“Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept.”

“Let us now look at the words of our lesson, and see that they are in full accord with what we previously set forth to be the Scriptural teaching. Our text mentions the dead as asleep, and declares that Christ was the first one to experience a resurrection from death. Let us note these two points:

(1) In what sense is death a sleep?

We answer that really, actually, death is an extinction of the soul; but that God, having purposed our redemption from before the foundation of the world, purposed also, as a result of that redemption, the calling of us back to being again in his own due time, by a resurrection of the dead: as it is written,

“Thou redeem my life from destruction.” (Psa 103:4; 34:22.)

In view of this the Lord speaks of death as a sleep, and his people are similarly justified in using this term “sleep.” Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the prophets, and the kings, good and bad, are all declared to have “fallen asleep,” “slept with their fathers,” etc.

The New Testament records our Lord’s words respecting the maid whom he called back from death: he said of her, “The maid is not dead, but sleeps.” So, of Lazarus he declared, “Our friend Lazarus sleeps,” and when his disciples understood not the meaning of his words “then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.” The plain statement is death; the proper figure of death, in view of the divine purposes and promises, permits it to be called by the more comforting term, sleep, which expresses at the same time both our hope for the dead and our faith in God. The record of Stephen’s death is that “he fell on sleep;” and the apostles, in writing to the Church regarding, not only the brethren of the household of faith, but all their dear friends who go into death, speaks of them as “them that sleep in Jesus,” while of the Church he declares that they are “dead in Christ.” Only the members of the “body” can be said to be in Christ, or to have any hope of sharing with him in his resurrection. (Phil 3:10.)

But it was “the man Christ Jesus, who by the grace of God tasted death for every man,” and thus, in harmony with the divine plan, turned what would have been death for every man, into a sleep from which all will awaken at Christ’s second advent, – after he shall have established his Kingdom. Respecting this awakening, and the place from which the dead will come forth, he says, “All that are in the grave shall hear the voice of the Son of man and shall come forth.” – John 5:28.

(2) This statement that our Lord was the first fruits of them that slept is in general accord with the testimony of the Word, “that he should be the first that should rise from the dead“; and also, that he should be the “first-born [from the dead] among many brethren.” (Acts 26:23; Rom 8:29.) Our Lord, as the Head of the Church which is his body, was raised from the dead by the Father’s power, on the third day after his crucifixion; but the body, the Church, will not be raised up until the time of its completion, in the end of the Gospel age. When raised up it will, as his “brethren,” or the members of “his body,” share in “his resurrection” – his kind of a resurrection – a chief, or superior resurrection; not a resurrection in flesh and as human beings, but, as we shall see shortly, to a spirit nature, with a spirit body. Our Lord was not only the first fruits from the dead amongst the brethren, the Church, but the first to arise from the dead in every sense of the word, none having preceded him.

What, then, becomes of the theory that the dead are not dead, or that their resurrection to a higher life took place at the moment of their dying?

We answer that these theories have no foundation whatever in Scripture. They are the imaginings of those who have learned in the school of Plato science falsely so-called, and who have not on this subject, at least, been taught of God in the school of Christ. Mark the words of the Apostle Paul on this subject. He did not claim that our Lord arose from the dead the next instant after he expired on the cross, but plainly declared that he “rose from the dead on the third day.” Incidentally, too, Peter refers to the prophet David, and while speaking of him in most respectful terms, as a prophet of the Lord, he declares, “David is not ascended into the heavens.” – 1 Cor 15:4; Acts 2:34.

The Apostle balances this question of life and death in the 21^st verse, declaring that death passed upon ALL by a man’s transgression, and that the resurrection provision is for ALL, through the obedience of the man Christ Jesus, – who “poured out his soul unto death” on behalf of our race. There could have been no resurrection without this redemptive work, the substitution of our Lord’s soul for the soul of Adam. It was a man who had sinned; and only the life of a man could meet the penalty prescribed; hence, as the Apostle says, the blood [death] of bulls and of goats could never take away sin (Heb 10:4); and we might add that likewise the death of angels or archangels could never take away sin, – because of this divine arrangement of a life for a life, a man for a man. (Exod 21:23-25; Lev 24:12,17-22; Deut 19:21; Matt 5:38.) Hence, the necessity that our Lord should leave the glory of his spirit condition, which he had with the Father, should humble himself, and take a lower nature, – the human, – in order that he, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man. He gave his soul, his being, all that he had as the man Christ Jesus – he kept nothing back – the price has been paid fully and satisfactorily.

The evidence of its satisfaction to God is doubly attested, 

(a) by the fact that he raised our Lord Jesus from the dead – giving him a new life, – life on a new plane of being, far above angels, and principalities and powers. (Eph 1:20,21.)

(b) It is also attested by the giving of the holy spirit at Pentecost, after our Lord had ascended up on high and had presented the merit of his sacrifice on our behalf.

We continue once again with our next post.