2 Corinthians 5:1-10, Luke 23:39-43 (NASB)
David Bruce Linn, Pastor-Teacher
29 June, 2003
All Rights Reserved
Mormons teach that when you die you go to live on another planet. The best Mormons get the best planet called Kolov, while the others get lesser planets. Islamic extremists claim to believe that all martyrs in the jihad (holy war) against the West will go to a heaven where they will have seventy virgins with which to fornicate forever who turn back into virgins immediately after sex. They will also have the capacity to eat endless feasts in a way their earthly stomachs will not allow. Popular author Wayne Dyer, like all who believe in the New Age, teach that your soul is immortal. He says that you existed in eternity past, you temporarily put on a human body in order to grow spiritually through the trials of this life, and then you shed the body at death and go back to perfect immortality. Hindus think we are repeatedly reincarnated in order to attain spiritual enlightenment but are hoping to exit the potentially endless process by finally becoming one with the universe. All tribal groups have some concept of an afterlife which is always dependent upon the hope of finally pleasing the gods. Modern Westerners, most of whom love to believe in a heaven of their own design, usually also reject the existence of hell as a conscious punishment. Most other Westerners like the idea of annihilation--eat, drink, and be merry, and after death there is simply nothing but rotting in the grave.
So what does happen after you die? There is no way to end the theorizing unless a real God has actually spoken and explained the afterlife to us. That explanation is found in the canonical Bible (see message entitled Who God Is for reasons why). While the answers the Bible gives are reliable and the broad outlines of the afterlife are easy to discern, the details are more difficult to determine and even surprising. There is a huge body of literature on this subject because there is so much at stake in the answers. Different groups of Christians have hardened up in wildly varying views, and so rather than survey the theological studies we will land on a particularly fruitful Bible passage.
I. EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY BODIES
Paul wrote the Corinthians: “For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1). Paul is using a figure of speech to speak about our physical bodies as we now know them. When God finally tears this building--this body--down, those who believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior will receive a new body designed for heaven. The term “a house not made with hands” is a reference to the heavenly temple of God. The temporary, imperfect, earthly temple was made by the hand of man, and the eternal, perfect, heavenly one is made by the hand of God. So our new bodies also will be eternal, perfect, and heavenly.
Paul then speaks of the common experience we all have with our earthly bodies: “For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven...” (2 Corinthians 5:2). Scripture says not only do we groan in our frail bodies, but the whole creation groans in anticipation of being finally delivered from the devastating effects of sin. Then Paul moves into a clarification which was much needed in the ancient world and is still needed today: “...Inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5:3-4).
What does Paul mean when he speaks of not being found “naked?” This is a reference to the idea which is common among all New Agers, Platonists, Gnostics, and not a few mistaken Christians, that after death the soul lives on without any physical body. In fact, the body is seen by these groups as a hindrance to pure spirituality, and so good riddance! Let’s be clear about what Paul is saying: when we are “swallowed up by life,” which means going to be with the Giver of Life after the death of our physical bodies, we will “not be found naked,” that is, without a body. We get the perfect, eternal body described in verse one.
So all of the beliefs in a soul separated permanently from the body at death are declared false. Strangely, there are many mistaken Christians who believe the false view. They begin by denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus. This must be done by denying the authority of the Bible, because Jesus was seen, heard, touched, and breakfasted in his post-resurrection body. They then follow Paul’s own logic which is that our resurrection bodies are going to be patterned after that of Jesus Christ. Since they hold only to a “spiritual resurrection” of Jesus (what would be the point of that?) they also hold only to a “spiritual” resurrection of the believer. This is manifestly not the teaching of Scripture.
II. THE SO-CALLED INTERMEDIATE STATE
Now we slam head on into a major diversion of thought among Christians who believe the Bible. Paul goes on to explain these sublime truths: “Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord-- for we walk by faith, not by sight-- we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:5-8). Paul’s purpose is to encourage us powerfully with the knowledge that all believers who are still in their earthly bodies already have the Spirit of life within them as the first part of their inheritance in Christ. We already are blessed by the eternal life principle, so we can be of good courage even though we groan with the burdens associated with these fallen bodies. As long as we are in our earthly bodies we live by faith because cannot physically see Jesus. In fact, he has already taken his physical body to heaven with him at the ascension in Acts 1.
