One of the biggest problems in modern Christianity is an extreme either-or mentality. We lack balance, straying from one ditch to the other. Consider the Christian’s relationship with the Law. Some will say we must keep the whole law slavishly and seek part of our salvation in it (legalism), while others reject it entirely and say God doesn’t care if we keep His commands as long as we have Jesus (license). Both views miss the point.
Most arguments that the Law isn’t relevant today start with Paul. But Paul’s letters contain things “hard to understand” which people who aren’t well-grounded in the entirety of scripture can “twist to their own destruction” (2 Pet. 3:15-16). When we’re going to study a complex subject like this, we have to start somewhere more straight-forward. I can think of nowhere better than words directly from Jesus’ own lips.
Using The Law Rightly
When Jesus came to this earth, He didn’t tell people He was done with the Law. Instead, He said, “I did not come to destroy but to fulfill” (Matt. 5:17). This word, pleroo (G4137), means to fill to the fullest extent. Or, as Thayer’s says, “to cause God’s will (as made known in the law) to be obeyed as it should be, and God’s promises (given through the prophets) to receive fulfillment.” Read more →
We talk quite often about how we ought to live our lives as Christians — the things we should and should not do, which laws we must keep, the characteristics of Jesus Christ that should show up in our lives. We also talk about what motivates this way of living. If our hearts aren’t right, the outward stuff doesn’t matter. God cares about why we do what we do as much (or more) as He cares about our actions.
The “why” is connected with how we view God. Are we obeying His rules because we see Him as an intimidating authority figure, or because we respect Him as Creator? Do we follow Jesus because of what we hope to get out of being Christian, or because we love Him and trust that He wants what’s best for us?
Those questions are concerned with how God relates to us. Beyond that is the question of how we view God as Himself. God is the self-existent One who inhabits eternity. We often think of Him in terms of how He relates to humanity, but there’s far more to Him than that. How should we view God simply because He is God?
In Hebrew, the word translated glory and honor in the verses we’ll cover literally means “to be heavy.” It’s not an abstract or subjective concept. There’s substance behind the honor and glory discussed in the Bible. Kabod (H3519) and the related word kabad (H3513) are used figuratively of an honorable social position backed-up with a “weightiness of character.” This makes the recipient of glory worthy of that honor (TWOT entry 943). Read more →
A couple weeks ago, I read a blog post that stated emotions can’t be sins. They just are, and how we act on them determines whether or not we’re sinning. The example they used was anger. For proof, they cited all the times God is described as angry. Because God is incapable of sin, this demonstrates that anger can’t be inherently sinful.
I knew the verses they were talking about, but just out of curiosity I ran a word search to see how often God is described as angry. 208 verses. That’s out of 268 verses in the KJV containing the word anger in any context. Anger is only used 60 times that it’s not in reference to God, and this isn’t even counting words like fury and wrath.
Wow. That’s far more than I’d expected. The sheer number of verses wasn’t the only interesting thing, though. There’s also a marked difference in how the Bible talks about God’s anger and human anger. God’s anger is always righteous, ours not so much. Read more →
One of the most uncomfortable aspects of modern Christianity is the idea of hell. The common notion is that those who aren’t following God (including those who reject Him and those who never knew Him) miss-out on their chance at salvation and are tormented forever in a burning place. Few want to talk about it, many have rejected it, but most don’t agree on an alternative. It’s something Christianity must address, though.
What happens after death for the people who are not followers of Jesus?
For believers, the question “What happens when we die?” has clear answers in scripture. We’re not sure exactly what life in God’s family will be like, but we know that we’ll either be resurrected from the dead (if we died before Jesus’s return) or transformed into spirit beings (if we’re still alive at His return). At that point, “we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is” (1 John 3:2, NET). For other people, things are a bit more ambiguous.
My purpose today isn’t to give a definitive answer, but rather to look at some different readings of scriptures talking about eternal judgement. There are some things we can say with a fairly high degree of certainty, but there are others that I just don’t know the answers to (and I’d rather acknowledge that than take a stance that I’m not reasonably confident lines up with God’s revealed word).
What is “hell”?
