“THE FIRSTBORN OF THE DEAD”

Hugo McCord

Paul and John both wrote that Jesus was “the firstborn of the dead” (Colossians 1:18; Revelation 1:5). But how did the dead come to be dead? How and why did death come into the world? The “tree of life” in the garden of Eden, of which one might “eat and live forever,” was available to Adam (Genesis 2:16; 3:22). Thus he did not have to die. But the penalty of death God gave if Adam and Eve ate of the tree of good and evil (Genesis 2:16-17), a penalty irrevocable, a penalty handed down to all Adam’s descendants: “through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).

We all suffer the penalty of Adam’s sin, but the guilt cannot be inherited. Sin is personal, and its guilt cannot be transferred to other people:

The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father; neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him (Ezekiel 18:20). So then each one of us shall give an account of himself to God (Romans 14:12). The Son of man ... shall reward every man according to his works (Matthew 16:27).

The consequences of a man’s sins, as being a drunkard, fall on his family and on other people, but not the guilt.

But what did Paul mean by writing that “death spread to all men, because all sinned”? He shows that he did not mean that we inherit Adam’s sin because he wrote also that death reigns “even over those who” have “not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam” (Romans 5:14).

But what did he mean by writing that “all sinned”? Perhaps he meant that we all sin in Adam as our family head. We are his kinfolks. We did not eat the forbidden fruit, but he represented us when he ate the fruit.

A parallel in Scripture is that Levi “paid tithes through Abraham” when “he was still in the loins of his father” (Hebrews 7:9-10). Levi’s father was Jacob (Genesis 29:21, 29); Jacob’s father was Isaac (Genesis 25:21, 26); Isaac’s father was Abraham (Genesis 25:19). The only one who actually paid the tithes was Abraham (Genesis 14:20), yet Levi, Abraham’s great-grandson, “paid tithes through Abraham” while yet unborn! In parallel, we all today sinned in Adam, not actually, but through our representative.

What does the phrase, “the firstborn of the dead,” mean? Jesus was not the firstborn of the dead. About 900 years before Christ, Elijah the prophet “stretched himself out on” the body of a dead child, the son of a widow of Zarephath,

and cried out to the Lord, “O Lord my God, let this child’s soul come back to him.” Then the Lord heard the voice of Elijah, and the soul of the child came back to him, and he revived (1 Kings 17:8-22).

About a hundred years later, the successor of Elijah, Elisha, revived the son of a Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:36). And after Elisha was buried, when the corpse of another man happened to touch Elisha’s body, the man came to life (2 kings 13:20-21).

Then, before Jesus arose from the dead, he himself raised at least three corpses to life again: the 12 year old daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:22, 41), the son of a widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17), and his friend Lazarua, whose body had lain “in the tomb four days” (John 11:17-44).

Moreover, at the moment Jesus died, an earthquake opened nearby tombs, “and many bodies” were raised (Matthew 27:52). These revived corpses, after Jesus’ resurrection, “entered the holy city, and were seen by many” (Matthew 27:53).

So, again, the question comes, how was Jesus “the firstborn from the dead”? Apparently the answer is that all those raised to live again before Jesus own resurrection, and even including the raising of Dorcas by the apostle Peter (Acts 9:36-41) after Jesus’ resurrection, all had to die again. The only corpse ever to come from a tomb alive never to die again was the body of Jesus. Only he could announce, “I was dead, but behold! I am alive forever and ever, and I have the keys of death and the grave” (Revelation 1:18). “Death has no more a dominion over him” (Romans 6:9).

Normal people “love life” and delight in “good days” (1 Peter 3:10). Sadly, they know that death is unavoidable, that “it is appointed for men” to die (Hebrews 9:27). As far as doctors can find out, there is no human way to “deliver those who through fear of death” always have to live “in the bondage” of that fear (Hebrews 2:15). Consequently, they ask with Job, “If a man die, shall he live again?” (14:14).

How thankful we are that, that by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Job was able to say:

I know that my Redeemer lives, and ... after my skin, even this body, is destroyed, then without my flesh I shall see God, whom I, even I shall see, on my side, and my eyes shall look upon, and not as a stranger (19:25-27).

Jesus became a human being “of flesh and blood” so that he could die and through dying he could “conquer [not “destroy,” KJV] him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). “He has indeed abolished death, and has brought to light life and immortality” (2 Timothy 1:10). “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26).

Jesus is “the firstfruits of those who are asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). “Since death came by man, by man also is the resurrection of the dead. As in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:21-22). “The hour comes in which all those in the graves will hear his [Jesus’] voice, and will come out: those who have done good things to a resurrection of life; but those who have done evil things to a resurrection of condemnation” (John 5:28-29).

“With what sort of body will they come?” (1 Corinthians 15:35). “[I]t is sown a physical body, but raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:44). Even if the physical body has been cremated, the spiritual body will “be like his glorious body, according to the power which enables him to subject all things to himself” (Philippians 3:21). This happy transformation will be for “those who belong to Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:23), but certainly not true of those to whom he will be forced to say, “Depart from me, accursed ones, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his agents” (Matthew 25:41).