In our previous installments in this series, we have explored our culture’s discomfort with death, noting it as God’s judgment on sin, yet also observing that Scripture offers a wonderfully tender perspective. We discussed how believers, by God’s grace, escape the second death, which Christ endured in their place. As Lord of life and death, holding the keys to Death and Hades (Rev 1:18), Christ ensures believers need not fear death. Having conquered it, he abides with us (John 15:4), lovingly escorting us through death’s portal when our time comes.
In today’s article, we want to consider what happens on the other side of that “portal”—what happens at the moment of a believer’s death and in the nanoseconds immediately after?
After Death
I do not think I can do better than the Westminster Shorter Catechism (WSC) in summarizing, according to Scripture, what happens to believers upon their deaths.
WSC 37 says:
37. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death?
A. The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory; and their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection.
Perhaps the only thing better than that succinct answer is the one provided by the Westminster Larger Catechism 86:
86. What is the communion in glory with Christ which the members of the invisible church enjoy immediately after death?
A. The communion in glory with Christ which the members of the invisible church enjoy immediately after death, is, in that their souls are then made perfect in holiness, and received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies, which even in death continue united to Christ, and rest in their graves as in their beds, till at the last day they be again united to their souls.
There are several different ways we could outline those two catechism answers, but for the purposes of this article, let us focus on what the catechism says regarding the soul and the body. Thus, let us give attention to four blessings which belong to believers which are ours immediately upon death, at the instant our last breath leaves our mortal bodies.
The Soul After Death
Soul: With Christ
In death, believers are immediately with Christ. In 2 Corinthians 5:8, the apostle Paul says, “We are of good courage, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.” For the apostle Paul, to be absent from this body (that is, referring to physical death, the first death) is to be at home with the Lord.
The Shorter Catechism says that “the souls of believers at their death . . . do immediately pass into glory” (WSC 37). Glory, of course, is shorthand for where Christ is. The Larger Catechism puts it as, “The communion in glory with Christ which the members of the invisible church enjoy immediately after death, is, in that their souls are . . . received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glory” (WSC 86).
Home is where the heart is? To an extent, yes, but far better: For the Christian, home is where Christ is! Samuel Rutherford once said, “I am so in love with His love that if He were not in heaven I would not want to go there.”1 This is why Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” and thus we should “lay up for [ourselves] treasures in heaven” (Matt 6:20–21). In other words, wherever a man’s treasure is, that is where his thoughts will constantly go; that is where his attention and longings will be preoccupied. See to it, friends, that our treasure is Christ! May it be that we prize Christ, that we cherish Christ above all else, so that he is our treasure, so that he is “where our heart is,” so that to be with him is indeed our sincerest longing, for to be with him is home.
Where is this home? Well, the short answer is we do not know. And I am not sure that it matters, frankly. We know that the ascended Lord Jesus is at the right hand of the Father. Does such a place have a kind of supernatural, super-temporal locality? Is it in some plane above this physical universe, in another dimension above our own? We really do not know. But the Lord is there, and that is all that matters. We will be with him, safe, forever at home, with the one in whose presence is “fullness of joy” and “pleasures forevermore” (Ps 16:11).
Soul: Made Perfect
But then, also, immediately after death, what happens? Believers are perfected in holiness. The author of Hebrews speaks of the believing dead as “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (Heb 12:23). The soul of the believer will be made perfectly holy, and all sin—every last granule of every last vestige of its miserable presence and effects—will be removed from it. And it is not just that God will remove sin, bringing the soul to some kind of net neutrality; he will make the soul fully, positively righteous. The forensic reality of the believer’s justification will be brought into his soul’s lived experience.
Again, WSC 37: “The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness.” Immediately upon our death as we enter into glory, our spirits enter into the presence of God—yes, disembodied from our mortal bodies and awaiting that future bodily resurrection and reunion of body and soul—and immediately we are perfected in holiness, freed from sin, made perfect in godliness and righteousness, and set in the likeness of Christ. At last, “all the ransomed church of God [shall] be saved to sin no more.”2
Can you imagine? I do not know that we can rightly comprehend an existence free from the presence and pull of sin. This fallen, sin-wrecked world is all we have ever known. Can you imagine what it will be like to live in a place where our hearts are no longer tempted a thousand times a day to be disloyal to God; to be freed from any temptations, any provocations, any inclinations to do evil or wrong, where the very presence and existence of sin is utterly vaporized—not even permitted to be? It is a place where the ingredients or causes for grief or heartache or misery will no longer exist, where the striving and warfare against sin will at last be ended, a place where the pains of a thousand sorrows will at last be made right, where the tug of Satan, the pangs of regret, and tears of bitterness are but a long-forgotten memory.
