By Rev. John Moes and Garry J. Moes

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The reality and the nature of human existence after death is one of life’s greatest mysteries. Although the Bible makes the reality of existence after death clear, it has perplexed the generations of mankind concerning the nature of human existence beyond the grave, despite its lofty promises of bliss for the Redeemed and horrific threats for the unrepentant wicked.

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Are men — or at least some aspects of their being — born mortal or immortal? If mortal, how and when do men gain immortality? Is there a resurrection of the dead, when does it occur, and how are we to understand the transition from mortal life to immortal life?

 

During the period from the second century before Christ until they disappeared sometime after the first century after Christ, a wealthy and powerful priestly group known as the Sadducees rose to prominence within Judaism. Little is known of their beliefs, since none of their writings remain. They are known largely from their critics, including the Jewish historian Josephus, who called them boorish and quarrelsome. The Bible’s references to them highlight their apparent disbelief in the resurrection of the dead, and in angels and spirits, key doctrines of the rival Pharisees and scribes. Their alleged quarrelsome proclivities are evident in several references to their “gotcha” entrapment questioning of Jesus, such as this one in Luke 20:

 

27 There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, 28 and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. 30 And the second 31 and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. 32 Afterward the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”

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34 And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, 35 but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36 for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. 37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.” 39 Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” 40 For they no longer dared to ask him any question.

 

When the Sadducees came to Jesus hoping to trip him up with this tricky story, Jesus, in a parallel account in Matthew 22:29, answered, “You err, not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God.”

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What was their error?

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There are five places where their view is described in Scripture, and in all five places their error is described in the same way:

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Matthew 22:23: “Sadducees, those saying there is no resurrection.”

Mark 12:18: “Sadducees who say there is not resurrection.”

Luke 20:27: “Sadducees, those denying there is resurrection.”

Acts 23:8: “For Sadducees say there is no resurrection.”

 

The Apostle Paul also finds some of their thinking within the Corinthian church:

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I Corinthians 15:12: “How say some of you that there is no resurrection of the dead?”

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Notice, there is nothing said about their theology, nothing about their Christology, their soteriology, or their ecclesiology (except in Acts when they went berserk and threw dust in the air when Paul used the “G-word” — Gentiles). This may be because they did not differ that much from most others in their day on those subjects. It was their anthropology (their view of humanness, self-existent spirits) and their eschatology that set them apart.

 

There are two things in common worthy of note in the above five Scripture statements. 1) All five say the debate was about “resurrection”; and 2) All five have the Greek protracted present tense verb “is.” When four writers are inspired to use the same words in three situations where a matter needs clarification, it seems wise to assume that the Holy Spirit is being precise in His choice of words to convey His exact ideas. “Resurrection” means resurrection, and “is” as used in the Greek tense here means “going on at present.”

 

Someone might try to find a distinction between “resurrection” and “life after death.” He might suggest that “resurrection” almost always implies “the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:23) [1]. On the other hand, many people have the Platonic idea of disembodied “souls” after death being more like ghosts flitting around heaven or hell. Luke, in the Acts 23 [2] passage, saw the difference and listed both — resurrection of bodies and independently-existing spirit, two things among those the Sadducees denied.

 

But the Holy Spirit in the five places uses language such as that found in Romans 8:23 indicating specifically “resurrection of bodies” and not “life after death as spirits.” Paul was clearly making that distinction in the Acts 23 passage. In the Gospel passages describing the Sadducees questioning of Jesus, the Lord makes clear that their error is about resurrection of bodies (though, as we have seen, they also denied existence of spirits). When they came to Jesus, their question was about bodily activity, marriage, “in the resurrection.” In Matthew’s short version of the conversation, Jesus describes conditions “in the resurrection,” and in the end He says that His words to Moses at the burning bush (about being the God of the living) are concerning the “resurrection of the dead,” not about some vague “life after death.”