The word “hell” is used in the Bible, but not with the same connotation we have for it in English. Western ideas of hell come from Medieval imagery (think Dante’s Inferno). Most uses in the New Testament, though, are translated from the Greek word ghenna. When people of Jesus’s time heard this word they didn’t think of a burning place with a pitchfork-toting devil where eternal souls writhed in torment. They thought of Ghenna–a rubbish heap outside Jerusalem “where the filth and dead animals … were cast out and burned,” which is “a fit symbol of the wicked and their future destruction” (Thayer’s dictionary G1087).
Strong’s dictionary does describe ghenna as a place of “everlasting punishment,” but that imagery wasn’t originally in the Greek language. As we talked about last week, the Bible doesn’t teach humans have immortal souls. Immortality can only come to us as a gift of God, and unless He grants the gift of eternal life we won’t be around for everlasting anything, including torment.
Another word translated “hell” in English Bibles is hades (G86), which originally referred to the Greek god of the underworld but came to mean the grave in general. There’s also one other mention of “hell” in in the New Testament that’s translated from tartaroo (G5020), which was considered a place of eternal torment. The only time it’s used is in 2 Peter 2:4,where it talks about God casting “the angels who sinned … into hell” (NET). Other than that, when we look at what the Bible says about hell, we have to check each verse to see whether it’s talking about hades (the grave) or ghenna (a burning place of destruction).
While the Bible does speak of a burning lake of fire, it doesn’t talk about humans staying there nor going there instantly when they die. After people die, the prevailing Biblical description is that they’ve fallen asleep and are awaiting the resurrection (John 11:11-13; 1 Cor. 15:6, 18, 31; 1 Thes. 4:13-15; 5:10; 2 Pet. 3:4; Dan. 12:2; and many others). Some people — the “firstfruits” that we discussed in last week’s post– will be raised from the dead to eternal life at Jesus Christ’s second coming. The rest of the dead stay asleep until a second resurrection.
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A Second Resurrection
We don’t actually get a whole lot of information about what happens after the first resurrection and the Millennial reign described in Revelation 20:1-6. We are told in the description of the first resurrection that “The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were finished” (Rev. 20:5, NET). Skipping to the end, we read this:
Then I saw a large white throne and the one who was seated on it; the earth and the heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne. Then books were opened, and another book was opened—the book of life. So the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to their deeds.The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each one was judged according to his deeds. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death—the lake of fire. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, that person was thrown into the lake of fire.
Revelation 20:11-15, NET
At this point in the future, “the devil who deceived them” has already been “thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet are too, and they will be tormented there day and night forever and ever” (Rev. 20:10, NET). That’s the only mention of eternal torment, though. The people who follow the devil die in the “second death.” They’ll be consumed, burned-up like the rubbish thrown in ghenna.
Death as the punishment for sin fits with God’s warnings to humanity from the very beginning (Gen. 2:15-17; 3:2-3). God’s message is consistent throughout scripture. If you follow His way, then you will live. If you do not, then you are choosing death.
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your descendants, to love Yahweh your God, to obey his voice, and to cling to him; for he is your life, and the length of your days.
Deuteronomy 30:19-20, WEB
This message continues through the old and new testaments. Sin leads to death, but following God results in life (Rom. 6:22-23; 8:5-7; 2 Cor. 2:15-16; 1 John 3:14). God doesn’t control or manipulate us with the threat of everlasting punishment. He sets two very simple choices before us: life forever with Him, or permanent death.
Note: you could argue my reading of everlasting punishment using verses like Matthew 25:41-46 and Mark 9:42-48. For Matthew 25, I would say that just because the fire is everlasting doesn’t mean the people cast in it stay alive, and that the phrase “everlasting punishment” can just as easily be read “punishment that is irreversible” (because they die in the second death, which fits with Rev. 20:15). For Mark 9, where “hell” is translated from ghenna, I really don’t know what the phrase “worm does not die” means. The Hebrew and Greek both refer to maggots/grubs such as would eat dead flesh, which doesn’t make much sense to me with either interpretation–if the people die, why don’t the worms? and if the people don’t die, why does it say “worm does not die” instead of something like “soul does not die”?
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Readings on Judgement
Last week I spent quite a bit of time talking about N.T. Wright’s teachings on the resurrection. He has comparatively little to say about hell, though. He goes through the Medieval hell symbolism and meaning of Gehenna (p. 177-178), mentions that while final judgement was accepted as part of God’s plan it wasn’t widely discussed in the epistles (p. 177), and covers different modern views on hell (p. 178). What he does state is that “God is utterly committed to set the world right in the end,” and that means there will be no people in His future world who worship “that which is not God as if it were” and who fail “fully to reflect the image of God” (p. 179).
