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What Happens When You Die?

The Bible teaches that death is not the end of a person and not a leap into nothingness. For those who belong to Christ, to die is to be, at once, with him. Paul wrote that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, and Jesus told the dying thief, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise. This is the intermediate state, a real and conscious being-with-Christ that follows death. Yet even this is not the final hope. The great promise still ahead is the resurrection of the body, when God makes all things new.

We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.2 Corinthians 5:8 (KJV)

The question everyone asks

No question is more universal or more tender than what happens when we die. Every culture has asked it; every heart, sooner or later, must face it. The Bible does not answer with speculation or with the elaborate maps of the afterlife that some traditions have drawn. It answers with a Person. Because Jesus died and rose again, death has been changed for those who trust him from a wall into a doorway.

Scripture is honest that death is real and that it is an enemy. It does not pretend that dying is nothing, or that grief is unspiritual. Jesus himself wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus. But into that honest sorrow the gospel speaks a hope that does not flinch: death, for the believer, is not the end of the story but the turning of a page. The Bible refuses both the false comfort that pretends death does not hurt and the despair that says it has the final word. It looks the grave full in the face and says, over its darkness, that Christ has been there and come back, and that he holds the keys.

To be absent from the body, present with the Lord

The clearest word Paul gives on the moment of death is disarmingly simple. We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. There is no long sleep of unconsciousness in his expectation, no shadowy waiting in the dark. To leave the body is, at once, to be at home with the Lord. Writing from prison, facing possible execution, he said he was in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better.

This is what Christians call the intermediate state: the condition of those who have died in Christ before the final resurrection. It is not the whole of the hope, but it is unbroken fellowship with Jesus. Whatever else remains mysterious, this much is promised with confidence: the believer who dies is not lost, not asleep to the love of God, not separated from Christ, but nearer to him than ever before.

Today thou shalt be with me in paradise

Perhaps the most moving picture of this comes from the cross itself. Beside Jesus hung two criminals, and one of them, in his last hours, turned to him and asked only to be remembered when Jesus came into his kingdom. He had no time to reform his life, no good works to offer, nothing but a dying plea. And Jesus answered him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

Today. Not after long ages, not after earning it, not after being purified by his own suffering, but today, with me. It is one of the great mercies of the gospel that the door to Christ's presence stands open to the very end, and that it opens not to the deserving but to those who simply turn to him. If a dying thief could hear those words, no one who calls on Jesus is beyond his welcome.

Not the final state: the resurrection still to come

It is important to say that being with Christ at death, wonderful as it is, is not the full and final hope of the Christian. The Bible's ultimate promise is not that our souls escape our bodies forever but that our bodies are raised. Paul told the Thessalonians that the dead in Christ shall rise, and that then the living and the dead together shall ever be with the Lord. The intermediate state is the waiting room; the resurrection is the homecoming.

This is why Christian hope refuses to end at the graveside. The body laid in the earth is described as a seed sown, and what is sown will be raised, incorruptible and glorious. The one who is with Christ now will one day be raised to reign with him on a renewed earth. Death is real, but it is temporary; it has a shadow, but it has no final victory.

The sting is gone

What changes death for the Christian is not that it stops hurting but that its sting is drawn out. Paul, echoing the prophets, cried, O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death, he said, is sin, and its power to condemn was broken at the cross. Death remains an enemy, but a defeated one, a doorway now rather than a dungeon, a shadow with no substance left to harm those who are in Christ.

This is why believers through the ages have faced death, even hard deaths, with a strange and steady peace. The twenty-third Psalm has been whispered at more deathbeds than any other words: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me. Notice it is a valley to walk through, not to dwell in, and the reason for courage is not that the valley is not dark but that we are not alone in it. The Shepherd who goes with us has walked it first.

The prophet Isaiah saw the day when God will swallow up death in victory, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces. That promise runs unbroken from the Old Testament to the last page of the New. For the one who belongs to Christ, dying is not falling into the dark but being gathered home by the One who has already passed through death and out the other side, and who now holds its keys in his hands.

Where Christians agree, and where they wonder

Christians across the traditions agree on the heart of it: death is not extinction, those who die in Christ are safe with him, and the resurrection of the body is the final hope. There are questions Scripture leaves quieter, and here believers have held different views with humility. Some have spoken of the state between death and resurrection as a conscious being-with-Christ; a few have described it as a rest so complete it is likened to sleep. Traditions also differ on whether there is any purifying between death and glory. These are matters for gentleness, not division.

What no honest reader can miss is the settled confidence of the New Testament: neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Whatever the details we cannot see, the love that holds us does not let go at death. For anyone grieving, that is not a small thing but everything.

Where Christians differ: The Bible speaks with great confidence about the destination, being with Christ, and with more reserve about the timing and texture of the intermediate state. Faithful Christians have differed on whether the dead are consciously with the Lord or at rest until the resurrection, and on other questions Scripture does not settle. It is right to hold these open questions humbly, while holding the central promise, safe with Christ, without doubt.

Continue: The resurrection of the body · What the Bible says about heaven · How can I be sure I will be with God? · Grief and loss · Heaven, hell, and the life to come