 

In Mark’s version, Jesus does not repeat their words, “in the resurrection,” but says, “When they were raised (aorist [3] past tense) from among the dead…,” implying that “resurrection” and “raised from the dead” mean the same. And in the conclusion, instead of Matthew’s “concerning resurrection,” Mark is inspired to write, “Concerning the dead, that they are rising…” (“are rising” being the Greek present tense form of the same root of the word translated “resurrection.” Histemi is “to make to stand” [implying feet], which combined with ana becomes “make to stand again.”) In John 5:21, Jesus distinguishes between His Father “at present raising the dead” and “making them alive” — two activities. Making alive may mean spiritually alive, but raising the dead involves revitalizing of bodies.

 

So the Sadducees’ error is about the resurrection — raising bodies. They didn’t ask Jesus about angels, but He corrected their denial about them as well: in their resurrected state, the sons of this age are as angels — unmarried — in heaven, so the question about the marital state of husbands and wives in eternity was misplaced nonsense to begin with. If those who are the “sons of the resurrection” are only spirits — also like angels — then what word do we use for putting on a new body? If a soul (a complete, living person consisting of material and live-giving spirit) does not die when the body dies, then it is nonsense to talk of raising a living soul/person from the dead. Jesus said (in Luke 20:36) “for they cannot die any more,” so what died before? For that matter, almost every angel seen in the Bible appears to have or take on bodily form. They “are ministering spirits,” true; but how can we be sure they don’t have bodily form?

 

Some may say, “Bodies die but souls are immortal. It is the soul that lives on after death.” That is assuming that you are using Plato’s definition of “soul” instead of the Bible’s definition. As Edward Donnelly, in What Comes After Death: Biblical Teaching on the Doctrines of Heaven and Hell, says:

 

What is peculiar to scriptural faith is the teaching that our bodies also will survive death. In asserting a physical resurrection the Bible is unique and yet many believers have, at best, a tenuous grasp on this doctrine. The blame for such hesitancy rests partly with an ancient Greek philosopher.

Plato (427-347 BC) has influenced human thought in a variety of ways for nearly two-and-a-half thousand years, but in our present context he is significant for the way in which he devalued the material in favour of what is spiritual.[4]

 

Donnelly goes on to cite Anthony Hoekema’s explanation of how, in Plato’s teaching, “The soul is … considered a superior substance, inherently indestructible and therefore immortal, whereas the body is of inferior substance, mortal, and doomed for total destruction. Hence the body is thought of as a tomb for the soul, which is really better off without the body.”[5]

 

As Donnelly notes,

 

Plato’s memorable slogan, soma sema —“the body a tomb’, encapsulated this view. He taught that human beings are immortal souls imprisoned in inferior bodies of flesh. Only that which is spiritual is worthwhile. All that is physical and material will ultimately be left behind, discarded for ever.

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Unfortunately, this poison of anti-materialism has seeped into Christian thinking, so that many believers are unconscious Platonists. Their views of “the world”, “the flesh,” and even “the soul” have been distorted by an instinctive hyper-spirituality. Devotional writers look forward to being in glory, because their souls will there be set free at last for worship, unencumbered by the prison-house of the flesh. Evangelists speak about “souls” being saved, not so often about the redemption of “people”, “men” or “women.” But this hyper-spiritualizing betrays a false view of heaven and neglects the fundamental Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body. It is of the utmost importance that we hold on to the reality of raised and glorified human flesh.

 

The definition of “soul” we get from Genesis 2:7 and the 700+ times the original word which is translated as “soul” is different from the Platonic. According to these texts, the body did not receive a soul. The body became a soul.

 

A mass of dust was sculpted into the form of a man’s body, with shape, nostrils, and an exact number of hairs known to its Creator. It was identifiable and named “man” — adam. But that identifiable earthen form by further action of God (breathing His life into it), became a soul — a living being, a living creature. Remember, God is life and thus the source of life for all creatures upon whom He chooses to bestow it (John 5:25-29)[6]. He, through His Son, can withdraw it as easily as He gives it.

 

A soul is a body with breath, performing a function — being an image of God. A soul does not survive death but actually dies and is raised from death. If Paul, as a soul, didn’t die when He laid down his tent (2 Corinthians 5:1-4), then Paul, as a soul, will never be raised from the dead.

 

Such a soul can die, it is not immortal. “The soul that sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4, 20). The Suffering Servant “poured out his soul to death” (Isaiah 53:12). God told Adam, “Dying you shall die,” and he left a trail of dust for 930 years. Always a soul, always a body, but not with the same dust from one day to the next. He didn’t become a new soul every time he shed some dust and replaced it with other. But if dust formed into a body is needed to make a soul, then something without a body is not a soul.

