Death & the Afterlife

But there is this two-partness to us, body and soul. And the Bible gives us this distinction at least one time in the book of James chapter 2 and verse 26, where it tells us that just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead. But the body without the spirit is dead. So we have to say then from a biblical standpoint, death is the separation of spirit and body. So the body ceases to function, of course. It’s buried, it decomposes, sees corruption, but the soul continues to live on. We have a custom often, particularly at funerals, of looking in the casket and saying, “He’s not there,” encouraging ourselves in the thought that he is with God. And that’s right, because personality is tied to the soul, not to the body. And so it’s very right, and it’s very right to encourage ourselves with a reminder he’s not there. But we should also remember that that’s not quite entirely exact, because we are created body and soul. We are two-part beings and God’s purpose for us in the end is holistic. It’s not just to rescue our souls out of this body or out of this earth and take us to heaven. God’s purpose for us ultimately is to save us body and soul.

The intermediate state then is the state between death and the final state or between death and the resurrection. It’s salvation not yet consummated. It’s the state of the soul after death but before the resurrection. We’ll be looking at that a little bit later with regard to the intermediate state of the redeemed, and then the intermediate state of the lost, but now just to establish the fact of it. So it is that period—it is in heaven, but the problem here is that it’s limited to heaven. So it’s not the perfect state. It’s not the new heavens and new earth. It is bereft of a body. It’s a bodiless existence. Paul calls it being naked in 2 Corinthians chapter 5. And it’s a time in which the soul is morally perfected, but although morally perfected, it is still a time of hope and prayer, Revelation chapter 6.

But all of this already, you can see, just has very solemn implications that this life is not the whole of your existence. And this is exactly what is in mind. This is the context of the thought when Jesus says, “Don’t fear those who are able to destroy your body, but fear him who’s able to destroy both body and soul in hell.” That there is a continued existence after this life. That’s the whole point of the rich fool and Lazarus in Luke chapter 16. He lived for today; he didn’t live for tomorrow. He forgot that this life is just a small, small speck of eternity, and he didn’t live accordingly. And that, of course, in turn then presses us to the urgency of the gospel. This life is not all you have. There is an afterlife, and there is a hell to be feared. A hell to be shunned and a heaven to seek.

Now, what does that mean, gathered to his people? Well, you might think, well, it means burial. But in fact, in his burial, he isn’t gathered to anybody. He has his own tomb. And verse 9, in fact, after his death, records his burial. Isaac and Ishmael, his sons, buried him in the cave of Machpelah in the field of Ephron. “Gathered to his people,” “gathered to his father,” seems to be—I think I’ve given you several references to that in the Old Testament—seems to be an expression of the conscious existence of the soul after death, that he’s joined the realm of the dead where they are.

So we have this contrast. Number one: we can be at home in the body, in which case we are away from the Lord. And that’s why at the end of the verse, or verse 7, we have to walk by faith and not by sight because we don’t see him. We can be at home in the body, in which case we’re away from the Lord; or we can be absent from the body, in which case we’re at home with the Lord. Life now, he says, is followed by life in the immediate presence of Christ—absent from the body, present with the Lord. Life now will end, and when it ends, for the believer, there’s a transition into, immediately into, the very presence of Christ.

Now then, more to our point. What does this passage teach us about the afterlife for the lost? Well, first of all, it is described for us as Hades. That’s verse 23: “In Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off.” Hades, again, being the New Testament equivalent of the Old Testament Sheol. This is the realm of the dead. Many people say always, but at least most always, Hades is the place of the unbelieving dead in punishment. Hades is the place in Matthew chapter 16 which is the abode of Satan. You remember the statement, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church.” That’s Hades there. It’s the abode of Satan. And here, notice how he describes it. It’s not only called Hades, but in verse 23, Hades is a place of torment. It’s a place of torture, a place of agony, and a place of pain. That’s what the rich man says, and that’s what Abraham says back in response. In verse 24, he expands a little bit. He’s thirsty. He’s in anguish. And then in verse 26, he’s in isolation. There’s this chasm between him and the blessed.

Now, Paul is giving a contrast here. “At home in the body” means away from the immediate presence of Christ. At home in the body is away from the Lord. But the other side of the contrast is, if we’re “away from the body” or absent from the body, it means we’re present with the Lord in his immediate presence. So again here we have that life now in the body is to be followed at death immediately by life in the presence of Christ.

But to our point this evening, notice how he describes what’s going on in heaven. There’s a heavenly Jerusalem, he says, and there is the innumerable number of angels in “festal gathering.” Sounds like a celebration of some kind. We have come to them and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect. That must be, then, a reference to those believers who have died ahead of us and who are already there in heaven. In this celebrating time with these innumerable angels in festal gathering, they are already there. And it says, not only are they the spirits—so there’s what they are, disembodied spirits—but they’re spirits of the righteous, the justified ones, “made perfect.” So they’ve entered into moral perfection. So death then here, or the intermediate state, is described as heaven. It’s the presence of the angels, it’s the presence of God, and it’s in the state of moral perfection. All right, what have we seen so far? At death, the believer passes into the presence of Christ, moral perfection, into an atmosphere of celebration amidst the angels in the very presence of God, and enjoying the presence of Christ.

