1 Corinthians 15:21

1 Corinthians THE DEATH OF DEATH1 Corinthians 15:20 - 1 Corinthians 15:21 ; 1 Corinthians 15:50 - 1 Corinthians 15:58 . This passage begins with the triumphant ringing out of the great fact which changes all the darkness of an earthly life without a heavenly hope into a blaze of light. All the dreariness for humanity, and all the vanity for Christian faith and preaching, vanish, like ghosts at cock-crow, when the Resurrection of Jesus rises sun-like on the world’s night. It is a historical fact, established by the evidence proper for such,-namely, the credible testimony of eye-witnesses. They could attest His rising, but the knowledge of the worldwide significance of it comes, not from testimony, but from revelation. Those who saw Him risen join to declare: ‘Now is Christ risen from the dead,’ but it is a higher Voice that goes on to say, ‘and become the first-fruits of them that slept.’ That one Man risen from the grave was like the solitary sheaf of paschal first-fruits, prophesying of many more, a gathered harvest that will fill the great Husbandman’s barns. The Resurrection of Jesus is not only a prophecy, showing, as it and it alone does, that death is not the end of man, but that life persists through death and emerges from it, like a buried river coming again flashing into the light of day, but it is the source or cause of the Christian’s resurrection.

The oneness of the race necessitated the diffusion through all its members of sin and of its consequence-physical death. If the fountain is poisoned, all the stream will be tainted. If men are to be redeemed from the power of the grave, there must be a new personal centre of life; and union with Him, which can only be effected by faith, is the condition of receiving life from Him, which gradually conquers the death of sin now, and will triumph over bodily death in the final resurrection. It is the resurrection of Christians that Paul is dealing with. Others are to be raised, but on a different principle, and to sadly different issues. Since Christ’s Resurrection assures us of the future waking, it changes death into ‘sleep,’ and that sleep does not mean unconsciousness any more than natural sleep does, but only rest from toil, and cessation of intercourse with the external world. In the part of the passage, 1 Corinthians 15:50 - 1 Corinthians 15:58 , the Apostle becomes, not the witness or the reasoner, as in the earlier parts of the chapter, but the revealer of a ‘mystery.’ That word, so tragically misunderstood, has here its uniform scriptural sense of truth, otherwise unknown, made known by revelation. But before he unveils the mystery, Paul states with the utmost force a difficulty which might seem to crush all hope,-namely, that corporeity, as we know it, is clearly incapable of living in such a world as that future one must be.

{12} For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. (12) Another confirmation of the same conclusion: for Christ is to be considered as opposite to Adam, that as from one man Adam, sin came over all, so from one man Christ, life comes to all. That is to say, that all the faithful, who die because by nature they were born of Adam, so because in Christ they are made the children of God by grace, they are made alive and restored to life by him.

21 . For since by man came death ] Cf. Romans 5:12 ; Romans 5:17 ; Romans 6:21 ; Romans 6:23 ; James 1:15 ; and the narrative in Genesis 3. by man came also the resurrection of the dead ] Athanasius remarks that here we have not παρά but διά , as pointing out that even in Jesus Christ man was not the source , but the means of the blessings given to mankind in Him; that He took man’s nature in order to fill it, and through it us, each in our measure, with all the perfections of His Godhead. “As by partaking of the flesh and blood, the substance of the first Adam, we came to our death, so to life we cannot come unless we do participate in the flesh and blood of the Second Adam , that is, Christ. We drew death from the first by partaking of the substance; and so we must draw life from the second by the same. This is the way; become branches of the Vine and partakers of His Nature, and so of His life and verdure both.” Bp Andrewes, Serm . 2 on the Resurrection .

(21) For since by man . . . —The image of the firstfruits is followed up by an explanation of the unity of Christ and Humanity. The firstfruit must be a sample of the same kind as that which it represents. That condition is fulfilled in the case of the firstfruits of the resurrection.