We know that in His death, Jesus Christ conquered death. This was obviously in concert with His resurrection from the dead, but Scripture speaks of Christ’s death having a singular power over death as well. “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14). In other words, Jesus conquered the devil, the lord of death, by His death. This liberates those of us who have faith in Christ, and it liberates us from the fear of death, as this passage puts it.
But fear and curiosity are not the same thing. All of us will die, and all of us know very little about what happens at death. Our knowledge of the greatest journey we will ever undertake is lamentably sketchy. Some of this is obviously because of the nature of the case — death is a great barrier — but part of our ignorance is the result of not carefully looking at what the Scriptures tell us about this.
There are several things we have to keep in mind as we consider what it is like to die. As Christian disciples, we are following Christ in His death. If we have been baptized, Paul argues, we have been baptized into His death, which means we are also united with Him in His resurrection. If you are a baptized Christian with true evangelical faith, this means that your entire life is united with Christ. It is not just an internal, essential “you” that is united to Him, but your life is united with His. This means that your death is taken up into His death, and this means that you will rise with Him as well. The Christian hope is the resurrection of the dead in history, not an abstract hope that the soul will float around in some immortal zone. When we die before the end of the world, we do have to figure out what the Bible says about the interim state, but it is a deadly error to make that interim, intermediate state the final Christian hope. Our final hope is the resurrection of the dead, not “going to heaven when we die.”
That said, there are a few other things to remember as we talk about how Scripture describes life after death. As we discuss these issues, we must remember the nature of symbols, or figures that are possibly symbolic. A symbol is never greater than that which it is picturing. Sometimes liberals used to dismiss the biblical teaching on Hell by saying that the “language is undoubtably symbolic.” Granted, but which is less, the wedding ring or the marriage it symbolizes? Clearly, the marriage is the greater reality. Which is greater, the flag or the nation it represents? Clearly, the nation is the greater reality. I am quite prepared to acknowledge that the image of a “lake of fire” in Revelation may well be symbolic. If it is not, the Hell is a terrible reality. If the lake of fire is a symbol, then the reality of Hell is far worse. Figurative language (which undoubtably is used in the Bible on this general subject) should not be taken as some kind of dilution agent. Figurative language is given to us in order to explain, not to explain away.
All right, then. What does the Bible say about life after death? In the Old Testament era, everyone — good, bad, and indifferent — expected to die and go to Sheol, a netherworld of departed spirits. The godly expected to go there (Ps. 139:8), and the ungodly wind up there (Prov. 9:18). Sheol was conceived of as being down, somewhere under our feet. The rebels against Moses fell alive into Sheol (Num. 16:30-32), and the shade of Samuel came up out of Sheol (1 Sam. 28:13-14). The witch of Endor saw “gods ascending out of the earth.”
In the New Testament, the word used to translate Sheol is the Greek word Hades. For example, “Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell [Hades], neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” (Acts 2:27). This is a quotation from Psalm 16:10, where the word is Sheol. The common understanding of that time was also that this place was subterranean. Plato thought he knew where the gates heading down to Hades were. It was, in their cosmology, the kind of place you could wind up in if you got way lost in Carlsbad Caverns. Jesus said that He was going to be in the heart of the earth (Matt. 12:40). The common modern misunderstanding of Sheol/Hades as nothing more than “the grave” has a problem here. We are told clearly that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow — in heaven, on earth, and under the earth (Phil. 2:10).
In common with other ancients, the biblical writers saw Hades as divided. Christ told us the story of Lazarus and the rich man, both of them in Hades (Luke 16:19-31). The one side was a place of torment (v.23), while the other compartment across the chasm was a place of bliss — called Abraham’s bosom by the Jews. Note that Abraham, an Old Testament saint, was in Hades. The place of torment was called by the ancients Tartarus, a name used once by Peter (2 Pet. 2:4). The good side was called Elysium, a name not found in Scripture, but the Lord apparently called it Paradise. He said that He would spend three days and nights in the heart of the earth (Matt. 12:40), and He also told the thief on the cross that he would be with Him that day in Paradise (Luke 23:42). So Paradise, or Abraham’s bosom, were in Hades, but were a place of bliss for those who died in faith.
The Apostles’ Creed teaches us that Christ descended into Hades. This is quite biblical, being based on a comment made by Peter (1 Pet. 3:18-20). God did not abandon the Messiah to Hades, which meant that He was there for a time (Ps. 16). But this is where many moderns start to get confused, because many translations of the Creed say that He descended into Hell. It is an unnecessary confusion — our word Hell came from the word hel, which for our Teutonic forefathers was basically the same as Hades. But in modern English Hell has come to mean the final judgment, the lake of fire. But this is not the same as Hades — in the book of Revelation, death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire. Hades and Hell are therefore distinct.