What can we say in summary? How can we put all this together? I’ve just put it this way—you may be able to say it better: The intermediate state then is the conscious, joyful existence of the redeemed in the immediate presence of Christ, his angels, and the redeemed who have died. They are morally perfected, and yet still awaiting the full completion of our promised salvation.

And so the question has been raised against the doctrine of the continued existence of the soul on this ground that they are fallen asleep and no longer conscious. The beginnings of that expression, by the way, are in Daniel chapter 12, which is probably the clearest statement of the Old Testament of the resurrection of the dead, and it speaks of those who sleep in the dust of the earth. Jesus picks that up when he speaks of Lazarus, who has just fallen asleep. Paul then picks it up, speaks of those who are dead as those who sleep or those who have fallen asleep. But a few observations, I think, help us in this regard. Number one, that terminology is always used with regard to earthly existence—that we’re no longer active in this earth. We have rest from our earthly toil. We’re still very aware of our surroundings, like Luke chapter 16 will tell us when we get there with both the rich man and Lazarus. So the metaphor of sleep has to do with our earthly existence only. It has specific reference only to the body, not the soul. Those who are sleeping are awaiting the resurrection and consciously awake. And also then, I think most obviously with this objection that’s brought up, we have to understand that metaphor within the context of the teaching of the rest of the Bible, which is very clear with regard to the continued existence of the soul.

What can we derive from all of that? One, in the afterlife, in the intermediate state, the lost are conscious—obviously conscious of their surroundings. This is not some kind of soul sleep, very obviously. Lazarus is in Abraham’s bosom being comforted, and the rich man then, by contrast, is in Hades being tormented in anguish, and that even while being aware of the blessedness of Lazarus. Obviously, this is conscious existence after death in torment. Also, we can say about Hades from this, or hell in the intermediate state, that it’s a place where memory still remains. The rich man is instructed by Abraham to recall the earlier circumstances. He also, in the following verses, remembers his family. So he has conscious existence. He still has memory of his life that was lived before death. Verse 30, actually verses 29 and 30, it seems clear enough to say that the unrighteous dead retain their capacity of reason. He reasons this out: “send Lazarus to my family, they’re lost, I don’t want them to come here.” There’s something a little ironic though in verse 30. Here the rich man in hell—now get this—the man being punished by God in hell, is arguing theology with Abraham. That’s what’s happening. Well, we have then conscious existence, we have memory, we have the capacity of reason and rationality.

So he’s looking at history, the history of God’s dealing with sinners. If he’s done this, if he’s done this, if he’s done that, and if he’s done the other, then one, he knows how to rescue the righteous, and number two, he knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. Now this is one of the clearest statements you can find in the New Testament, that in the intermediate state of the lost, they are kept under punishment. The day of judgment has not yet come, and yet they are kept under judgment, under punishment, until the day of judgment when it comes. I don’t see how there can be any question here, but that the intermediate state of the lost is one of punishment under divine judgment.

And there’s another feature of hell. That’s really the whole drift of the parable, and that is that it’s final. This is the intermediate state, but that’s it. It’s over. Verse 26, the whole drift of the story: you’re there, you can’t get out. Well, there’s the parable. There is its teaching on what hell is like in the intermediate state. This is what makes for the urgency of the gospel. And that is what is emphasized then in verses 27 to 31. Send someone back to tell my brothers. They’ve got Moses and the prophets. They have the scriptures. Yeah, but if somebody went back from the dead, they’d hear that. No, they can hear Moses and the prophets. And of course, you’ve read the rest of the book. You can’t miss the irony of that, that one did come back from the dead. It made no difference either. Again then, the purpose of the story, the purpose of the parable, is a warning. After death, there are two contrasting destinies. There’s a heaven to pursue, there’s a hell to be shunned, to be feared, and to be avoided. And that in the intermediate state.

Very often, I think, in Christian lingo and normal conversation, we speak of, after death, going to heaven. That is our hope, to be in heaven. And there’s great truth in that, and don’t let anyone ever diminish it, except in this sense: that that is not our final hope. Christ has not come and given himself for us in order to rescue our souls away from our body and from this creation and take it up to heaven with him. Christ has come to redeem us body and soul. And in the end, in the new creation, that will be our experience and that is God’s promise.

Glorious as that intermediate state will be, because we are in the immediate presence of Christ, it is to be far surpassed by the day of resurrection. One day, Jesus will return and call up all who are his. And those who are his will be joined to their bodies, raised immortal. And in resurrection, finally we will know what it is to be redeemed, body and soul, and be all that we were created to be, and to enjoy all that God promised for us.

So in summary then, what kind of body will we have in the resurrection? It’ll be a literal, physical body. It’ll be continuous with our old body. Please don’t ask me how old will we be. Will the 10-year-old still be the 10-year-old? I don’t know. I’m sure God will be able to sort all that out. But we will have a body that is continuous with the old body that we had in this life, and it’ll be a body that is perfectly suited to that age and that age to come.

