer that question? Is there a living and undying germ in that body which we bury out of our sight? Try. Take one and let it be representative. Take the Man Christ Jesus. Describe his burial, and the glory of the Easier morning when he rose. But on what grounds do we affirm that what is true of one will be true of all the others? It may be urged that one instance often suffices to establish a law. But, further, God"s Word declares that Christ occupied a special place in relation to man. He was constituted his Representative. The human race has two heads, Adam and Christ. One covers the race for death, and one for life the eternal life. Did all die in Adam? Then, verily, all shall be made alive in Christ. And certainty is added to bare possibility, and death has lost its great terror.

III FIRSTFRUITS UNFOLD THE CHARACTER OF THE HARVEST. So Christ, as the model Christian, declares the character of the resurrection. Christ bore relation to the whole world; he is representative Man. But he bore a special relation to his own people; he is the representative Christian, Therefore we have two things in his resurrection:

(1) the bare fact;

(2) the glorious character of the fact.

Firstfruits show the character of coming harvest. Illustrate by our thoughts and fears as we see the firstfruits thin, blighted, speckled; or standing well, clean, strong, and full. What hope, then, is there in Christ"s resurrection, regarding him as the First fruits from the dead? What will our coming life be if it is like his during the forty days he tarried with us?

1. Christ"s forty days showed that the new life will be beyond the limiting conditions of humanity. It will be to our old life as flower to seed.

2. Christ"s forty days showed the new life will have the old recognitions and the old sympathies. Jesus was in feeling the same.

3. Christ"s forty days showed the new life to be a deathless and eternal life. This is the truth of the ascension. Once out of the death-grasp, death is done away. Impress

(1) the importance of all moral seed sowings, as directly bearing on the resurrection life;

(2) the duty of fixing firmly our oneness to Christ, our Representative and Head;

(3) the joy of cherishing a good hope of the great awaking. R.T.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

But now - St. Paul declares that Christians "have hope," not "in this life only." His proof of the resurrection lies in a narrow compass, ver. 12-19. Almost all the rest of the chapter is taken up in illustrating, vindicating, and applying it. The proof is short, but solid and convincing, that which arose from Christ's resurrection. Now this not only proved a resurrection possible, but, as it proved him to be a divine teacher, proved the certainty of a general resurrection, which he so expressly taught. The first fruit of them that slept - The earnest, pledge, and insurance of their resurrection who slept in him: even of all the righteous. It is of the resurrection of these, and these only, that the apostle speaks throughout the chapter.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

A victorious line of argument:

v. 20. But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the First-fruits of them that slept.

v. 21. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.

v. 22. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

v. 23. But every man in his own order: Christ the First-fruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His coming.

v. 24. Then cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.

v. 25. For He must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet.

v. 26. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

v. 27. For He hath put all things under His feet. But when He saith, All things are put under Him, it is manifest that He is excepted which did put all things under Him.

v. 28. And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.

In contrast with the deplorable results which would follow from the supposition as held by the ignorant deniers of the resurrection of the body, Paul now triumphantly sets before his readers the fact of the resurrection and its glorious consequences. If Christ had not risen, all the disastrous events must have followed as a matter of course. But as matters now stand, if we look at the situation as it really exists: Christ has been raised from the dead as a First-fruit of them that sleep. The fact of His resurrection is beyond doubt and dispute, is, in fact, not called into question even by those Corinthian Christians that hold a wrong view with regard to this doctrine. And thereby Christ is set forth before us as the First-fruits, the first offering, of the new harvest, Lev 23:10, a sign and token that the entire harvest is sanctified to the Lord. He was the first dead person to lay aside all mortality and to assume a spiritual body which would not be subject to death in all eternity. And so they that fell asleep in Christ in the hope of eternal life will also arise from the dead; the first harvest-sheaf will be followed by all the other sheaves; the bodies of all the believers will lay aside mortality; consecrated to God as they are, they will become partakers of that same spirituality, Col 1:18; Rev 1:5.

The apostle explains how this result has been brought about: For since through a man is death, also through a man is resurrection of the dead. A man, Adam, was the means, the instrument, by which death entered into the world. He ate of the forbidden fruit and thus caused the curse of God to take effect; he subjected mankind to physical death. On the other hand, through man also is the resurrection of the dead; Jesus, true man, by His resurrection has broken the ban of death, has become the first one of a new mankind over which death has no more power, Rom 6:9. For just as in the Adam, in that one man representing the entire world of men, all men die, so also in the Christ, in the promised Messiah, all will be made alive. As death in all cases is grounded in Adam, so life in all cases is grounded in Christ. As in Adam all die that pertain to Adam, that are sinful human beings, so in Christ all will be made alive that are Christ’s by faith in Him.