The biblical word for the final judgment is Gehenna. This is the term used in the New Testament for the the lake of fire, the outer darkness, or Hell. The word comes from a garbage dump outside Jerusalem, in the valley of Ben Hinnom (which morphed gradually into Gehenna). This had been the location of Molech worship until Josiah desecrated it. It became a place of worms and burning fires (Mark 9:44), and from that into a striking and terrifying image of the final exclusion of the damned from the presence of God.
Now we have to understand that the death and resurrection of Christ transformed the cosmological landscape in significant ways. In the first place, at the resurrection, Paradise was removed from its subterranean place of blissful twilight a nd transferred to the heavens. When Christ rose from the dead, He held the keys of both death and Hades (Rev. 1:18). By His ascension, He transferred Paradise up into the heavens. We see this in Paul’s account (2 Cor. 12:4; cf. Rev. 2:7). By the time of Paul, he was caught up into Paradise. This shift is likely referred to in the cryptic comment Paul makes in Ephesians. “Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men. (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.)” (Eph. 4:8-10). I take the descent into “the lower parts of the earth” as referring to His descent into Hades, making it the counterweight to His ascension into heaven. And when He ascended into heaven, He led captivity captive — all the Old Testament saints who had died looking forward to His coming were transferred to the heavens along with Him. There is one strange comment near the end of Matthew that this understanding might help explain. It appears that quite a number of Old Testament saints rose along with Jesus, and before the Ascension took the opportunity to go into town to say hey to some old friends (Matt. 27:52-52).
Then there is the small matter of the pearly gates and golden streets. A common confusion identifies the imagery of the New Jerusalem with that of Heaven, or the eternal state. But the Bible is very clear that the New Jerusalem is an image of the Christian Church on earth, both now in our struggles and at the final day when the resurrection of the dead has occurred, and the Bride is without spot or wrinkle, or any such blemish. The New Jerusalem descends down out of heaven, but should not be identified with heaven. This heavenly Jerusalem is the Church, the mother of us all (Gal. 4:26), is built on the mountain that cannot be touched but within which we worship every Lord’s Day (Heb. 12:22-24), and is called the Bride, the Wife of the Lamb (Rev.21:9-10). The Church is the Bride, the Wife of the Lamb. Christ is not married to Heaven, but is the Bridegroom of the Church.
So in the restoration of all things through Christ, we find that the Paradise for Old Testament saints has been taken up into the heavens, and this is where we Christians shall go when we die. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:6-8). But our time in the heavens with the Lord is the interim state, because it is God’s intent to bring it all back here, to raise the dead and establish His final glorious kingdom. And so we shall always be with the Lord, not standing awkwardly on a cloud, but living on a restored and glorified earth.
Now the point of all this is not to tickle our ears with vain speculations. The point is to hear what the Bible says about where we shall be one hundred years from now (2 Cor. 5:1-10). We have a heavenly body: if we come to die, we must do so with the assurance that we have an eternal body waiting for us (v. 1). We groan now: but this is not because we have bodies, but rather because we have fallen bodies (vv. 2,4). The idea of being eternally “unclothed” is distasteful to all biblically-minded Christians. Plato looked forward to having a “naked” or “disembodied” soul. But Paul shuddered at the idea (v. 3). We know from other places of Scripture that we will not receive our final body until the day of resurrection. This means that when we die we will be “disembodied,” or, to use Paul’s metaphor, “unclothed.” This distasteful temporary condition has its great compensation, as we will see, in the presence of the Lord. This is why, even given this reluctance to be “unclothed” in this way, Paul can still say that he would rather depart and be with Christ (Phil. 1:23). In other words, he delights in the interim state, but he constantly looks forward to the resurrection beyond it. “Who shall cahnge our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body” (Phil. 3:21). In short, Paul is not distracted or diverted from the final blessed hope in the same way that many modern Christians have been. We have been given the earnest of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not lead us to an ethereal realm; rather, He is the one who guarantees that we will have a body forever (v. 5). Because of this, we are confident all the time, in two ways. In this world, having bodies, we walk by faith and not by sight (vv. 6-7). At the same time we know that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (v. 8). This is what happens when we die — we go to be with Him. And when we are with Him, we will continue to long for our return to earth, along with Him. We labor for acceptance; our work here must keep these things in view (v. 9). This is because we know that how we have lived in the here and now will be brought under judgment (v. 10). And this drives us back to our understanding of justification, and our longing for final vindication.