God will condemn evil, and Wright thinks that those who reject God will “cease to bear the divine image at all” and continue to “exist in an ex-human state” (p. 182-183). That, however, ignores his own teaching that people do not inherently have immortal souls and doesn’t address what the Bible says about the lake of fire. I do, however, like the way Wright speaks of a “final condemnation for those who, by their idolatry, dehumanize themselves and drag others down with them” (p. 180). We know God doesn’t desire that any perish (1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9), but there will be people who end up in the lake of fire and this seems a good way of summing up their condition.
The Churches of God that I’ve attended with most of my life venture into more specifics about the final judgement. Their main teachings are well represented in United Church of God’s booklet “What Happens After Death?” In brief, it goes like this: Those who are not the firstfruits will be resurrected to physical life after the Millennium and given a chance to understand God’s word. After a period of time (some say 100 years) they’ll be judged and the ones who’ve refused to repent will die in the lake of fire. The others will live on in God’s kingdom.
This teaching holds great hope, as well as relief for our worries about people who have not yet committed their lives to Jesus. It also relieves us of a sense of urgency to convert people before they die because we believe there’s a time in the future when they’ll be given the chance to know Him. If they aren’t saved in this life, they’ll have an opportunity to escape eternal death in the second resurrection.
There are a few things that this interpretation doesn’t explain, though. One thing that has to do more with implications than accuracy is that lack of urgency to convert people. We know that God is the one who chooses whether to call someone and open their eyes, and that those who do not choose Him now will have an opportunity in the second resurrection. But we should still care about sharing His word with people today. We’re supposed to be like God, and since He “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” that should be our desire as well (1 Tim. 2:4, NET).
The time frame of this judgment is also in question. Romans 2:1-16 indicates that all will be judged based on their actions in this life. It talks of God exercising abundant mercy towards those who didn’t know Him and yet lived good lives, but there’s also the promise of “wrath and anger to those who live in selfish ambition and do not obey the truth but follow unrighteousness” (Rom. 2:8, NET). Yet if people are judged as soon as the books are opened in Rev. 20:12, what about the babies, children, and others who never had a chance to do works by which they could be judged? God’s mercy, justice, and love seems to demand they be given a chance to know Him, which implies a time-gap between resurrection and judgement but that is not explicit in the scripture.
I don’t have all the answers. What I do know is that, in the years after Jesus’s original apostle’s death, Christian religion generally adopted a terrifying version of God who tortures unbelievers in hell for all eternity. Even if we don’t understand everything about God’s final plan for those who don’t know Him now, it is time to recapture a vision of God that is more consistent with how He reveals Himself as One who is love, justice, and mercy.
His justice demands recompense for sin, but He also has no desire that anyone perish (or suffer forever) and He will be merciful to everyone. For some, this mercy involves granting salvation because they come to repentance and follow Him with a pure heart. For others, that mercy involves letting them die the final, second death because they can’t be allowed to continue in rebellion against Him. That’s a God we can trust, One Who will keep His promises to reward those who follow Him with life and those who persist in disobedient rebellion with death.
Another thing I think we can say for certain is that it’s best to follow God now if we have that option, not to wait for what seems like a second-chance in the future. The firstfruits do receive a greater reward. If you are faithful to God, He will be faithful to reward you according to His promises. That’s what the church should be teaching–not threatening people with “you’ll burn in hell” but rather encouraging them to pursue God and take hold of the “better promises” and the “better resurrection” that comes with following Him now (Heb. 8:6; 11:35, WEB).
Christians and non-Christians alike typically assume that our religion teaches good Christians go to heaven when they die and bad people, or those who’ve never given their lives to Jesus, go to hell. As more and more Biblical scholars, Christian churches, and individual believers are realizing, though, this isn’t the most accurate picture of what the Bible teaches regarding life after death.
I grew up in churches that taught the resurrection. It’s straight out of the scriptures, but I hadn’t come across other churches teaching something similar until reading a book called Desiring the Kingdom by Catholic theologian James K.A. Smith. In this book, Smith made a comment about Christians not really going to heaven when they die and footnoted it with three book suggestions for further reading. I could only locate one book from that list in the library: Surprised by Hope by New Testament scholar and Anglican bishop N.T. Wright.
