Misconceptions

Are our deceased loved ones, who died in the Lord, already in heaven? It is a common refrain at funerals for the pastor to comfort the grieving by assuring them that the recently departed are, today, in the presence of God. One passage referenced to support this idea is found in Luke. Luke 23 contains the familiar story of the thieves crucified alongside Jesus. While one thief insulted Jesus, the other asked Jesus for something:

42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom!” 43 And Jesus said to him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:42-43 BEREAN)

Jesus’s response is usually cited as evidence that upon death, the faithful go immediately to paradise where they are awake, alert, and active while awaiting the resurrection and judgment. Upon first glance, the verse does seem to support this conclusion. However, this is not the only possible meaning of Jesus’s promise to the thief. 

One of the most well-known narratives in the New Testament is the story of the rich man and Lazarus found in Luke 16:19-31. Many Christians have understood this passage as offering a glimpse into the afterlife and the realms of the dead. However, upon closer examination, it appears that Jesus likely did not intend to reveal details about life after death by telling this story.

I have previously written about Jesus’s story of the Rich Man and Lazarus. I will provide an overview of my understanding of the story below. However, to get the broader background I recommend reading the original posts: 

• Were The Rich Man And Lazarus Real People?, Part 1
• Were The Rich Man And Lazarus Real People?, Part 2 

In this series of blog posts we have allowed the Bible to establish the meaning of the word “soul.” We have learned that we are a living soul composed of our bodies and the breath of life that God has given every living creature. The unbiblical, yet popular, concept of the soul is that it continues a conscious existence after the biological death of the body. However, the Bible communicates that the soul is an inseparable combination of mind and body and that one does not survive the other. In fact, both the Old and New Testaments portray death as sleep in which we rest, unconsciously, until the resurrection. What then, does Ecclesiastes 12:7 mean when it says, “the spirit returns to God?”

There are several passages in the Bible which are traditionally interpreted to teach the immortality of the soul and its conscious existence in the intermediate state between death and the resurrection. We will now turn our attention to these passages and see if they do indeed teach these things.

The Bible’s own language for death is sleep, not conscious existence in the period between death and resurrection (i.e., the intermediate state). That idea comes from Greek philosophy. In this article we’ll notice a sampling of verses which demonstrate how the Bible uses the word soul. As stated previously, our methodology in examining this topic is as follows.

First, we’ll examine the Bible’s description of the soul (previous blog post). Second, we’ll observe the usage of the term “soul” within the biblical context (this article). Third, we’ll analyze various passages often cited as evidence for the soul’s ability to exist independently from the body.

Although some of the passages we’ll examine in this article may revisit concepts from the previous article, it’s important to reinforce the idea that the soul is not a separate entity which inhabits our bodies. Instead, it is a biblical concept representing the inseparable combination of our body and immaterial inner being. In other words, the soul is not something we have; it is what we are. Said yet another way, the soul is the summation of one’s body and inner being.