Finally, that blessed Edenic state will be restored! What was lost and ruined by Adam will finally be brought back, and we will be once again what we were always meant to be, as the Children’s Catechism so marvelously puts it, “holy and happy.”3
Soul: In Glory
But also, at death, believers pass immediately into glory. This notion dovetails sweetly into our earlier consideration of how death ushers us home.
Again, WSC 37: “The souls of believers . . . at their death . . . do immediately pass into glory.” WLC 86: Believers “immediately after death . . . [are] received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glory.”
In Philippians 1:23, the apostle Paul says that he has the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is better by far! Why? Because with Christ we pass into glory. We are, Jesus says in John 14:2, upon death welcomed into “the Father’s house.” We might reverently paraphrase what the apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:8 and say that to be absent from the body is to be home with the Lord. We will have finally arrived at that place where goodness and mercy have been chasing us, hounding us, thrusting us into, all the days of our life, and we “shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever” (Ps 23:6).
The moment that death comes—home! The Christian is safe in the Father’s arms, safe with our elder brother, Jesus Christ. And there is no intervening waiting period, no celestial probation to endure. Remember what our Lord said to the thief on the cross: “Today you will be with Me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).
And do note that the reward that awaits the believer is not for the believer in isolation, but is something to be enjoyed with all the saints in glory. Earlier, we noted Hebrews 12:23, which tells us that in glory, the “spirits of the righteous [are] made perfect.” But Hebrews 12 also tells us that in Christ we “have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven” (Heb 12:22–23). The light and glory, the bliss and splendor of the presence of God, is not something for us to enjoy by ourselves, but together with all the saints (Eph 3:18), in full, perfect, splendid, and sinless communion forever. And we get just a taste of that “blest communion, fellowship divine”4 every Lord’s Day—just a hint of what splendor awaits us forevermore (Heb 12:1).
The Body After Death
Body: Resting and Waiting
Finally, we see from Scripture and the catechisms that in death, believers remain united to Christ, their bodies resting in the grave, awaiting the resurrection. There is blessing here not only for the soul, but for the body as well.
Nothing can dissolve the believer’s faith-union with Christ—nothing! Not even the perishing of their mortal bodies can separate them. Remember what Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–17:
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep . . . the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.
Oh, what a felicitous way to describe the death of the saint: “Fallen asleep in Jesus.” I do not know that we can treasure this truth too much, Christian: that to close our eyes in death is to awaken in eternity with the Lord. In less than a blink, there we are—our souls with Christ. That metaphor of “asleep in Jesus” is not a metaphor of a kind of bland, cold numbness, but one of rest, comfort, and blessed, everlasting safety. Their bodies are safely tucked away, awaiting a more glorious hour, but in the meantime, they are with the Lord—abundantly alive and enjoying him!
Again, I love the way the WLC 86 puts it: “waiting for the full redemption of their bodies, which even in death continue united to Christ, and rest in their graves as in their beds, till at the last day they be again united to their souls.” In tandem with Paul’s language from 1 Thessalonians 4, do you not love how this phrase “asleep in Jesus” evokes the imagery of warm, fatherly, caring tenderness, as if one is tucking a child into bed at night. Patting them in—safe, secure, at rest; simply awaiting that time when they shall awake again, they are now simply “asleep in Jesus.”
As a father tucks his children safely into bed at night, so the Heavenly Father secures the body and soul of his own beloved children—even in death—rendering them safe and eternally secure in Christ, simply passing the time, awaiting that glorious day.
You see, the point of Paul’s language is that the sting of death has been neutralized. For the Christian, death is not a place of dark uncertainty. It is a place of calm repose and rest where the Lord himself is holding and caring for the believer, as a compassionate Father, even in the hour of his death.
There is more for us to explore regarding those future resurrection bodies, the hope of Christ’s return, and the promise of the new heavens and earth. We will consider those matters in more detail when we return next time to our ongoing series on the Christian’s comfort, even in death.
Notes
- Samuel Rutherford, “Letter to the Viscountess of Kenmure, 7 March 1637,” The Wesley Center Online: Letters Of Mr. Samuel Rutherfoord, Part I.
- William Cowper, “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” Trinity Psalter Hymnal (The Committee on Christian Education of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2018).
- The Children’s Catechism Q. 21.
- Ralph Vaughan Williams, “For All the Saints,” Trinity Psalter Hymnal (The Committee on Christian Education of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2018).
©Sean Morris. All Rights Reserved.
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Sean Morris
Sean was educated at Grove City College, Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson, MS), Edinburgh Theological Seminary, and the University of Glasgow (Scotland). He earned his PhD from Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. He is an ordained teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America, and serves as a minister at the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Oak Ridge, TN. He also serves as the Academic Dean of the Blue Ridge Institute for Theological Education and has published numerous theological and devotional articles. Sean lives in Oak Ridge with his wife, Sarah, and their children.
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