Then comes a wonderful truth for everyone who has lost a believing loved one. The believer who is absent from this earthly body is “at home with the Lord.” No waiting, no purgatory to burn out impurities, no hanging around the underworld in Sheol--straight to the presence of God! When stated this simply, this is a truth upon which all Bible-believing Christians agree. Then we mount our skis and ski off the mountain of God’s truth in many different directions!
Before we look at the different views let’s back up and see the problem clearly. We all want to know what happens to us after we die. The Great Divide occurs based upon our faith in Christ or lack of it, as clearly expressed in the words of the Apostle John: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:16-18).
But whether one believes or not, the timetable of what happens “immediately” after death is a problem. The timeline of Scripture indicates that simultaneously believers depart their earthly bodies at death and go immediately to conscious bliss in the presence of God (heaven). By the same token, Scripture also teaches a future resurrection of the body, such as John 6:40: “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” That this must be a reference to the resurrection of the body is shown by what Paul declared to the Corinthians, that after death we are “absent from the body and...at home with the Lord.” We could continue compiling a list of things that believers seem to be awaiting after death, the rapture and the Bema Seat Judgment, for example. The question is: what in heaven’s name is happening to the Christian in between his death and his bodily resurrection? Peter seems to have been waiting two thousand years and Abraham over four thousand to find out what God thinks of their works!
The logical problem is similar for the unbeliever. Scriptures such as Luke 16:19-31 show those who reject God as going directly to conscious punishment. They also must face their ultimate fate at the Great White Throne Judgment, when they will be raised, judged, and ultimately cast into the lake of fire as seen in Revelation 20:11-15. It makes you wonder if Cain, who murdered his brother Abel, is in torment now or if he has been hanging around Sheol (the Old Testament place of the wicked dead) for thousands of years chain-smoking cigarettes and trash-talking God while awaiting judgment.
The number of possible answers given to this question is staggering. One answer is that the gap between death and resurrection leaves time for purgatory. Purgatory is said to be a post-death burning away of sins for believers on the thesis that some people just didn’t deal with their sins well enough in this life. This concept is foreign to Scripture because the basis of salvation is our total cleansing by the blood of Christ, not our individual spiritual performance, as Paul wrote: “Such [bad sinners] were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). Purgatory does not exist because it is not needed.
Another view, often associated with Seventh Day Adventists, is that our souls simply go to sleep upon leaving our dead bodies to await the resurrection. The early church father Origen seems to have adopted this view as did some Arabian Christian sects mentioned by the church historian Eusebius. The Scriptural refutation is that Jesus told the repentant thief on the cross: “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise,” (Luke 23:43), not “After a long period of mindless soul sleep you will eventually be with me in Paradise.”
Then we come to the two most well-accepted views of historic Christianity on the so-called intermediate state. The first mistakes the phrase from Paul, “absent from the body...at home with the Lord,” as meaning that these two divergent things are true at the same time. In other words, the believer goes directly into the presence of the Lord naked, that is, with no body at all. Furthermore, according to this view the naked Christian is somewhat displeased with this state of affairs and is eagerly awaiting the resurrection of the body. This thought is mistakenly attributed to Paul as well: “...Inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5:3-4).
Paul’s meaning in the first instance is that when we are away from this earthly body which decays in the grave then we are at home with the Lord. In the second instance, he is affirming one of the great distinctive doctrines of Christianity, namely, that we are unified beings who will be saved, judged, and live forever as unified persons. We are not waiting to “shuffle off this mortal coil”--our bodies--so that we can be pure disembodied spirits as all Platonists, Gnostics, and New Agers erroneously believe. We would be miserable to be disembodied. Think of how emotionally damaged people become who they lose one or more limbs. Then think of how we would be affected by losing our entire bodies! No, we are not waiting to be “unclothed” but to receive our glorified bodies. There is no evidence, apart from this mistaken deduction, of any human beings existing apart from a body. Besides, when Lazarus is pictured in bliss, the rich man in torment asks for Lazarus to dip his finger in cool water and touch it to his tongue. So immediately after death, the rich man has a tongue and Lazarus has a finger (Luke 16:20-31).
