dead in v. 18, and the living in this verse, is in favour of the first-mentioned explanation. ' Those who died in Christ, per- ished when they died. And we, if all our hopes in Christ are confined to this Ufe, are the most miserable of men.' We have hoped. The Greek is -^A-ttikotcs ecr/xeV, which, as the commen- tators remark, expresses not what we do, but what we arg^ We are hopers. This passage does not teach that Christians are in this Ufe more miserable than other men. This is con- trary to experience. Christians are unspeakably happier than other men. All that Paul means to say is, that if you take Christ from Christians, you take their all. He is the source not only of their future, but of their present happiness. Without him they are yet in their sins, under the curse of the law, unreconciled to God, having no hope, and without God in the world ; and yet subject to all the peculiar trials incident to a Christian profession, which in the apostolic age often in- cluded the loss of all things.
20. But now is Christ risen from the dead, (and) become the first-fruits of them that slept.
But now, wvl 8e, i. e. as the matter actually stands. All the gloomy consequences presented in the preceding verses follow from the assumption that Christ did not rise from the dead. But as in point of fact he did rise, these things have no place. Our preaching is not vain, your faith is not vain, ye are not in your sins, the dead in Christ have not perished, we are not more miserable than other men. The reverse of all this is true. Christ has not only risen, but he has risen in a representative character. His resurrection is the pledge of the resurrection of his people. He rose as the first-fruits of them, that slept, and not of them only, but as the first-fruits of aU who are ever to sleep in Jesus. The apostle does not mean merely that the resurrection of Christ was to precede that of his people ; but as the first sheaf of the harvest presented to God as a thank-offering, was the pledge and assurance of the ingathering of the whole harvest, so the resurrection of Christ is a pledge and proof of the resurrection of his people. In Rom. 8, 23 and 11, 16, the word aTrapxri, first fruits, has the same force. Comp. also Col. 1, 18, where Christ is called "the first begotten from the dead," and Rev. 1, 5. Of the great harvest of glorified bodies which our earth is to yield Christ is the first-fruits. As he rose, so all his people must ; as