Feasts of the Bible

The Feast of Firstfruits: How It Points to Christ

Spring feast · Leviticus 23:10 · The day after the sabbath following Passover, in the spring harvest

The Feast of Firstfruits was kept when Israel brought the very first sheaf of the spring barley harvest and waved it before the LORD, before gathering the rest of the field. It was a promise that the full harvest was coming. Christians see it fulfilled in the resurrection of Jesus, for Paul writes that Christ is risen from the dead and become the firstfruits of them that slept. His rising is the first sheaf of a harvest that will one day raise all who belong to Him.

The institutionSpeak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest:Leviticus 23:10 (KJV)

The feast God gave Israel

When Israel came into the land of promise and began to reap its harvests, God gave them a feast of first things. On the day after the sabbath following Passover, they were to bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of their harvest unto the priest, and he would wave it before the LORD to be accepted for them. It was the very first of the spring barley, cut and brought before God before a single sheaf was gathered for themselves.

The order was the heart of it. They did not wait until the harvest was safely in and then offer God a portion of the surplus. They brought Him the first, while most of the field still stood uncut, as an act of trust that the rest would surely follow. To give God the firstfruits was to say, this whole harvest is Yours, and we believe You will bring it all in. The single waved sheaf was both a thanksgiving for what had begun and a pledge of all that was still to come.

What the feast meant

Firstfruits taught Israel to read the beginning as a promise of the end. The first sheaf and the full harvest were of one kind, one life, one field. Where there was a firstfruit, there would be a harvest; the two could not be separated. To hold up the first ripe sheaf was to declare that the barren winter was over and that the fields, now stirring, would soon be white and full.

It was a feast of hope planted in the middle of labor. Much of the harvest was still ahead, still vulnerable, still to be gathered with sweat. But the firstfruit in the priest's hands was proof that life had won, that the seed sown in death had risen green, and that the God who gave the first would give the rest.

Fulfilled in Christ

Fulfilled in ChristBut now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.1 Corinthians 15:20 (KJV)

Jesus rose from the dead on the day after the sabbath, the very day of Firstfruits, and the timing is no accident. Paul reaches for exactly this feast to explain what the resurrection means: But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. His empty tomb is the first sheaf held up before God, the beginning of a harvest of the dead.

For if He is the firstfruits, then a full harvest is promised, and it is of the same kind as the first. As surely as the first sheaf meant the field would follow, so surely the rising of Jesus means that all who belong to Him will rise. Every man in his own order, Paul says: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. The single risen Lord is the pledge that death does not have the last word over any of His people.

The wonder of it

Stand back and see the sequence God laid down in Israel's spring. Passover: the Lamb is slain. Unleavened Bread: the holy One rests in the grave. Firstfruits: the first sheaf is lifted up in resurrection. Three feasts in a single week, in perfect order, foretelling the death, the burial, and the rising of the Messiah, kept by Israel for a thousand years and then fulfilled to the very day. Christ died at Passover, lay in the tomb through Unleavened Bread, and rose on Firstfruits.

No human planner arranged that. It is the fingerprint of a God who wrote the gospel into the harvest calendar of a small nation long before the Lord of the harvest walked out of the tomb. The feast of first things was waiting, century after century, for the morning it was made to picture.

Every man in his own order

Paul does not leave the harvest as a vague comfort; he sets it in order. Christ the firstfruits, he writes, afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. There is a first sheaf and there is a full field, and between them lies the whole age of the church, the long season of growing and waiting. We live in that in-between time, having seen the first sheaf lifted in the resurrection of Jesus, and awaiting the great ingathering when the trumpet sounds and the dead in Christ rise.

This is why the resurrection of Jesus is never spoken of in Scripture as an isolated marvel, a single man raised long ago. It is spoken of as a beginning, the opening of a harvest that includes us. He is not merely risen; He is risen as the firstfruits, which is to say, as the promise and the pattern of our own rising. The same power that raised Him is at work in all who are His, and it will not stop until the whole field He has sown is gathered home. The first sheaf guarantees the harvest, and we are the harvest.

How it speaks to us now

Firstfruits turns the resurrection from a distant miracle into a personal promise. Because Christ is risen as the firstfruits, your own future is settled in Him. The grave is not the end of the story for anyone who is His. Death, for the believer, is a seed sown, not a life lost, and the first sheaf has already been lifted in glory. When you stand at a graveside, or face your own mortality, the empty tomb of Jesus says what the waved sheaf said to Israel: the harvest is coming, and it will be of the same kind as the first.

A note in honesty: Christians read these feasts as shadows whose substance is Christ, in the words of the apostle Paul (Colossians 2:17), and they are cherished across the traditions as one of the clearest windows into the gospel. Faithful Jewish readers understand them differently, and we hold ours with respect and without contempt. The spring feasts were fulfilled at the first coming of Jesus, to the very day; the fall feasts many see as pointing toward His return, though Scripture forbids the setting of dates, for no one knows the day or the hour. We marvel at the pattern without pretending to a calendar God has not given.

Related: The Passover · The Resurrection · Pentecost · All the feasts of the Bible