The First Day of the Week

As we read the account of the resurrection, there is a most beautiful phrase that the Gospel writer wanted us to see: “The first day of the week.” In order to understand the significance of this phrase, we need to see the resurrection in the context that it was intended.

As prescribed by the Lord, there are seven feasts that the Israelites were to hold every year. Three of these feasts were in rapid succession in the first month of the year, the month of Abib (March-April in our calendar). This is the month when the Lord delivered them from slavery in Egypt. On the 14^th day of the month, they were to keep the Passover. The lamb was to be slain and eaten as remembrance of their deliverance from both the deaths of their firstborn and from slavery. On the 15^th of the month, the feast of Unleavened Bread was to begin. The third feast was the feast of Firstfruits which was to take place the first Sunday after the 15^th. The Firstfruits was the celebration of the first of the winter barley that was harvested. Obviously spring is the time of planting, however this was the anticipation of a greater harvest. It was an “advance” of thanks on what they knew was coming in the autumnal months of the year.

We read back in Matthew 26, that the night Jesus was betrayed to His crucifixion, He had celebrated the Passover with His disciples. The Passover meal was a symbol of Jesus’ death on the cross. The Passover lamb covered the people and freed them from slavery just as the shed blood of the Lamb of God does for us. Jesus was arrested that night and crucified the next day which was a Friday and the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. He spent Friday and Saturday in the grave, and then resurrected on the third day—which was the day of the feast of Firstfruits—on Sunday which was “the first day of the week.”

The very first time we hear the phrase “the first day”” is back in Genesis 1:5 at the very beginning of the creation week. The author wants us to see Jesus as the new Adam. Adam was the firstborn of the Old Creation, and Jesus, having buried the curse of sin and death of the Old Creation that came through Adam, steps out of the grave on the first day of the week and becomes the firstborn of the New Creation. We read the same account in John 20, and it is after this New Creation has begun that Jesus appears to His disciples and “He breathed on them and said, ‘receive the Holy Spirit.’” When God created humans, they did not live until God “breathed the breath of life into man’s nostrils,” and now at the onset of the New Creation, Jesus is breathing the Holy Spirit upon those who believe in Him to give them the life that only comes from from the Spirit of God. Also, the Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:20 that Jesus Christ is the “firstfruits” of the dead. Just as the feast of Firstfruits is anticipation of a greater harvest at the end of the year, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the first of many who will come to live in resurrection life through faith in Him, and of those who will be raised again with Him at the end of the ages.

The “first day of the week” offers new life and new hope for all who would come to Jesus to partake of the awesome resurrecting life that He offers freely. In Jesus, God has made all things new, He has reversed the curse of the Old Creation (Genesis 3:17-19), and brought us eternal blessing through Him who “became a curse for us,” (Galatians 3:13). There is deliverance from sin in Jesus’ death, but there is power for new life in His resurrection—and that power is available for me and you right now. Let’s live everyday in the very power that is able to reverse what was a curse for us!

Pastor Kyle Bauer