Heaven Is Not Our Final Destination?: The Intermediate State, the Second Coming of Christ, and the Resurrection Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (104)

Recap of Last Two Weeks

We’re in the third week of a seven-week series on heaven.  The first week we looked at Luke 16 and the story of Lazarus and the rich man, where Jesus teaches about the finality of death, the reality of heaven and hell, and how the time to choose is now.  Once we die, our fate is fixed.

Last week we looked at Ecclesiastes 3 and how the monotonous flow of time is meant to lead us to God because he’s “put eternity in our hearts,” or that he’s put a sense of eternal things in us to tell us that this life isn’t all there is.  He created us to live for him, which is why we long for him.

Why did I do a sermon like that, a sermon not on heaven per se, but about how our longings point us to heaven?  Two reasons.  First, because I want to give you more than a factual overview about the place of heaven.  I want you to notice where God is already pointing you to heaven through your longings.  I want you to notice these longings so that they’ll push you toward God and toward eternal things so you won’t settle for the world’s cheap fixes.  Second, I want you to notice these things so you can use them in your evangelism, to be able to use people’s longings as a bridge into discussing God and eternal things.

Three Dominant Views about Life After Death

This week we’re going to move into what the Bible says about life after death, specifically for the Christian believer.  The culture has three dominant views about life after death, and none of them are anywhere close to the orthodox Christian view.

The first view the culture has is annihilationism, or the idea that when we die, we cease to exist.  This is the end result of a secular worldview: we came from nothing so we return to nothing.

The second view is the Eastern view, which could be reincarnation (Hinduism) or absorption back into the cosmos (Buddhism).  There are many varieties of these beliefs, but they’re all impersonal.  We don’t exist as persons after we die.  Rather, we’re either reborn into something else or we disappear like a drop in the ocean.  Either way, we lose our identity.

The third view is the spiritual or mystical view that we’ll exist in a disembodied state in a place of eternal bliss.  It’s a vague and hazy existence.  We’re floating in the clouds essentially enjoying a never-ending family reunion or worship service.  Millions of Christians believe this.

Another Option

None of these views inspire hope.  Rather, they inspire despair, fear, and boredom.  Is there another option?  There is, and unfortunately many Christians don’t know what it is.  Here’s my summary of what the Bible teaches about life after death for those who’re in Christ:

When a believer dies, their body goes into the ground and their spirit goes to Jesus where they will be until Jesus returns to the earth and their spirit is united with a new body at the resurrection of the dead, with which they will live forever in a resurrected universe with the resurrected Christ.

The Christian hope is resurrection!  Our ultimate goal is resurrection, but what happens when we die?  Are we resurrected immediately?

Our Spirits Live On

Let’s go back to my summary statement about what happens when a believer dies.  It starts like this: “When a believer dies, their body goes into the ground and their spirit goes to Jesus.”

Upon our death, our bodies die but our spirits live on.  We don’t cease to exist or go to sleep until the resurrection.  Our soul or spirit continues to exist.  What does the Bible say about what happens to our spirit when we die?

It doesn’t give us the detailed description we’d prefer, but it does make several things clear.  Let me read you several passages that speak to this, then summarize what we find.

Genesis 2:7, “Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”

Ecclesiastes 12:7, “The dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

Matthew 10:28, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

John 12:26, “If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also.”

Luke 23:43, “And he said to him, ‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’”

2 Corinthians 5:8, “Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”

Philippians 1:21-23, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.  If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me.  Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell.  I am hard pressed between the two.  My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”

Revelation 6:9, “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne.”

Revelation 20:4, “Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God.”

The Intermediate State

Here’s what we know for sure from these passages:

