or of poets and say to the sorrowing ones that their departed friends were

then with the Lord, therefore rejoice; what he does say is, that when the

Lord comes, all will be raised and reunited, 'Wherefore comfort one another

with these words'.  If we do not feel that our all hinges upon the fact of

Christ's resurrection and our own, then we have not the same faith as the

writer who penned 1 Corinthians 15:18.

One verse only now intervenes between this long argument and the

triumphant assertion of positive truth.  That verse just pauses to reflect

upon the hopeless state of the Christian in this life:

'If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most

miserable' (15:19).

Comment upon such a statement is unnecessary.  All who have sought to

live godly in Christ Jesus have realized that it involves in some degree the

loss of this life and its advantages.

The apostle Paul now opens up the next great spiritual fulfilment of

Israel's feasts.  We can see how the Cross, Christ crucified, Christ our

Passover, dominates the opening section with its divisions and its

immortality.  The next great type which supplies the theme of this chapter

is that of Israel's feast of the Firstfruits.  Let us see its setting:

a

Now is Christ risen.

First Coming.

b

Type  Firstfruits.

c

By man came death.

d

By man came resurrection.

c

In Adam all die.

d

In Christ all made alive.

b

Christ the firstfruits.

Second Coming.

a

They that are Christ's.

The risen Christ is the Firstfruits.  This fact begins and ends the

section.  One theme occupies the central portion, and that is death and life

as they are related to the race and the respective heads of the race, Adam or

Christ.  To view the title of Christ as Firstfruits in the light of Leviticus

23, and ignore the great fact of 1 Corinthians 15:21,22 is to miss the truth.

'The head of every man is Christ', even as the head of every woman is man,

without regard to the question of their salvation.  In the opening argument,

the apostle limited himself to the vital connection which the resurrection

had with the gospel.  From this he showed that the hope of the believer, the

forgiveness of sins, and the present stay of the suffering saint was also

most vitally bound up with the fact that Christ rose from the dead.

He now takes another stride.  From the gospel and faith he goes further

back to the connection which Christ's resurrection has with the whole race as

in Adam, showing that Christ must be raised from the dead for the

accomplishment of the wider purposes of God.  This is indicated by the

firstfruits.  There are eight occurrences of the word aparche, 'firstfruits'

in the New Testament.  Eight is the dominical number, the octave, the new

start, the resurrection.  The eight references are as follows: