What happens after death?

What the Bible says

The Bible speaks of death on two levels: what happens at death, and what happens on the last day. First, death. When a man crucified beside Jesus asked, "Remember me when You come into Your kingdom," Jesus answered:

Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.

Luke 23:43

Paul speaks in the same way, torn between living and dying:

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

Phil 1:23

In 2 Corinthians he would "prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord" (2 Cor 5:8). For whoever dies in Christ, the New Testament's hope is to be with the Lord.

Yet the hope does not stop there. The final goal is not a soul rescued from the body but the resurrection of the body. Jesus said to Martha:

I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.

John 11:25-26

In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul compares the resurrection body to a seed.

What is sown is perishable; it is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.

1 Cor 15:42-44

The ground of this hope is that Christ was raised first. He is "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Cor 15:20). When the Thessalonians grieved over their dead, Paul comforted them:

For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, we also believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him.

1 Thess 4:14

Christians grieve too, but not "like the rest, who are without hope" (1 Thess 4:13).

Then there is judgment. Hebrews says that "man is appointed to die once, and after that to face judgment" (Heb 9:27). Jesus said that all who are in their graves 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" (John 5:28-29). What follows judgment is taken up in Are heaven and hell real?.

The church's witness

The church confessed this in its creeds. The Apostles' Creed ends with "the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting" The Apostles' Creed. The Nicene Creed closes by looking for "the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come" The Nicene Creed. Platonic philosophy saw the soul's release from the body as liberation, but the church insisted on the body's resurrection, because the whole person is saved. The Heidelberg Catechism begins in the same spirit: our only comfort in life and in death is that we belong, body and soul, to our faithful Saviour Jesus Christ Heidelberg Catechism, Q1.

On Philippians 1:23 Matthew Henry says of death: "to a true believer it is gain, for it is the end of all his weakness and misery" Matthew Henry. He notes that Paul's difficulty lay between two good things, living to Christ and being with him. On the penitent thief he warns against postponing repentance: "true repentance is never too late; but it is as certain that late repentance is seldom true" Matthew Henry.

How to describe the state between death and resurrection, however, Christians have not said with one voice. The main views are these.

First, Catholics, the Orthodox and most Protestants teach that the dead remain conscious while awaiting the resurrection. Protestants generally say that those who die in Christ are at once with the Lord, citing Philippians 1:23 and 2 Corinthians 5:8.

Second, within that frame the Catholic Church teaches that those who die in God's grace but not yet fully cleansed are purified in purgatory, and are already assured of salvation. The Orthodox pray for the departed but do not accept the Western doctrine of purgatory; Protestants generally reject it as not taught in Scripture.

Third, some Christians, including Seventh-day Adventists, understand the time between death and resurrection as "sleep," with no conscious experience, pointing to the way Scripture often calls the dead "those who sleep" (1 Thess 4:13).

These views differ, but they are confident of the same things: death is not the end, those in Christ are in his hands, and at the last come the resurrection of the body and a new creation. About the intermediate state Scripture does not tell us all we might wish, and that part may be left open.

In the original languages

The New Testament calls dead believers koimao (κοιμάω), those who have "fallen asleep" (1 Thess 4:14). Whether this means the soul sleeps without awareness or is a gentle way of speaking of bodily death is disputed. Either way, sleep implies waking.

In Philippians 1:23 Paul uses analyo (ἀναλύω) for "depart." Its root sense is "to loosen," and commentators note its use for a ship slipping its moorings or an army breaking camp. Death is pictured not as extinction but as departure, and the destination is "with Christ."

A third word is paradeisos (παράδεισος), "paradise." It comes from a Persian word for a garden, and in the Greek Old Testament it names the garden of Eden. Jesus' promise to the thief calls up that picture: not some vague elsewhere but being with him in God's garden.

Common objections

"Death is the end. Consciousness is brain activity, so when the brain stops, I am gone." This is the strongest objection. That brain states are deeply tied to consciousness is well established; damage to the brain can change personality and memory. Christianity does not deny this; Scripture sees a human being not as a soul housed in a body but as one embodied person, which is why its hope is the resurrection of the body and not only the soul's survival. Yet that consciousness is linked to the brain does not prove that the brain is all there is to it. That is a question of philosophical interpretation, not science, and thoughtful philosophers still argue about it. Christianity's ground for speaking of life after death is not philosophical reasoning but an event, the resurrection of Jesus. If death has been reversed even once, ‘death is the end’ is not a proven fact but an assumption. For this ground, see Did Jesus really rise from the dead?.

"Hope for an afterlife is only comfort born of the fear of death." This too has weight. People do fear death and long for consolation. But that a hope consoles does not show it is false. Scripture does not offer this hope cheaply: since it speaks of judgment, the teaching lays responsibility on us as well as comfort. A story made up by wishing would more naturally have left judgment out.

"Even if God exists, don't the Bible's descriptions of the afterlife differ?" In places they seem to. The Bible does not describe the intermediate state in detail, and Christian views divide on it. But the pictures point in one direction: being with Christ, the resurrection of the body, judgment, and a new creation. Uncertainty about details is not uncertainty about the core.

Going further

Death is a road everyone must walk, yet we avoid the subject. Scripture does not, but neither does it shut us up in fear. Paul's last word on the resurrection is not an explanation but thanks: "thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 15:57).

You might ask yourself: what feeling comes first when I think of death? If death is not the end, how would today's choices change? If I am grieving, what is the difference between grief with hope and grief without it?

To read further, see Are heaven and hell real?, Did Jesus really rise from the dead? and What is hope?. Reading 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4 slowly is also a good start.