Wright’s powerful exegesis on the meaning of the resurrection is inspiring and some of the thoughtful, well-researched ways he diverged from my church’s traditional teachings made me realize there are alternative explanations for a few difficult scriptures that deserve a second look. I also admire his style. Instead of telling people “You’re wrong,” he says, “We’ve been misinformed, and here’s the more wonderful plan God has for us.” That’s what I want to focus on today. The deeper our understanding of what God is actually planning for us, the firmer our hope and faith becomes.
What Happens When We Die?
The idea that human beings have immortal souls does not come from the Bible, It traveled into Christian theology from Greek philosophy, specifically Plato (see “Plato’s Shadow” by Gary Petty for more details). The Bible teaches that God “alone possesses immortality” (1 Tim. 6:16, NET). Immortality is not something inherent to humans. We didn’t even have a chance at eternal life until Jesus Christ broke “the power of death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel!” (2 Tim. 1:10, NET).
In Hebrew thought and New Testament theology, the soul refers “not to a disembodied entity hidden within the outer shell of a disposable body, but rather to what we would call the whole person or personality” (Wright, p. 28). In Hebrew, the word translated “soul” is nephesh (H5315). It refers to a living thing with breath (Thayer’s Dictionary).
Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed (naphach) into his nostrils the breath (neshamah) of life; and man became a living soul (nephesh).
Genesis 2:7, WEB
The New Testament does talk about different parts of a human. We have a body — the soma , which is fleshy, physical, and “that which casts a shadow” (Thayer G4983). We have a soul — psuche , the vital force of life and personality (G5590). And we have a spirit — pneuma , the “rational spirit, the power by which the human being feels, thinks, decides” (Thayer G4151). The three can’t really be separated in any useful way, though; they all go together to make us human beings in the image of God.
Now may the God of peace himself make you completely holy and may your spirit (pneuma) and soul (psuche) and body (soma) be kept entirely blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Thessalonians 5:23, NET
So, we are human bodies that God created from dust and breathed into, making us living beings with spirits that can communicate with His Spirit. Ecclesiastes says that, at death, “the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Ecc. 12:7, WEB). Wright believes that this spirit is conscious while awaiting the bodily resurrection, but I lean more toward my church’s traditional teaching that this isn’t the case.
While there are a couple verses hinting at the possibility of consciousness after death (Luke 16:19-31; Rev. 6:9-10), the bulk of scripture compares death to sleep (John 11:11-13; 1 Cor. 15:6, 18, 31; 1 Thes. 4:13-15; 5:10; 2 Pet. 3:4; Dan. 12:2; and many others). Furthermore, “in death there is no memory of you” (Ps. 6:5, WEB), “the dead don’t praise Yah” (Ps. 115:17, WEB), and ” the dead don’t know anything” (Ecc. 9:5, WEB). Two scriptures–one in a parable and one in Revelation– that aren’t necessarily clear/straightforward do not seem to be enough evidence to counter the many, many other scriptures describing the dead as unconscious and sleeping.
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For The Firstfruits
Eternal life is a gift God promises to those who follow Him now, in this life (we’ll save those who don’t for a follow-up post next week). The promises to believers are spelled out clearly in scripture, and nowhere more clearly than in 1 Corinthians 15. Here in the resurrection chapter, Paul reminded the Corinthians that he declared to them the gospel: “that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to” the apostles and hundreds of other believers (1 Cor. 15:3-5, NET). Jesus’s resurrection is central to the gospel message.
Paul then addressed a group of people who didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead. He stated in no uncertain terms that if there is no resurrection the gospel is empty, and “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is useless; you are still in your sins. Furthermore, those who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished” (1 Cor. 15:17-19, NET). There is no alternative. Either there’s a resurrection of the dead or we have no hope at all; physical death would be permanent.
