What Does 1 Corinthians 15:20 Mean?
But now the Anointed One has been awakened from the dead, and has become the first portion of those who have lain down to sleep.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.THE KEY
Christ’s rising is called the firstfruits: the beginning of a harvest, not a solitary exception.
THE MEANING
The verse calls those who have died “those who slept” and declares Christ raised as the firstfruits from among them. For the reader now, his rising opens a harvest that includes those sleepers; it is the first portion of what is still to come.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that Christ’s rising is a lone exception with no bearing on those who have died: “firstfruits” presents it as the beginning of a larger harvest.
THE ROOT
ἀπαρχή
aparchē
GROWS FROM
ἀρχ- (arch-), in ἀπαρχή (apo + archē)
ἀρχή means beginning, origin, or first place; with ἀπό (“from”), ἀπαρχή names a first portion taken from a larger whole.
“first portion” in this verse is aparchē. The word names more than being first in sequence: it is the first share of a whole harvest. Calling the risen Christ the ἀπαρχή presents his rising as the beginning of what follows.
ALSO GROWS
archō: begin; rule
ἄρχω
Its sense of beginning echoes the first portion that marks a harvest’s opening.
archēgos: leader, pioneer, originator
ἀρχηγός
This related word carries the sense of one who stands at the head of what follows, illuminating Christ as the first share of the coming harvest.
ἐγήγερται
egēgertai
GROWS FROM
ἐγείρω
egeirō
To wake, rouse, or raise.
“awakened” in this verse is egēgertai. The Greek form means “has been raised”: a completed raising whose result stands now. English “risen” can leave that enduring state less visible.
ALSO GROWS
egeirō: wake; raise
ἐγείρω
The same verb can describe waking someone or raising the dead, holding awakening and resurrection in one word.
egersis: rising; resurrection
ἔγερσις
This related noun makes explicit the rising that the verb names here.
κεκοιμημένων
kekoimēmenōn
GROWS FROM
κοιμ-
koim-
To sleep or put to sleep.
“lain down to sleep” in this verse is kekoimēmenōn. The verse uses a word for sleep to speak of those who have died. The image holds death honestly while placing it beside the possibility of waking.
ALSO GROWS
koimaō: sleep; fall asleep
κοιμάω
The same verb is used for ordinary sleep and for death described as sleep.
koimēsis: sleep; falling asleep
κοίμησις
This related noun is used when Jesus speaks of death as sleep, showing that the image in this verse belongs to a wider way of speaking.
THE PATTERN
The first portion marks the beginning of a larger harvest.
Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When you come into the land that I give to you, and reap its harvest, then you shall bring a sheaf of the first of your harvest to the priest.And not only the creation, but we ourselves also, who hold the firstfruits of the breath, groan within ourselves, waiting for our placing as sons, the release of our body.By his own will he bore us forth through the word of truth, so that we might be a kind of firstfruit of his created things.THE THREAD
But each in his own rank, the Anointed One as first portion, then those of the Anointed One at his arrival.This verse uses the same word, ἀπαρχή, and makes the order explicit: Christ first, then those who belong to him. The image of the first portion here opens into the sequence named there.
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