What is meant by the first resurrection (Rev. 20:4–6)?

“And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their

1202 St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 22.6 (NPNF I/10:151–152).

1203 St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 4.21 (NPNF II/7:24) amended. 1204 Abba Mark the Ascetic: Selected instructions from his other discourses, 21.

1205 St. Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies 2.20.3 (ANF 1:388).

foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years” (Rev. 20:4–6). Here we are told of a first resurrection and a second resurrection, although nowhere else in the Holy Bible do we find the phrase “the second resurrection.” So, what does the first resurrection mean?

We know that sin entered the world, so death reigned over all souls, and so we came to be such that although we live in the body our souls are dead because they are separated from the source of their life, God. Thus, our Lord came to offer to us a spiritual resurrection for our souls, before our bodies and our souls enjoy a general resurrection on the Day of Judgment.

The Lord says, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is , when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live” (John 5:25). Concerning this resurrection, the apostle says, “buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead” (Col. 2:12). And through repentance we also taste the resurrection while we are still striving: “Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light” (Eph. 5:14).

This is a matter of continual experience in the daily life of the believer. For the apostle says, in a manner indicating a continuous act, “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death” (Phil. 3:10). Therefore, with all certainty we say that the Church in its striving and despite the pain she suffers, lives in the millennium, the first resurrection, savoring the token of heavenly things.

St. John Chrysostom says, “He was the last item of the reasonable creation. But the feet became the head, and by means of the first-fruits, were raised to the royal throne … But God made the gain greater than the loss, and brought our nature to the royal throne. Therefore Paul cries out and says, ‘He raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him, on his right hand in the heavenly places, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness towards us’ (Eph. 2:6–7). What do you say? the thing has already happened and has an end, and do you say ‘in order that he might show to the ages to come?’ Has he not shown? He has already shown, but not to all men, but to me who am faithful, but the unbelieving has not yet seen the wonder. But then, in that day the whole nature of man will come forward, and will wonder at that which has been done, but especially will it be more manifest to us.”¹²⁰⁶

1206 St. John Chrysostom, Three Homilies on the Power of Man to Resist the Devil 1.2 (NPNF I/9:179–180) amended.

Therefore, those who bear the cross with our Lord Jesus as witnesses to Him until death enjoy the first resurrection here; while the rest of those who are dead in spirit, who do not accept the faith, do not enjoy the first resurrection and fall under the eternal second death (Rev. 21:8).

Again, we affirm the words of St. Augustine : “Of this judgment He went on to say, ‘And has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man’ [John 5:27]. Here He shows that He will come to judge in that flesh in which He had come to be judged … This judgment He uses here in the same sense as a little before, when He says, ‘He that hears my word, and believes on Him who sent me, has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment , but is passed from death to life’ [John 5:24]; i.e ., by having a part in the first resurrection, by which a transition from death to life is made in this present time, he shall not come into damnation.”¹²⁰⁷ Thus, the millennial reign of Christ on earth actually began with Jesus Christ Himself in the Church, and the saints now have a share in that reign.

Pope Athanasius the Apostolic says, “For the Word being clothed in the flesh, as has many times been explained, every bite of the serpent began to be utterly staunched from out it; and whatever evil sprung from the motions of the flesh, to be cut away, and with these death also was abolished, the companion of sin, as the Lord Himself says: ‘The prince of this world comes, and finds nothing in Me’ (John 14:30); and ‘For this end was He manifested,’ as John has written, ‘that He might destroy the works of the devil’ (1 John 3:8). And these being destroyed from the flesh, we all were thus liberated by the kinship of the flesh [i.e., the flesh of Christ], and for the future were joined, even we, to the Word.”¹²⁰⁸

St. Gregory the Wonderworker says, “For since the holy Virgin, in the life of the flesh, was in possession of the incorruptible citizenship, and walked as such in all manner of virtues, and lived a life more excellent than man’s common standard; therefore the Word that comes from God the Father thought it meet to assume the flesh, and endue the perfect man from her, in order that in the same flesh in which sin entered into the world, and death by sin, sin might be condemned in the flesh, and that the tempter of sin might be overcome in the burying of the holy body, and that therewith also the beginning of the resurrection might be exhibited, and life eternal instituted in the world, and fellowship established for men with God the Father.”¹²⁰⁹