1 Corinthians 15:20-22

“But now is Christ risen from the dead, the first-fruits of them that sleep. 21. For since by a man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. 22. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

The words: But now, are, as it were, the cry of deliverance, after the nightmare through which the apostle has brought his readers, by opening up to their view the abyss into which we should be plunged by the denial of the resurrection. The now contrasts the certain reality of the fact with the perfect void resulting from its denial; this void, opened up for an instant, no longer exists, except as a vanished past.

The words ἐκ νεκρῶν, from the dead, would suffice to prove that Paul is thinking of a bodily resurrection; for spiritually Christ never was among the dead.

The verb became, added by the Byz. reading, must be rejected; the word first-fruits is not a predicate, it is a simple apposition: “He rose again as first-fruits,” and not to remain alone in His state of glory. Christ risen is to the multitude of believers who shall rise again at His Advent what a first ripe ear, gathered by the hand, is to the whole harvest. Is there in this expression a distant reminiscence of the rite in which the apostle had so often taken part as a Jew, the offering in the temple of the first sheaf of the year, as the first-fruits of the harvest? This festival took place yearly, on the morrow after the Passover, the 16th Nisan. It is difficult to doubt this recollection in the apostle's mind, especially if it is held, according to the fourth Gospel, that Jesus was crucified on the afternoon of the 14th Nisan, and that consequently He was raised on the morning of the 16th. But this reminiscence, even if it is real, did not determine the idea and expression of first-fruits. Both offered themselves spontaneously.

The term first-fruits is justified in 1 Corinthians 15:21 (for).