  1. The Hebrew word for “breath” in Genesis 2 (“nephesh”) is used almost 300 times in the Old Testament to refer to our soul, or the immaterial part of us, our consciousness, or heart, spirit, and mind. We’re “soulish creatures.”  We don’t have a soul but are a soul, or rather, an embodied soul.  Thus, if the material part of us dies, we don’t die.
  2. When our bodies die, our spirits go back to God (Eccl. 12:7).
  3. Our bodies can be killed, but our souls cannot die (Matt. 10:23; Rev. 6:9, 20:4).
  4. Believers will always be with the Lord (Jn. 12:26; cf. 1 Thess. 4:17, “so we will always be with the Lord.”). “Soul-sleep” isn’t possible because we’ll “always” be with Jesus.  There won’t be a long period of unconsciousness between life on earth and the resurrection.  And there’s no purgatory, or place where we go to be further refined and prepared for heaven.
  5. There is a place called “Paradise” where believers go when they die (Lk. 23:43). This is before the resurrection so it isn’t the New Earth.  We don’t know much about this place.  There’s debate about whether we’ll have some sort of physical body or whether it’ll be a physical place.  Paul says that there was a man (probably referring to himself) who “was caught up to the third heaven – whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows.  And I know that this man was caught up into paradise – whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows – and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter” (2 Cor. 12:2-4).  Paul isn’t sure if he went there with his body or not, so we should probably leave the question open as well.  However, in Revelation 2:7, Jesus says to John, “To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”  The presence of the tree of life in Paradise suggests that it could contain physical objects. The only thing we know for sure is that there’s at least one physical object there, the risen Lord Jesus.
  6. Being in Paradise is better than being on this earth. Paul says that when we die, we’ll be “away from the body” but “at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8), and that this is “far better” than life on this earth (Phil. 1:23).  In the intermediate heaven, we’ll see Jesus, interact with him, and enjoy his presence in ways we can’t enjoy now.

Not Our Final Destination

As sweet as it’ll be to be “at home with the Lord,” the intermediate state isn’t our ultimate hope or our final destination.  The intermediate state doesn’t actually solve the problem of death.  If eternity is us living in a disembodied state, then death, or the separation of our spirit from our bodies, wins.

But death will not win for the people of God.  As Jesus says, “Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment” (Jn. 5:28-29).

The ultimate hope for believers is resurrection, or what N. T. Wright called, “Life after life after death.”  Paradise will be wonderful but living with new bodies in the New Earth will far exceed the glory and sweetness of Paradise.  More on that in the next couple of weeks.

The Second Coming of Christ

But first we need to consider the next part of my summary statement about what happens to believers after death: “When a believer dies, their body goes into the ground and their spirit goes to Jesus where they will be until Jesus returns to the earth.”

Let’s spend a few moments considering the second coming of Jesus.  This is when Paradise will come to earth and when the resurrection will happen.

The second coming of Jesus and the final resurrection are, in my view, simultaneous events, so there’s a lot of overlap here.  Before we talk about the resurrection, let’s look briefly at one of the clearest passages of Scripture on the return of Jesus (1 Thess. 4:13-18).

The main thing I want us to notice here is in verse 14.  When Jesus returns, he will “bring with him those who have fallen asleep.”

When Jesus returns, he’ll be bringing his family with him, all the souls who’ve been with him in Paradise waiting for the redemption of their bodies (Rom. 8:23).

One of the implications from this text is that our hope isn’t just that Jesus will return, but that when he comes he’ll be bringing the Christian dead with him.  God didn’t abandon Jesus in death and he won’t abandon Christians in death either.  He’ll raise them just as he raised him.  He’ll bring them back to the earth when Jesus comes back to the earth.

The Final Resurrection

What happens when the Christian dead come back to the earth with Jesus?  Let’s look at the end of my summary statement: “When a believer dies, their body goes into the ground and their spirit goes to Jesus where they will be until Jesus returns to the earth and their spirit is united with a new body at the resurrection of the dead.”

When Jesus returns, bringing “those who’ve fallen asleep” with him, their spirits will be united with a new body.  In other words, resurrection is what happens!

This is what we see at the end of verse 16, “The dead in Christ will rise first.”  Paul fills this out a little more in 1 Corinthians 15:50-57.

Verse 52 says that “the dead will be raised imperishable.”  Then verse 53, “For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.”

The dead will be raised to life, meaning that their spirit will unite once again with their body, but this time it’ll be an imperishable and immortal body.  Paul says a bit more about these resurrection bodies in verses 42-44.  In verse 49 he says that our new body will like Jesus’ resurrection body.

John says that “when he appears we shall be like him” (1 Jn. 3:2).  And Paul says, “(The Lord Jesus Christ) will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (Phil. 3:21).

When believers die, we go to be with Jesus in Paradise where we’ll wait for his return and the resurrection.  This is the biblical view of life after death for those who’re in Christ.