The nature of the resurrection will be the same, but there will be a distinction of order or rank: But each in his own rank, in his proper order—Christ the First-fruits, then those that belong to Christ, at His coming. This statement is intended to remove an objection which men might make by pointing to the fact that the believers in Christ are lying in their graves by the side of those that were subject to death on account of the curse which came upon the world in Adam. Paul simply says that the Lord is observing a due order according to His plan. Christ, as the First-fruits, has entered into the fullness of life, has in His human nature assumed immortality, an incorruptible body. And those that belong to Christ by faith will enter into that same glorious state when He returns on the last great day.

When Christ thus comes, then is the end; His return for the final judgment means the conclusion of the world’s history, when He delivers up the kingdom to His God and Father, when He has put down and abolished every rule and every authority and every power. Christ is now the King in the Kingdom of Power and in the Kingdom of Grace. And He is performing the duties of this office continually; He is adding further souls to His Kingdom of Grace, He is making intercession for those that have been admitted under His rule by faith. This work of mercy continues to the last day, when the history of this present world will come to an end, when the last elect will be added to the number fixed by the Lord. By that time also He will abolish all the forces of evil that oppose His work of grace, no matter how firmly fixed their rule, no matter how extensive their authority, no matter how great their power seems to be at the present time. And then Christ will lay at His Father’s feet the kingdom; that will be the end of the Kingdom of Grace, since the Church Militant on that day will be changed to the Church Triumphant, and the Kingdom of Glory will have its beginning. This is no ceasing of Christ’s rule, but the inauguration of God’s eternal kingdom; as the victorious Prince of Life He lays the spoils, the power and reign of all His enemies, at the feet of the Father, and then proceeds with the Father, in perfect unity of essence, to reign to all eternity. So far as the present world, the present period of time, is concerned, Christ must needs reign until He has placed all His enemies underneath His feet, Psa 110:1. Satan, the arch-enemy of Christ, and all the powers allied with him in opposition to God, must be brought to the most perfect subjection, to the deepest humiliation. The last enemy that shall be rendered absolutely powerless, whose rule shall be taken from him, is death: death is the last enemy to meet his doom. When the resurrection is complete on the last day, the power of death will be forever annulled, there will no longer be such a thing as dying or as being dead; Satan’s last bulwark will be destroyed after he has given up his arms. It is a shout of victory which the apostle here utters as he reaches the climax of this passage.

The unlimited dominion which will belong to Christ by the removal of all His enemies is finally pictured: For "all things He put underneath His feet. " But when He says, "All things are subjected,"—obviously with the exception of Him that put all things in subjection to Him,—when all things will have been made subject to Him, then also the Son Himself will subject Himself to Him (the Father) that has subjected all things to Him (the Son), that God may be all in all. The apostle here applies the words of Psa 8:6 to Jesus, the Man above all men. See Eph 1:22. God gave to Christ, according to His human nature, power and dominion over all things, subjected everything to His will. So absolute and all-encompassing is this "all" that only the Father Himself is excepted, since His is the unlimited supremacy. And incidentally the Son will then subject Himself to the Father, not as subordinated to Him in essence, but in the free submission of love. In all the works of His office as Redeemer, He was loyal to His Father in perfect obedience, and now the Son, in His Sonship, subjects Himself to His Father, as Father, that God may be all, the one object of praise, glory, and adoration, in all, the believers giving Him the joyful reverence of their blessedness, and the unbelievers and all other creatures bowing before Him as the supreme Lord. Mark: These words in no way teach the inferiority of the Son to the Father in essence: on the contrary, the absolute unity in the distinction of persons stands out all the more clearly and conspicuously. Whatsoever glory the Son has gained is devoted to the glory and power of the Father, who, in turn, glorifies the Son. See 1Co 3:22; 1Co 11:3.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Observe here, 1. The resurrection of Christ declared: Now is Christ risen from the dead.

2. Our resurrection from his is inferred and insured: he arose as the first-fruits of them that slept. The term of first-fruits in the Levitical law, Lev 23:10. These were offered both as an acknowledgment that the whole crop was God’s, and as a pledge and assurance of their enjoying the whole crop from God, and as a mean by which the whole crop was consecrated and sanctified to their use.

As sure as the whole harvest follows the first-fruits, so shall the saints’ resurrection follow the resurrection of Christ, as an effect follows its proper cause; for Christ’s resurrection is the meritorious cause, the efficient cause, and the exemplary cause, of our resurrection; and as it is the cause, so is it the pledge, the earnest and the full assurance of ours.

