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 at least part of our ignorance is the result of not studying what the Scriptures teach us about this. “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens . . .” (2 Cor. 5:1-10).
As we discuss these issues, remember the nature of symbols, or figures that are possibly symbolic. A symbol is never greater than that which it is picturing. When a theological liberal says that he believes that hell is “symbolic,” he means to say that whatever it is should not be thought to be as bad as the word pictures we have been given. But if the word pictures are literal (e.g. lake of fire), then hell is really bad. If it is a symbolic word picture, then the reality symbolized by that word picture would be far worse. A ring is less than the marriage. A flag is less than the nation. A symbol of hell would be less than the real hell.
That said, we should make a few more distinctions about the afterlife than we usually do.
First there is Sheol. In the Old Testament era, everyone 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). Good, bad, or indifferent, everyone died and went to Sheol.
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 Hebrew Sheol is the Greek Hades.
We know that Hades was a divided Hades: 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 was a place of bliss—Abraham’s bosom. The place of torment was called by the ancients Tartarus, a name also used by Peter (2 Pet. 2:4). The good side was called Elysium by the Greeks, 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). Putting these two together, we see that Jesus was describing Paradise as being in the heart of the earth.
What about the Lord’s descent into Hades. According to the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord died and descended into hell [Hades]. This is based on a comment made by Peter (1 Pet. 3:18-20). In Old English, hell was closer to the idea of Hades. In modern English, hell refers to the place of final judgment. But those who say the Creed during the course of worship are not confessing that Jesus descended into the lake of fire. He did not suffer in hell — He preached in Hades. His suffering was completed on the cross.
So Gehenna is quite distinct from Hades. Gehenna is the term used in the New Testament for the final place of judgment—the lake of fire, or hell. The word comes from a garbage dump outside Jerusalem, in the valley of Ben Hinnom. Over time Ben Himmon slurred 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). So the image of the final judgment, the lake of fire, is an image that arose from an unclean place, a garbage dump, a landfill.
In the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, we see that Paradise ascended with Him. When Jesus rose from the dead, He consequently 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). Jesus descended into Paradise, but by the time of Paul, he was caught up into Paradise.
What about the New Jerusalem & the heavens? A common confusion identifies the imagery of the New Jerusalem with that of heaven, or the eternal state. For example—golden streets, pearly gates, etc. But this is an image of the Christian Church, not an image of heaven. The angel tells John — come, I will show the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And he showed Him the New Jerusalem. The Jerusalem above is the mother of us all in Galatians, meaning the Christian church. The New Jerusalem is not a literal city. It is a perfect cube (the shape of the Holy of Holies). It is 1200 stadia by 1200 stadia by 1200 stadia, which translates to a cube that extends 1500 miles in each direction. If literal, this would cover the eastern United States, and stick way out into outer space, knocking down space satellites. It is appropriate to take this imagery and apply it to the eternal state, provided we know what we are doing. The New Jerusalem is a glorious symbol of the Christian Church in her final eschtological glory and, remembering what we mentioned about symbols earlier, this means that the final heaven will be much deeper and richer than the symbol that we have of it in the Church. So in the restoration of all things through Christ, we find that Paradise has been taken up into the heavens—and this is where we Christians shall go when we die.
So then, back to the text in 2 Cor. 5. The point is not to tickle our ears with vain speculations. The point is to hear what the Bible says about where each of us shall be one hundred years from now. We have a heavenly body: if we come to die, we must do so with the assurance that in the resurrection we have an eternal body waiting (v. 1). We groan now, but this is not because we have bodies. Rather it is because we have fallen bodies (vv. 2,4). Being eternally “unclothed” is distasteful: Plato looked forward to having a “naked” soul. But St. 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 somehow 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. The apostle is less clear (to our minds) than we would perhaps like him to be. What is our bodily condition between the day of our death and the day of resurrection? There are various logical possibilities, about which I am still mostly agnostic — which I think is okay, given the paucity of biblical data. 1. we are disembodied the entire time, and no wonder that Paul recoiled from it. 2. we get some kind of rental body — Dollar, Avis, Budget, something like that. 3. soul sleep until the day of resurrection. I don’t buy this one. 4. the intersection of history and eternity is not something for which we have the math figured out, but when when we die we open our eyes and are immediately with the Lord at the day of resurrection.
Regardless, in this life, we are 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 always confident. 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. We are currently laboring for acceptance with Him, but we labor in faith (Eph. 2:8-10). Our work here must keep all these things in view (v. 9). This is because we know that how we have lived here and now will be brought under judgment (v. 10). And this drives us back to our understanding of justification, which is the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ — the only way any of could stand in that great day.