So What?

The point of this sermon, and this series, isn’t to give you facts, but to give you hope.  Paul says that we’re supposed to “encourage one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4:18).  What do we need more than hope?

One of the great hope-killers is the reality of death, the great enemy we all have to face.  No matter how old you are, there’s a lot of death in your future.  How will you face it with courage and hope?  How will you face this great enemy?

In a sermon on 1 Thessalonians 4, Tim Keller talks about the two ways people face death.[1]  He says some face it the stoic way.  This way acknowledges that death is terrible and there will be anger and grief, but this way says there’s no point in giving into these emotions.

Then there’s the modern secular way to face death.  This way denies that there’s anything horrible about death.  It says that death is natural and so nothing to be afraid of.  You simply lose consciousness and return to the earth.

There was a little boy whose cousin died and he was talking to his mother about it.  She didn’t believe in God or an afterlife, so she said, “Your cousin has gone back into the earth from which he came.  Death is a natural part of the cycle of life.  So when you see the earth putting forth new flowers next Spring you can know that your cousin is fertilizing those flowers.”  The little boy looked at her and screamed, and said, “I don’t want him to be fertilizer!” and ran out of the room.

The woman had suppressed the natural intuition that death is unnatural, but her son hadn’t.  He still understood that death was unnatural and he was angry about it.

Like this boy, we understand that death isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.  Far closer to what we feel about death is what the poet Dylan Thomas said, “Do not go gentle into that good night.  Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.”[2]

Rage Against Death

Why do we rage against death?  Because it takes from us the most important things in our lives.  Love relationships are the best part of our lives, but death takes from us all those we love and then takes us from those we love.

And we rage against death because we’re uncertain about what happens after we die.  We dread the undiscovered country that we’re headed into (Heb. 2:14-15).  We’re not afraid that death is the end, but that it’s the beginning.  Of what we don’t know.

We should rage against and grieve death.  Remember Jesus at Lazarus’ tomb in John 11?  He’s weeping (v. 35), and he was furious, or “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” (v. 33).  Why would he be furious?  Because as God he knows that death isn’t natural, that it’s not part of his original design.  He knows, as we all do, that we were made to last, to grow stronger and wiser and deeper and more beautiful forever, not to shrivel and get weaker and go away.  He knows that we weren’t made to lose the people we love, we were made to keep them.

Jesus isn’t doing what the stoic or the secular person does.  He doesn’t shut down his emotions but expresses them.  And he doesn’t say, “This is just what happens in the world.”  He’s weeping, frustrated, angry, even outraged over the sickness and death that generates so much sorrow in this fallen world.

But he’s not grieving like Mary and those with her.  They’re grieving with no hope because they don’t understand resurrection.  It’s understandable to grieve over death, but, as D. A. Carson says, “Grief that degenerates to despair, that pours out its loss as if there were no resurrection, is an implicit denial of that resurrection.”[3]

The Christian hope is resurrection.  Like Paul said, we’re supposed to grieve, but not like those without hope.  Hope of what?  Hope of resurrection.

Tim Keller illustrates it like this: In the past, you rubbed salt into your meat so that your meat didn’t go bad.  Like that we need to rub hope into our grief so our grief doesn’t go bad.  Shutting down our emotions and not grieving isn’t right.  It’s not good for you and it’s not what Jesus did.

But you don’t just give into your grief either and let it destroy you.  You rub hope into your grief so that instead of becoming more anxious and more angry you become stronger, wiser, more compassionate, and deeper.

Where Is Hope Found?

What hope do we rub into our grief?  Hope of resurrection and hope that those who die in Christ aren’t dead but still living, that they’re in Paradise and will one day be resurrected.

Where do we get this hope?  It’s in the text we looked at earlier, 1 Thessalonians 4:14, “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again.”  This is the irreducible core of the gospel, the message of hope.  Jesus died “for us” (5:10) so that we can be saved from his judgment (v. 9) and live with him forever (v. 10).

But he didn’t stay dead.  He rose again, defeating death, blowing a hole through the back of death, so that everyone who follows him will follow him out of death and into resurrection.

[1]Much of this section is based on Keller’s sermon: Hope in the Face of Death – Gospel in Life.

[2]Quoted in N. T. Wright, Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 10.

[3]D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 416.