◄ What Does 1 Corinthians 15:12 Mean? ►

The sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus on the Cross to pay the price for our sins, is a tiding of great joy. The free, unmerited gift of eternal life to all who believe in His name is the most wonderful addition to our redemption, but His glorious Resurrection from the dead is beyond our comprehension. Through His bodily Resurrection, He broke the power of death in the mortal bodies of all who would trust His name, and because He lives we too will live, with a spirit, a soul, and a glorified body.

The Corinthian Christians certainly believed in the death, burial, and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Himself. They believed that He had risen bodily from the grave, but they doubted that they too would receive an actual, resurrected body. They believed in a spiritual resurrection but doubted the physical element that is embraced in the glorious gospel of Christ.

When the Lord Jesus rose from the grave in His glorified, human body of flesh and bone, He triumphed over sin and Satan. He was Victor over death and the grave, and He removed the sting of death from all who would trust in Him as Saviour. It is not a dead Saviour that we worship but our living, resurrected, glorified, heavenly Lord. There is a Man today, seated on the right hand of the Father in power and great glory: Jesus Christ the Righteous Who is the First-Fruit from the dead.

The Old Testament Scriptures prophesied that Christ would be the First-Fruit from the dead, pointing to Jonah as one illustration of His glorious Resurrection, after three days. The New Testament lists many eye-witnesses, occasions, and numbers of believers who verified Him to be resurrected as they handled the glorified wounds in His body and listened to His reassuring voice as His opened the Scriptures in their very hearing.

And having laid all the evidence before the Corinthian believers, Paul is able say with authority: "Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?" If there was no resurrection of our body and just a resurrection of our spirit and soul, we would spend eternity as disembodied spirits. Praise God that Christ risen from the dead, with a spirit, a soul, and a glorified body, and He has become the First-Fruits of all who die in the Lord, and that includes you and me.

Down through the centuries, many have heard the glad tidings of great joy that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, that He died as our sin-substitute, was buried, and rose again according to the Scriptures, breaking the power of sin and death in the lives of all who believe in His name and becoming the First-Fruit of all who sleep.

Thank You, Heavenly Father, for the beautiful truth that Christ is the resurrected First-Fruit from the dead, for all who trust in Him.  Thank You that I am not only clothed in His righteousness, but will one day receive a new, glorified body. May the God of peace Himself, sanctify me completely, and may my whole spirit, and soul, and body, be kept blameless at the coming of my Lord Jesus Christ. In Jesus' name, AMEN.