Observe, 3. Christ is called the first-fruits of them that slept; that is, the first-fruits from the dead of them that slept; not as if Christ were absolutely the first that was raised from the dead, for we read of one raised by Elijah, and another by Elisha, and of Lazarus raised by Christ; but these were so raised as to die again; they were not raised to a life of immortality: but now Christ was the first that arose never to die more; the first that arose by his own power, the first that arose to give others a pledge and assurance of their rising after him, and of their rising like unto him. Christ’s resurrection is the cause, the pattern, the pledge, the assurance of the believer’s resurrection: Christ is risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

20. “Now is Christ risen from the dead, the first-fruit of them that slept.” A number of others had been raised from the dead before our Lord came forth from the tomb, but, as we have no assurance in their case that they received the glorified body, of course theirs was merely adumbratory resurrection, as they afterward died and became subjects of the final resurrection. The very fact that Christ arose from the dead is confirmatory proof that all will rise, and consequently He became the first-fruit.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of them that are asleep .

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

20–28. But now is Christ risen. This is certain. Paul had seen the risen Lord. So had many other credible witnesses. But since he is risen, the resurrection of his disciples must follow. He is the first fruits of those who have slept in death. On the morrow after the first Sabbath of the passover a sheaf of the first fruits of the barley harvest was “waved before the Lord” (Lev. 23:10–16) as a pledge of the harvest to come. So on the morning after the first Sabbath of the passover, Christ, the first fruits arose and appeared living, “the first fruits” of the great harvest of souls gathered into eternal life.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

now Christ

"as it is, Christ" or "this is the truth: Christ"

who is the firstfruits

Here "firstfruits" is a metaphor, comparing Christ to the first of the harvest, which would be followed by the rest of the harvest. Christ was the first to be raised from the dead. AT: "who is like the first part of the harvest" (See: Metaphor)

Christ, who is the firstfruits of those who died, has been raised

"Raised" here is an idiom for "caused to live again." This can be stated in active form. AT: "God has raised Christ, who is the firstfruits of those who died" (See: Active or Passive and Idiom)

death came by a man

The abstract noun "death" can be expressed with the verb "die." AT: "people die because of one man" (See: Abstract Nouns)

by a man also came the resurrection of the dead

The abstract noun "resurrection" can be expressed with the verb "raise." AT: "people are raised from the dead because of another man" (See: Abstract Nouns)

translationWords

Christ

firstfruits

raise

die

resurrection

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

20. [ἐγένετο] after κεκοιμημένων rec. with Peshito and Origen. Text אABDEFG Vetus Lat. Vulg.

20. The next eight verses point us to Adam and Christ, as types respectively of fallen and perfect humanity. As Adam’s fall was man’s fall, so Christ’s Resurrection was man’s resurrection. Christ’s triumph over sin, and therefore over death, is to be repeated in His members until sin, and ultimately death, the wages of sin (Rom 6:23), shall cease to be, and every faithful disciple of Christ shall enjoy an immediate vital union with God.

νυνὶ δέ. νυνί is not to be understood of time here, but as marking a fresh point of departure in the argument. The adversative sense must of course be given to δέ.

Χριστὸς ἐγήγερται ἐκ νεκρῶν. St Paul considers it needless to argue the point further. He appeals not so much to the reason—on points like this (see ch. 1Co 2:14) it is likely to deceive us—as to the moral instincts of every human being. Of course a man has power to stifle them, but they tell him plainly enough that love of purity and truth, desire of immortality, belief in the love and justice of God, are no vain dreams, as they would be if the ‘wise man died as the fool’ (Ecc 2:16). Accordingly, the Apostle now proceeds to unfold the laws of God’s spiritual kingdom as facts which cannot be gainsaid. He may appeal (as in 1Co 15:29-32) to his own practice and that of others as a confirmation of what he says. But from henceforth he speaks with authority. He wastes no more time in discussion.

ἀπαρχή. The firstfruits (Lev 23:10) were the first ripe corn, under the Law, solemnly offered to God, a fit type of Him Who first presented our ripened humanity before the Throne of God, an earnest of the mighty harvest hereafter to be gathered.

τῶν κεκοιμημένων. The aor. in 1Co 15:18 has reference more especially to death itself, ‘when they died they were destroyed.’ The perf. here indicates the past and present condition of the departed.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

20-28.] Reassertion of the truth that Christ is risen from the dead,—and prophetic exposition of the consequences of that great event.

20.] νυνί, ‘as matters now stand:’ see reff. [and note.]

ἀπαρχ. τ. κεκοιμ.] (as) (the) first-fruit of them that sleep (anarthrous, because categorematical). For the construction Meyer compares Eur. Or. 1098: Ἑλένην κτάνωμεν, Μενελέῳ λύπην πικράν. The sense is, ‘Christ, in rising from the dead, is but the firstling or earnest of the resurrection of the whole number of those that sleep.’ There does not appear to be any intended reference to the legal ordinance of the first-fruits (Lev 23:10, Lev 23:11): but however general the application of the analogy may be, it can hardly fail to have been suggested to the mind of a Jew by the Levitical ordinances, especially as our Lord rose on the very morrow after the Paschal Sabbath, when (l. c.) the first-fruits were offered.

τῶν κεκοιμημένων, from the logical connexion, should mean, not the dead in Christ, but all the dead; see next verse: but it is the Christian dead who are before the Apostle’s mind, when he calls our risen Lord ἀπαρχὴ τῶν κεκ.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

20-28. The sum of the arguments in vv. 13-19 is that the doctrine maintained by the τινές (v. 12) cannot be true, because it involves such monstrous consequences. And it is not true, so that the consequences are of a wholly different character, and we can rejoice abundantly. Christ has been raised, and His Resurrection carries with it that of all those who are Christ’s, for the Risen One is the first fruit of a vast harvest (6:14). Apostolic preaching is not void; their faith is neither void nor futile; they are not in their sins; those that are asleep have not perished; Christian hope is not limited to this life; and Christians are not the most pitiable of men (die bedauernswürdigsten or bejammernswerthesten unter allen Menschen).

In these verses the Apostle ceases to argue, and authoritatively declares the truth. Human logic is for the moment dropped, and the inspiration of the Prophet takes its place. Confident in the possession of knowledge which transcends experience and reason, he authoritatively declares what has been revealed to him respecting the relations between mankind and Christ, and between Christ and the Father. See Evans, pp. 354, 361; Schiele, Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 1719-1731.

20. Νυνὶ δέ. These words begin a joyous outburst in contrast to the dreary pictures which he has been drawing. The denial which produced those pictures is not true; ‘But, as it is, Christ has been raised from the dead, first of those that are asleep.’ The addition of ἐκ νεκρῶν implies a bodily resurrection, for Christ could not be thought of as among the spiritually dead. And ‘firstfruit’ implies community of nature. The first sheaf offered in the Temple on the morrow of the Passover was the same in kind as the rest of the harvest, and was a sort of consecration of the whole (Lev 23:10, Lev 23:11).* For ἀπαρχή comp. 16:15; Rom 8:23, Rom 8:11:16, Rom 8:16:5; Jas 1:18, where see Mayor; Rev 14:4, where see Swete; Clem. Rom. Cor. 24, 42. Christ is the first instalment, an earnest that many more are to follow. Comp. πρωτότοκος ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν (Col 1:18), πρ. τ.ν. (Rev 1:5).

The AV. has, ‘and become the firstfruits of them that slept.’ There is neither ‘and’ nor ‘become’ in the true text: ἐγένετο (K L, Syrr. Goth.) is a manifest correction; א A B D* F P 17, Latt. Copt. Arm., Orig. omit. Ἁπαρχή is in apposition with Χριστός, Christus resurrexit, primitiae dormientium (Vulg.).

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The first - fruits [απαρχη] . See on Jas 1:18. Omit become.

Compare Col 1:18, and see on Rev 1:5.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vv. 20-22. “But now is Christ risen from the dead, the first-fruits of them that sleep. 21. For since by a man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. 22. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

The words: But now, are, as it were, the cry of deliverance, after the nightmare through which the apostle has brought his readers, by opening up to their view the abyss into which we should be plunged by the denial of the resurrection. The now contrasts the certain reality of the fact with the perfect void resulting from its denial; this void, opened up for an instant, no longer exists, except as a vanished past.

The words ἐκ νεκρῶν, from the dead, would suffice to prove that Paul is thinking of a bodily resurrection; for spiritually Christ never was among the dead.

The verb became, added by the Byz. reading, must be rejected; the word first-fruits is not a predicate, it is a simple apposition: “He rose again as first-fruits,” and not to remain alone in His state of glory. Christ risen is to the multitude of believers who shall rise again at His Advent what a first ripe ear, gathered by the hand, is to the whole harvest. Is there in this expression a distant reminiscence of the rite in which the apostle had so often taken part as a Jew, the offering in the temple of the first sheaf of the year, as the first-fruits of the harvest? This festival took place yearly, on the morrow after the Passover, the 16th Nisan. It is difficult to doubt this recollection in the apostle’s mind, especially if it is held, according to the fourth Gospel, that Jesus was crucified on the afternoon of the 14th Nisan, and that consequently He was raised on the morning of the 16th. But this reminiscence, even if it is real, did not determine the idea and expression of first-fruits. Both offered themselves spontaneously.

The term first-fruits is justified in 1Co 15:21 (for).

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.