What most of us want to know is… does my spirit go right to heaven, where I get to see my loved ones? The Bible gives us a few clear answers to this question but leaves other details surprisingly vague.

Composite Beings: Humans are, in some vital way, at least a two-part creature with a body and a soul. The body is like the hardware that houses the soul. The soul is the software that provides us with a distinct personality. During this life, those two are inseparable. Yet it’s evident from Jesus that our soul, in some sense, outlasts our body. Jesus warns people in Matthew 10:28, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Resurrection from the dead: The resurrection from the dead is a practically universal belief in Judaism and Christianity. Many scriptures support the idea that both the evil and the righteous will be raised and judged before their Creator. Luke 14:14; Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2; John 5:28-29; Matthew 25:31-33; Hebrews 9:27; 1 Corinthians 4:5.

Judgment: This judgment will result in each person being rewarded for their choices and deeds on earth. There are varying degrees of punishment and reward (Matthew 11:24). The broader implications are clear: justice exceeds the boundaries of material existence.

“And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done.” Revelation 20:12-13

Eternal Life in Jesus: Eternal life does not appear to be guaranteed. Jesus links eternal life to being connected to him, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this” (John 11:25-26; see also John 3:13)? Life after death seems fundamentally connected to the Life Giver.

The Old Testament: Though the resurrection from the dead was taught, the afterlife was not vital to Old Testament Hebraic thought. In most stories, we get the impression that all they knew of the afterlife was a shadowy underworld of sleep until some “end of days” resurrection from the dead. The name they gave for it was “Sheol.” A perplexing depiction of this is when King Saul consults the witch at Endor, and she summons Samuel’s spirit from the dead. She reports, “I see a ghostly figure coming up out of the earth...” Then Samuel speaks, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” (1 Samuel 28:13,15).

Transition period: Even into the New Testament, there is ambiguity about what happens between now and the final resurrection of the dead. Do people’s souls go to sleep in a sort of unconsciousness until the Lord resurrects them? Or do they go immediately into some transitional phase of conscious existence until the final resurrection, such as a Catholic idea of purgatory? At the end of his life, the Apostle Paul seemed confident that death would result in him being immediately present with Jesus “as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord…(I) would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:6,8). According to one theologian, one of the reasons the early Church didn’t teach much about this intermediate period was because the Church expected the time between Jesus’s resurrection to heaven and his return to earth to be relatively brief. The greater concern for believers was the final states of heaven and hell. [1]

Eternal Heaven or Eternal Damnation: After the resurrection of the dead and the judgement of all people who have lived on earth, each person will arrive at their final destination. Heaven is synonymous with the place where God dwells. Revelation 21:3 jubilantly shouts, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” It will be a dimension of existence in which no evil,  sin, sin-nature, deception, disease, calamity, suffering, or rivalry with God’s rulership will be present. Everything will be united under Christ’s good leadership. Revelation 22:3; Ephesians 1:10; 1 John 3:8; Matthew 13:41.

There are varying views on whether hell is a place of eternal conscious torment or whether hell itself is the obliteration of all things apart from the One-Who-Gives-Life. First, it seems that hell was originally created for the rebellious devil and his angels, but it is also the destination of those persons deceived and belonging to the deceiver. Jesus warns, “Then (the King) will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).

Will these people under the “curse” be consciously aware of their suffering for an eternity, or will their souls be annihilated eternally and their punishment be irrevocable? Some texts and arguments would lean in either direction. Though we may never know in this life, we are informed that separation from God is an ultimate demise, one that every living soul should desire to avoid at all costs. God, the wisest and most judicial Father and Judge, would know better than us how to render a decision that matches the crime.

Pastoral Conclusion: The believer in Jesus can be confident in an eternal and glorious life with God when we die. Death is the end of our mortal existence, which is currently in some level of disharmony with God’s good will. But the next reality will exceed our imaginations in the perfection of God’s love, joy, beauty, and truth. Our goal is to live—today—in his sinless kingdom of grace and truth. We are also entrusted with a mission to help others who don’t yet believe in Jesus to perceive his precious grace and pathway back to an eternal relationship with God. We have only one life to live, and once we cross the threshold, there are no “do-overs.” Let’s make the most of this one gift of life we have been given.

[1] Millard Erickson in his book Christian Theology addresses this in chapters 55 and 58.

Tags: heaven, god, resurrection, judgment, life, eternity, hell, death, body, devil, punishment, soul, sheol