What
Happens When We Die?
A handful of passages
of Scripture have been bandied about in support of the idea that death itself
is good. These include Psalm 116:15, Ecclesiastes 7:1, 2 Corinthians 5:1-5; and
Philippians 1:21-23. Most translations of Psalm 116:15 read something like
this: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones”
(NRSVue). On the surface (and taken out of context), this verse looks like the
death of the faithful is pleasing to God; that is, a good thing. Why? Because
they go to heaven to be with him. Rather, “it seems more in keeping with the
context of the psalm and of other passages in the Old Testament to take the
word precious here to mean ‘costly.’ The term יקר (“precious) has the
sense of “costly,” which can be taken positively (e.g., a costly gem) or
negatively (e.g., a costly war). The context of the psalm and the overall
teaching of Scripture should move us to understand the term in its negative
sense: “Costly in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” Therefore,
as the psalmist prays, God delights in delivering his people from death.
In Ecclesiastes 7:1,
we read, “A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of death better
than the day of birth.” Does this mean the day we die is better than the day we
were born? No, the context of Ecclesiastes 7:1-4 suggests the author is
referring to funerals (the day of death) and birthdays (the day of birth); two
different opportunities to reflect on different aspects of one’s life. One commentator
puts it in simple terms: “As inner character is more crucial than outer
fragrance, so it is the funeral, not the rowdy birthday part, that poses the ultimate
questions about life. . . . Death brings us to think about life (cf. Ps.
90:12). . . . A party has no such effect. Every funeral anticipates our own.”
On the day of death, people reflect on the person’s whole life, ponder their
own mortality: “Death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this
to heart” (Eccl. 7:2).
In 2 Corinthians 5:1-5,
Paul addresses the question of what happens to believers when they die. Reflecting
ideas found in Romans 8, Paul contrasts the “light and momentary troubles” and
the “eternal glory that far outweighs them all,” which prompts us to “fix our
eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is
temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor 4:17-18; cf. Rom 8:18). In the
context of hoping for this eternal inheritance—unseen by us in the present—Paul
says, “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a
building from God” (2 Cor 5:1). IT is contrary to everything we have seen
regarding resurrection . . . to assert that Paul is speaking about receiving
resurrection bodies immediately upon death. Resurrection bodies are not—as many
second-century gnostics taught—merely spiritual in substance; rather,
resurrection bodies are those physical bodies that had died, now risen, restored,
and glorified . . . The fact that we have physical remains after death is prima
facie proof that resurrection does not occur at death; anything
else is a rejection of the classic Christian view of resurrection . . . It is
better to understand Paul’s use of the present tense “we have” as indicating
the absolute certainty of our resurrection into glorious bodies, which will
occur when Christ returns and he “will transform our lowly bodies so that they
will be like his glorious body” (Phil 3:20-21).
However, what happens when believers die prior to Christ’s
return to transform our mortal bodies into immortal bodies (1 Cor 15:51-52)?
During that period between a believer’s death and resurrection, Paul says, we
are “away from the body” but “at home with the Lord” (2 Cor 5:8). Philippians
1:23 expresses the same clear hope: “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which
is better by far” than “to go on living in the body,” considering Paul was in
chains and had experienced extreme physical and emotional sufferings in ministry
(cf. 2 Cor 11:23-28). It is no wonder that Paul could say, given the magnitude
of his pain, that to depart and be with Christ would be “gain” (Phil 1:21).
This does not make the death itself “good.” Paul was not saying the ultimate, final
goal of the Christian is to “die and go to heaven” and to life with Christ eternally
in a spiritual realm. Rather, he did not want to remain “unclothed” (that is,
without a body) but “clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what
is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Cor 5:4).
In referring to our “heavenly dwelling,” Paul probably
also had in mind more than a new, glorified body, he likely had in mind the new
creation that, quite literally, presently exists in the heavenly realm (1 Pet
1:3-4)-–in fact, in the third heaven, in paradise. This is why he could say in
Philippians 3:20 that “our citizenship is in heaven.” Wright correctly observes
that in the first-century way of thinking, “being citizens of heaven . . . doesn’t
mean that one is expecting to go back to the mother city, but rather that one
is expecting the emperor to come from the mother city to give the colony
its full dignity, to rescue it if need be, to subdue local enemies and put everything
to rights.” (Michael J. Svigel, The Fathers on the Future: A 2nd-century
Eschatology for the 21st-Century Church [Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
Publishers, 2024], 277-78)
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