 

Before we get into “what the meaning of ‘is’ is,” we need to clear up what might appear to be a contradiction in Scripture. What Matthew reports as the question of the Sadducees and what Luke reports is different, as is what Mark reports (notice the tenses used):

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• “Therefore, in the resurrection whose wife shall she be (Greek future tense) of the seven? (Matthew 22:28).

• “Therefore, in the resurrection whose of them is (Greek present tense) she wife? (Luke 20:33).

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It is possible that one of these statements is false, and, if so, we have an error in the Bible. (But we know God cannot error.) Alternatively, both statements may be true (most certainly this is the case). The women in question may be a wife both now and in the future. If the present tense and future are puzzling in Matthew and Luke, what can we say when Mark adds an aorist/past tense? Matthew future; Mark past; Luke present tense.

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• Therefore, in the resurrection, when they resurrected (aorist/past tense), of which of them shall she be (future) the wife? (Mark 12:23)

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Thus, in Mark’s version, the Sadducees used terms that say both the death and the “being resurrected” were already in the past. And as we said above, either there are one or more false statements, errors, here — or all the statements are true. Will she be wife in the future? And is she wife now in the present? And has the act of resurrecting already been done?

 

However, the questions are moot. How they asked the question is not as important as how Jesus answered them. And remarkably, Matthew, Mark and Luke, all three, have Jesus answering, not once in a future tense, but only in the Greek present tenses (which should almost always be translated as continuous or repeated action) and even in a couple of aorist tenses. We shouldn’t ask, “Did God really say…?” but simply assume that that’s the way the Holy Spirit wants us to understand the time frame. Luke’s inspired account has the most representative examples:

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1. Some Sadducees, who deny there is a resurrection….

2. Therefore, in the resurrection, of which of them is she wife?

3. Jesus said, The sons of this age are marrying

4. And are being given in marriage

5. But those who were counted worthy (aorist)

6. To have attained (aorist) the resurrection

7. Which is from among the dead

8. Are marrying

9. And are being given in marriage

10. For neither can they die anymore

11. For they are equal to angels

12. And are sons of God

13. Being sons of the resurrection (referring to sons of this age)

14. But that the dead are being raised

15. God is not the God of the dead but of the living (referring to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob)

16. For all are living with Him

 

Luke sticks with 14 present tenses and two past/aorist tenses. Why?

 

First, because the Sadducees’ error as described was in the present tense. But more so, if most of these were future tenses, then Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would still not yet have been raised from the dead and Nos. 13 and 15 above would be false. “Did God really say ‘is’”? If you are thus tempted by Satan, just try to make all these present and aorist tenses into future ones and see what a different picture you would see. According to Jesus, anyone who knows God at all should know that when God says He is the God of someone who had died (in history) but that He is the God of the living (those same persons), that it is a sure reference to bodies having been raised. If that hasn’t happened yet, then these are still dead and God cannot be their God, since He is the God of the living.

 

It is the “AM” in “I AM the God of…” that makes the “is” in “There is no resurrection” false.” It all depends on what the meaning of “is” is (as one of our lying presidents famously once said). The Lord’s logic is simple. Plato’s definition of “soul” is wrong.

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The soul (life-infused body) that sins dies. Redeemed souls will never lose their lives. Unredeemed souls are dead eternally.

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The perplexed and nearly crazed-from-bodily suffering saint Job (19:25-27) professed, in spite of all his misery, that His Redeemer lives (even at Job’s time in history), and he correctly prophesied that one day his Redeemer would stand upon this earth (fulfilled in the Incarnation). He goes on to say:

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After my skin has been thus destroyed [i.e., after his body died], yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”

 

Job found that thought so astounding that he added, “My heart faints within me!”

