Resurrection from Among the Dead

We read that the Sadducees were grieved that the apostles "preached through [in] Jesus the resurrection from the dead." Acts 4:2. No doubt the resurrection of Jesus was the great subject of the apostles' testimony. But the expression implies something more than the resurrection of Jesus Himself. The apostles preached through (or in) Jesus the resurrection from among the dead.
A few weeks before, the Sadducees had asked Jesus a question meant to turn the resurrection into ridicule, and had been silenced by the answer we looked at in a previous paragraph. This answer revealed not only the fact of a resurrection, but also an exclusive resurrection of those who should be counted worthy to obtain it.
This is the doctrine which the apostles were now proclaiming, with the further truth that this resurrection was through, or in, that same Jesus whom these Sadducees had rejected. They might have been grieved at their preaching "the resurrection of the dead," but could hardly have laid hands on them, inasmuch as the Pharisees, a far more numerous sect than themselves, held the same faith. It was the exclusive resurrection, announced by Jesus, and now proclaimed through Him, that aroused their fury.
In like manner Paul speaks of Jesus as "the firstborn from the dead" (Col. 1:18), that is, as the first of those who were taken from among the dead. If the resurrection of all the other dead were to be simultaneous, He would not be the first. But He was the only one born from among the dead, the rest having no part in a resurrection from the dead, but merely in a resurrection of the dead.
This expression is not an isolated one. In speaking before Festus and Agrippa, the Apostle declares the testimony of the prophets to be that Christ should suffer, and that He should be the first that should rise from the dead (Acts 26:23). Of course, the propriety of the phrase is easily seen respecting Jesus Himself. But here Jesus is declared to be only the earliest of a number to whom the same description is applicable. It is, moreover, as the first-begotten of the dead, or rather, as the first-begotten from among the dead (Rev. 1:5), that Jesus Christ is presented in the opening verses of the Revelation.