Title: 1 Corinthians 15:22 -
Author: Joe
Last saved by: PJD
Company: GDC

98-9-20.JSH-027 /1

© 1998  Joe Griffin	JOSHUA

Introduction: Victory through Faith: Blood of Christ: Events Surrounding the Physical Death of Christ

5. A sequence of sabbaths were involved around our Lord’s crucifixion:

1) The Passover: The celebration of the Seder was observed the night before Jesus Christ was crucified as the literal Passover Lamb the following day.  Passover speaks of our redemption from sin by the substitutionary sacrifice of the Lamb of God.  Passover is the first day of an eight-day festival.

1 Peter 1:18 - Knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver and gold from your futile way of life inherited from your ancestors,

v 19 - but with the precious blood of Christ, a Lamb without spot and without blemish.

2) The Feast of Unleavened Bread: The following six days all leaven is avoided and only unleavened bread is eaten.  This is a type for life inside the operational divine power system and the resultant execution of the Christian way of life.  The casting out of leaven indicates the remove of sin through rebound.

1 Corinthians 5:7 - Clean out the old leaven [ rebound ] that you may be a new lump [ back in fellowship ], just as you are in fact unleavened [ positional sanctification ].  For Christ our Passover [ the Lamb of God ] also has been sacrificed [ spiritual death, or “the blood of Christ” ].

3) The Sabbath: Over the eight-day period of    Passover there would always occur a     regular Sabbath, or what we call Saturday.

4) First Fruits: Observed on the day following the regular Sabbath when a sheaf of barley was waved by the priest at the Temple signifying the beginning of the harvest.  It is a type for the resurrection of Christ on the first Easter.

1 Corinthians 15:20 - Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.

v 21 - For since by a man [ Adam ] came physical death, by a Man [ Christ ] also came the resurrection of the dead.
v 22 -	But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming.

6.	Jesus proclaimed Himself to be the Messiah and demonstrated His veracity by fulfilling all the Old Testament prophecies related to the Incarnation.
7.	The self-righteous Jews were blinded by their myopic loyalty to keeping the letter of the Law while ignoring the very fulfillment of the Law taking place before their eyes.
8.	The Lord had become the ultimate Passover sacrifice.  His spiritual death solved the sin problem that the Law could only reveal.
9.	Ignoring the obvious, the Jewish leaders requested that the Lord’s physical death be hastened so they could dispose of his body before the special Sabbath began that evening at 6 o’clock.
10.	Passover was the first of a seven-day observance called the Feast of Unleavened Bread.  Tuesday night started the week off with the Passover Seder.
11.	The following day was known as a day of preparation for the following six days.
12.	Two considerations dominated their thoughts: (1) “We must now turn our attention to the Feast of Unleavened Bread,” and (2) “We are not allowed by the Law to permit a corpse to remain unburied.”
13.	Impatient to get on with their religious rituals they wanted to dispose of the corpse as soon as possible.
14.	Thus their appeal to the Romans to carry out a process known as crurifragium /crew-ree-FRAH-gi-um/, a Latin word which means “leg-breaking.”

John 19:31 -	The Jews therefore, because it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day) asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.

15.	Their motivation for this is the mandate found in the Law at:
Deuteronomy 21:22 -	“And if a man has committed a sin worthy of death and he is put to death and you hang him on a tree,
v 23 -		his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree but you shall surely bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is accursed of God), so that you do not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance.”

16.	As the soldiers began the process they discovered that the Lord was already dead.
John 19:32 -	The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man and of the other man who was crucified with Him
v 33 -		But coming to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs.

17.	Breaking the legs of those crucified made it impossible for the victim to periodically elevate himself in order to relieve the muscular fatigue in the chest.  Without this option the intercostal muscles malfunction making it impossible to exhale carbon dioxide.  Suffocation occurs fairly rapidly.
18.	Crurifragium was not executed on the Lord because He was discovered to already be dead.  We see continued fulfillment of both type and prophecy.  Type in: 

 Exodus 12:43 -	The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the ordinance of the Passover:
v 46 -		“… you are not to break any bone of it.”

		The prophecy was given in:
Psalm 34:22 -	He keeps all His bones, not one of them is broken.

19.	Next comes the critical event which provides the Apostle John the evidence he needs to not only document the physical death of our Lord but to demonstrate to the Docetic Gnostics that Jesus was indeed true humanity.
John 19:34 -	But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear and immediately there came out blood and water.

20.	This is the same observation John makes in 1 John 5:6 where in both cases he speaks of  “blood and water.”
21.	John was not a physician and could only describe what he saw in layman’s terms.  But knowledge of the sequence of events which occurs following a person’s physical death enables us to understand precisely the point John is making.