 

Again, Jesus, Job’s living Redeemer, in John 5:26-29:

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25“Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 28 Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

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When time ceases for a living person/soul at his earthly death, if He is in the Son, his whole person continues to have life, though his time-bound mortal body returns to dust. His now eternity-equipped soul (glorified body and God-breathed life) has become immortal "in the twinkling of an eye." He merely passes through the veil dividing time from timelessness. That which was mortal puts on immortality (i.e., he is a son of the resurrection who has heard the final trumpet and passed through judgment). "Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” It must be so, if one is to exist glorified in perfected eternity (I Corinthians 15:52-54) ...

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52 …in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

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“Death is swallowed up in victory.”

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Scripture knows nothing of an “intermediate state” — that supposed state of men after death when their spiritual, disembodied “souls” languish in some “place of the dead” awaiting the final resurrection. In this notion, the wicked languish in a realm of the deadlands called Hades until the resurrection and final judgment, when they are finally (yet not exhaustively) disposed of in the Lake of Fire, where they burn forever. The righteous dead languish in a deadland realm known as Paradise until the resurrection when they revive to live forever, following a verdict of “not guilty” at the judgment, in the new earth and heaven.

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The Westminster Confession of Faith in a chapter (32) called “Of the State of Men after Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead,” sees no such places, but yet curiously speaks of disembodied souls in these terms:

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The souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold [with eyes?] the face of God, in light and glory, waiting the full redemption of their bodies. And the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day. Beside these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none.

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At the last day … all the dead shall be raised up, with the self-same bodies, and none other (although with different qualities), which shall be united again to their souls forever.

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If the “intermediate state” is real, then there are currently and always have been only three bodies in heaven, those of Enoch, Elijah, and Jesus – two of whom never died and One who died but rose again and bodily ascended. Yet on the Mount of Transfiguration, who do we see in the body: Elijah (that makes sense) and MOSES, who clearly, according to Scripture, died? In fact, the Archangel Michael and Satan (according to Jude) fought over the body of Moses, which, presumably, Michael won. It seems apparent that that whole person known as Moses had been reunited with his body sometime before he appeared with Jesus and Elijah and the three disciples on the Mount. We hold that he received his glorified body immediately upon his passing from mortal life to immortal life, having been changed in the twinkling of an eye.

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Immediate resurrection, conceived before the creation of the world, seems to be the only way to make sense of so many scriptures, including Paul’s teaching in 2 Timothy 1:9-10:  “...but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

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The phrase, “appearance of Christ brought life and immortality to light,” is beautifully substantiated by the episode of the resurrection of Lazarus. Richard C. Lenski, in his commentary on this event in the Gospels, wrote (pp. 801-2):

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To [the person who dies] Jesus is “the resurrection,” the victory and triumph over death. He shall sleep indeed, yet “shall he live,” temporal death harms him not at all…. “He shall live” does not mean merely “shall come to life in the far distant future last day,” but from the moment of death on…no real death. Jesus has taken that away.

 

Concerning the person before he dies, Lenski writes:

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Each of the two parallel statements illumines the other. “Every one that lives,” that has true “life” in himself, the zoe or life principle, which is identified with Jesus, just as “the resurrection” is. Having this “life” in himself which he continues here on earth, no death in the real sense can touch him. “In no way shall he die forever.” … “he that believes in Me and yet dies — “he that lived and believes in Me,” — not the chiastic arrangement …. The present participles are durative qualifications [regularly ongoing at present – “all who are believing in Me” and “are living and are believing].

 

“In no way shall he die into the aeons,” as Jesus told the Sadducess, “they are not able to die again” in “that aeon” (Luke 20).

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In that sense death has been “abolished” from the yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows of this aeon, into the aeons of eternity — with no hint anywhere of an intermediate state.

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NOTES:

 

[1] “23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”

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[2] “6 Now when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.” 7 And when he had said this, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8 For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all. 9 Then a great clamor arose, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees' party stood up and contended sharply, “We find nothing wrong in this man. What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?” 10 And when the dissension became violent, the tribune, afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him away from among them by force and bring him into the barracks.”

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[3] Aorist: A tense in classical Greek that expresses action without indicating its completion or continuation.

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[4] Edward Donnelly, What Comes After Death? Biblical Teaching on the Doctrines of Heaven and Hell, Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, p. 102.

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[5] Donnelly, p. 102, citing A.A. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972, p. 87

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[6] 25 “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 28 Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment (emphasis added).

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