This leads us to the second view of historic Christianity on the intermediate state. The reasoning goes: We cannot have disembodied Christian ghosts floating around in heaven awaiting the resurrection of their bodies for thousands of years, so there must be a temporary body which they are given by God until they get their glorified bodies. This sounds like a neat solution to a logical problem in theology except that not one Scripture verse anywhere mentions a temporary body in the so-called intermediate state. In addition, it places the damned in a sort of predamned state “before” the Great White Throne Judgment takes place, and it places the saved in an incomplete prerewarded state “before” the Bema Seat Judgment. Simply because a view is held by the most eminent theologians and is contained in various denominational documents does not make it true. It would be better to tear off the mask of certitude and boldly declare: “We do not know, because the Bible does not say!”
III. A PROPOSED SOLUTION, IF YOU LIKE
The longer I am in Christ the more dissatisfied I have become with simple answers to hard questions. But before I add my own unbelievable answer to this great problem, let me make clear that the exact details of the intermediate state are not a matter of orthodoxy. The fuzziness of Scripture on this matter means that we must accept that there will be a variety of convictions about it which must not be allowed to separate the Church for which Christ died. So please feel free to believe what you understand Scripture to say, because that is all God requires of you.
Now let us consider that a fundamental misconception has taken place of how earthly events relate to heavenly events. All of us have seen charts of redemptive history which plot events on earth and which show events in heaven on the same timeline. This is not possible. We have also assumed that our own personal timeline, should it be charted in the same way, would simply shift from earth to heaven and carry on. That is the fallacy of the intermediate state. We have mixed apples and oranges. The moment of death actually causes our existence in time and space to cease. We are then transferred to whatever God is choosing to do with time in heaven! No one knows for sure, but I like what Dr. Hugh Ross has conjectured, that since God is Master of Everything, he is master of time as well and so heaven is not timeless but timeful. He can run any and every timeline in any way he wants.
What that means is that there may be no intermediate state at all. We have always tried to keep counting time for a person after they are no longer on our timeline and have moved to the afterlife. So we worry about them waiting for the fulfillment of their salvation after a long delay even after death, when in fact there is no Biblical evidence for a delay. Into that presumed delay we have rammed purgatory, Dante’s Divine Comedy, soul sleep, disembodied souls, and temporary bodies--none of which are ever mentioned in Scripture.
I suggest to you that the reason that there is no data in Scripture about what happens during the supposed delay is that there is no delay for the individual. The believer leaves behind his or her earthly timeline at death and is transported to the events of full reception into heaven. Arthur Custance suggested that would mean that believers in the church age would be transported from the moment of death to the rapture, while unbelievers would be transported from the moment of death to the Great White Throne Judgment. I have no idea if this is true, but it is consistent with our masterful, glorious God and does not require us to manufacture any theological concepts. So when Paul writes “absent from the body...and at home with the Lord,” we will really be at home and not in a temporary waiting room!
CONCLUSION
The joyful thing is that we know what we need to know! The eternal destinies of all people divide over faith in Christ or lack of it. We go to our destinies immediately after death and there is no chance for revising them. The believers gain a wonderful body which is suited for an eternity of meaningful rejoicing and the unbelievers are raised in whatever form of body is suitable for everlasting punishment. If there is a so-called intermediate state, the Almighty God will run it in a way that all his promises to us come true in every respect. If there is not, then that will be according to his plan as well. I, for one, am glad that our destiny after death is in the hands of our Great God who will carry every believer through to their full inheritance with Christ in the heavenlies.
What about you? Are you confident of where you will go after you die? You can be! As the Apostle John wrote: “He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:12-13).