Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. (James 1:18)

Firstfruits

The feast of Firstfruits portrays the resurrection of Christ and our entrance into His resurrection life. We are born again, meaning that a new life, the Life of Christ, has been born in us.

This is the beginning of the harvesting of our personality. Our new spiritual nature is raised to sit with Christ in the heavenlies. Our new nature, Christ born in us, is the firstfruits to God of the new creation.

There is part of our personality that has not been harvested as yet, as we can tell by the way we act, the things we say and think, the battles we have.

The unharvested part of us, the part that still rebels against God, has been accepted of God even though it has not as yet been redeemed from the hand of the enemy. It has been accepted because part of us has been presented before God (our reborn inward nature) as a firstfruits. We are without condemnation although we have not been perfected as yet.

Our spirit and soul must go through many experiences with God before they are cleansed, changed into the image of Christ, and reconciled to God. Last of all our physical body will be harvested.

We rejoice in God because we know what He has begun in us He will finish. The Lord has accepted our new nature as a firstfruits of the finished work of redemption. As soon as God has created Christ in every area of our personality, the harvest of our life will have been completed.

True faith versus mental belief. There is an extraordinary fact associated with the seven feasts. It is that the ordinances governing their celebration were issued in detail while the Hebrews were wandering in a desert. Yet some of the feasts were agricultural festivities.

Firstfruits, Pentecost, and Tabernacles were associated with distinct phases of the harvest season. They were enjoined on the Israelites when they had no farms.

That they were harvest ceremonies is interesting in itself because it reveals that God regards the Christian Era, commencing with Christ's death and resurrection during Passover Week, as a harvest of what previously had been sown in the earth by the Lord (John 4:35).

For example, the Day of Pentecost, as recorded in the Book of Acts, symbolizes the end of the wheat harvest. We ought to give more thought to the concept that the Christian Church is the fulfillment of that which began with Abraham (Galatians 3:6-29). The "Dispensational" model of Scripture interpretation is flawed seriously, in our opinion, in that it severs the Christian Church, the Body of Christ, from Israel.

On the other hand, the type of the former and latter rains is applied more readily to the concept that the Book of Acts portrays the former rain, while the latter rain will fall at the end of the present age, just prior to the revealing of Antichrist. This concept would place the fulfillment of Pentecost at the close rather than at the beginning of the Christian Era, in that the observance of Pentecost, the end of the wheat harvest, came several weeks after the latter rain had fallen.

To be continued.