Hebrews 9:27 says, “Just as it is appointed for man to die once and after that comes judgment, so Christ having been offered once to bear the sins of many will appear the second time not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” Now, verse 27, I think, tells us in a brief sentence really what we are looking at this evening, and that is that there is death and then there is after. Whatever else is going on in these verses—and we’ll probably see more of that in the weeks to come—this shows us that death, physical death, does not mark the end of our existence. There is afterwards. After that, the judgment, and we’ll explore some of that as well.

The Christian worldview takes very seriously that this life is not the whole of our existence. There is an afterlife. And in the afterlife, this life will have made a great difference in terms of our condition then. So this ought to shape our thinking regarding evangelism. It ought to shape our thinking regarding Christian faithfulness and Christian service, knowing, as Paul says, that your labor is not in vain in the Lord—that God rewards us for every good thing. I think probably above all, this ought to fill us with a sense of hope as God’s people. This life is not the whole of our existence, and whatever joys and whatever health and happiness and wealth we have here, the life of the new heaven and new earth is going to be so far overwhelmingly glorious as to make this seem like nothing. It’s no wonder then, as I’ve said many times and as John Wesley says, “Our people die well.” We can die with hope.

The intermediate state was made necessary only because of sin and divine judgment against sin. And so that in death now there’s this awful dissolution of the body and separation of body and soul. In this unnatural condition, strange condition, it’s not what we’re created to be. It’s not the way we were created. And so death is not what is ultimately desirable for the Christian either. It’s an unnatural condition. It’s imperfect. It’s not the fullness of what we’ve been promised. And Paul’s goal is not the intermediate state. Paul’s goal is the eternal state. I think the Apostle Paul would sing joyfully with us: “Oh joy, oh delight, should we go without dying.” That’s what he’s looking for here. Now, because the Lord Jesus stands on the other side of death and because of all that he’s done and what he’s provided and what we’ve seen here in this passage as well, we can tolerate it. Death is okay, and in fact, there’s a sense in which it’s better. But the Bible never endorses a merely romantic view of death as though it were something wonderful in itself considered.

We don’t cherish the event of death. There’s nothing of that in the scriptures. We don’t romanticize it in that way, but yet there’s a real sense in which the stinger has been pulled because we know that now we enter into the presence of Christ. It’s not to deny that death is an enemy. The victory over that will come at the resurrection. But it is to say that although it is an awful experience, it is a blessed one because through it we enter into the presence of Christ. And this is why Paul will say in 1 Thessalonians, although we do sorrow, we do not sorrow as those who have no hope with regard to those who have gone before. We will see in times to come, in weeks to come, with regard to the resurrection and the final state. And in 1 Corinthians 15, when Paul quotes Isaiah, “O grave, where is thy victory? O death, where is your sting?” That is not something that’s been—that’s not a promise that’s been fulfilled yet. Paul’s looking to the coming of Christ, and then will come to pass that which is written. And yet at the same time, there’s an important sense in which the stinger has been pulled, because it doesn’t have the haunt for us that it does for others. And this is the prospect that we have in Christ: that death is not the end of things, and in fact it’s the beginning of joyous existence in His presence.

I’ve mentioned this before in the series that I think we should be careful in the way we talk about death, perhaps particularly with people who are in bereavement. But sometimes I think Christians have tended to speak too sentimentally with regard to death. There is a great hope at death. We will be with Christ. We’ll be brought into his presence. That is far better. The intermediate state will be better; Paul tells us that. But that’s not our ultimate hope. And in fact, death is still an enemy. You’ll feel it yourself one day. And we all feel it at one time or another with those that we love. Death is still an enemy. But in the resurrection, all of that will be gone forever. We will be raised with a body of glory never to decay and never to experience the fallenness that marks this life.

And I have to point this out. Notice here, there is no room for purgatory. There’s no transition period. There’s no calling of the believer to go endure suffering so that he can be purged from his sin further. There was one purgatory and that was the cross where Christ purged our sins for us. But immediately upon death, we are ushered into the very presence of Christ. And so Paul says that is better. And so he says our outlook, even in death, even in death, our outlook is one of hope. There’s a sense in which we all fear death, but on another level, the believer doesn’t have to fear death at all. In death we’ll enjoy the immediate presence of Christ while we wait for the day of his return when our souls will be reunited with our bodies in resurrection.

We did see a little bit about this when we talked about the intermediate state, particularly in reference to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, where Paul is talking about the glory of that state. What I’m looking for is not to be “naked”—that is, this bodiless existence in heaven. What I’m looking for is to be “clothed upon” with a new body in resurrection. That’s his great hope. But he does say about that intermediate state—about death—that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. No room for purgatory in that. Absent from the body, present with the Lord. We might say with that as well Philippians chapter 1, where Paul’s anticipation is to depart and be with Christ, which would be far better.