What happens between death and the resurrection?

Suffering, Evil & Hard QuestionsIn theological review

The short answer

Scripture teaches that those who die in Christ are with him immediately, consciously and in rest, while they await the resurrection of the body: to be away from the body, Paul says, is to be at home with the Lord. Jesus promised the dying thief that they would be together in paradise that day. The view called soul sleep, that the dead are unconscious until the resurrection, is stated fairly below, but the direct statements of Jesus and Paul point the other way.

The fuller answer

Start with a dying man's question and a dying King's answer. The thief crucified beside Jesus asked to be remembered when Jesus came into his kingdom. The reply was not about a distant age: truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. Whatever paradise is, Jesus locates it on the day of death, in his company, for a man whose body would be buried before sunset. Christians have rested the whole doctrine of the intermediate state largely on the weight of that one word, today, spoken by that one speaker.

And Jesus said to him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”

Luke 23:43 (BSB)

Paul, facing his own execution, wrote that he desired to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far, and elsewhere that to be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord. Departing and being with Christ are joined without any gap in his sentences. The consistent picture across his letters is presence, rest and worship, real but incomplete: a harbour reached in safety, before the final homecoming of the resurrection, when body and soul are reunited and the journey ends in a renewed world.

I am torn between the two. I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better indeed.

Philippians 1:23 (BSB)

Stephen, the first martyr, spent his last breath on the same confidence, praying for the Lord Jesus to receive his spirit as the stones fell. Revelation pictures the souls of martyrs under the altar, awake, speaking, asking how long until justice comes, and given white robes and told to rest a little longer. It is visionary language, but unconscious souls do not converse and receive robes in it. Paul comforts grieving Thessalonians by saying God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. Sleep, in his usage, describes death's appearance and softens its face for believers.

While they were stoning him, Stephen appealed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

Acts 7:59 (BSB)

The soul sleep view should be stated fairly. Its defenders note that Scripture repeatedly calls death sleep, that the dead are said to know nothing, and that all hope is fixed on the resurrection morning, which can make any interval feel instantaneous to the one who sleeps. Those texts are real, and the resurrection emphasis is right. But sleep is the Bible's picture language for death's appearance, while Jesus and Paul speak in plain prose of being with Christ immediately. Christians therefore wait for the resurrection awake in his presence, not extinguished in the dark.

Sources

Berean Standard Bible (BSB)

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What happens when we die?The Bible says we die once, and after that face judgment. For those who trust Christ, death is not the end or a long unconscious wait: Jesus told the dying thief, today you will be with me in Paradise. Beyond that lies what the whole story leans toward, resurrection of the body and a renewed world where death itself is finished.What is the resurrection of the body?The resurrection of the body is the Christian hope that God will raise the dead bodily at Christ's return, transforming the bodies of believers into imperishable, glorious bodies like Christ's own. It is not a soul escaping the body forever: it is the body redeemed. Paul devotes the longest chapter in his letters to it and stakes everything on it: if Christ has not been raised, he says, the faith is futile.What is heaven like?Heaven, in the Bible's final picture, is a renewed earth, not an escape from one: God dwelling with his people in a vast, garden like city, with death, mourning, crying and pain ended, and a river and a tree of life at its centre. Scripture holds two things together: Paul says no eye has seen what God has prepared, and Revelation still gives real pictures. They are pictures, stated plainly, of a real place.Do people get a second chance after death?No: Scripture presents death as the boundary after which comes judgment, with no second probation offered beyond it. Hebrews states the pattern in one line: people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment. Jesus's parable of the rich man and Lazarus pictures a great chasm fixed between the dead, across which no one passes. The Bible's urgency about today comes from exactly this conviction.Bible Character: JesusThe Son of God, born of Mary in Bethlehem, who preached the kingdom of God, was crucified for our sins according to the Scriptures, and was raised on the third day.Bible Character: PaulThe Pharisee who persecuted the church until the risen Jesus stopped him on the Damascus road, and who became his apostle to the Gentiles, travelling the Roman world and writing many of the New Testament letters.Bible Character: StephenThe first martyr of the church: one of the Seven chosen to serve the widows, full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, who traced Israel's history to the council's face, saw heaven opened, and died praying for his killers.