Paul spent the next few verses talking about how and when we’ll be raised. N.T. Wright summed up the “how” by saying, “the risen Jesus is both the model for the Christian’ future body and the means by which it comes about” (p. 149). The “when” for the resurrection of faithful believers is Jesus Christ’s second coming (1 Thes. 4:13-18; 1 Cor. 15:23). This resurrection is for “the firstfruits”–a select group of people who actively, faithfully followed God during their physical lives. It’s not enough to verbally accept Jesus as your savior; we also have to live like Christians. And so the resurrection chapter also includes the injunction not to be deceived or corrupted, but rather “Sober up as you should, and stop sinning!” (1 Cor. 15:34. NET).
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A Bodily Resurrection
Paul anticipated one question that many will have about the resurrection when he said, “But someone will say, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?'” (1 Cor. 15:35, NET). It’s an understandable question, especially today given the confusion about what “soul” actually means. The short answer is given by John: “we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is.” (1 John 3:2, NET). When we’re resurrected, it will be to an existence like God’s.
Paul addresses this question in more depth. He likens our bodies now to “a bare seed” sown in a field with the expectation that it will grow into a mature, flourishing plant (1 Cor. 15:37, NET).We currently have a “natural body” that bears the image of the first human being that God breathed into and made a living being. Those who rise from the dead in the first resurrection will have a “spiritual body” that bears the image of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:42-49).
It is the same with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is 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. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.
In Greek, the words “natural” and “spiritual” are psychikos and pneumatikos. Wright points out that “Greek adjectives ending in -ikos describe not the material out of which things are made but the power or energy that animates them” (p. 155, emphasis in original). We currently have a body animated by the human soul. We will have a body “animated by God’s pneuma, God’s breath of new life, the energizing power of God’s new creation” (p. 156).
When Jesus rose from the dead, people could touch Him (John 20:27) and eat with Him (John 21:9-13). He told them, “Look at my hands and my feet; it’s me! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones like you see I have” (Luke 24:39, NET). Though He could appear in the middle of a locked room or vanish from sight (Luke 24:30-31, 36), Jesus wasn’t a ghost or a disembodied spirit. His spiritual body was something more than His physical one.
We’re not waiting for an escape from the body, but rather “the redemption of our bodies” (Rom. 8:23, NET). We long “to put on our heavenly dwelling … because we do not want to be unclothed, but clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Cor. 5:1-5, NET). We’re not waiting to go to heaven when we die — we’re waiting for Christ to come down from heaven to raise His people from their sleep of death and transform us all to have a spiritual life and body like His (1 Cor. 15:51-58). And it doesn’t end there!
Blessed and holy is the one who takes part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.
Revelation 20:6, NET
We don’t have a ton of information about what happens after the first resurrection, but God does sketch out the final stages of His plan for us. We know that for 1,000 years, those firstfruits who were resurrected from the dead or who were alive and transformed at Jesus’s second coming reign alongside Him in what we call the Millennium (most details about this come from the prophets and Revelation). After that, there will be a resurrection of the remaining dead, a final judgment, Satan’s total defeat, a new heaven and new earth, and God will come to dwell with humanity on earth (Rev. 20-22). It’s an incredible future that God has planned for His creation! Let’s not settle for any teaching that offers less than His glorious plan that He has revealed to us in scripture.
In 1 Corinthians 11:1, Paul said, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ” (KJV). If we want a how-to guide for the way Paul follows Jesus, we can find a succinct version in the 3rd chapter of Philippians. This chapter is a bit unusual. Rather than speaking generally to his fellow believers or addressing a specific issue in the church, Paul gets real about his own walk of faith.
We break into the middle of the letter to the church in Philippi. Paul has been warning against “dogs, “evil workers,” and “the mutilation.” He gives a general principle that physical things like circumcision aren’t what determines whether or not you’re part of God’s chosen people. “We are the circumcision,” he writes, “who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh” (Phil. 3:2-3). He then shifts to using himself as an example.
Though I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. (Phil 3:4-6)
What a pedigree! Under the Old Covenant, Paul was as perfect as you could get. There was no stain on his Israelitish lineage. His parents kept the Law and had him circumcised. He became an elite leader in the Jewish community and an expert in the Law, which he kept to the letter. He even actively persecuted heretics.
Then, suddenly, Jesus Himself showed up and told Paul those weren’t heretics. The Messiah had come and Paul was fighting the next step in God’s plan. In response, Paul gave up power, prestige, and (parts of) the belief system he’d poured his entire life into to follow Jesus. And that’s an aspect of Paul’s life that we’re supposed to imitate. Read more →
Like An Anchor 