Everyone is concerned about life; yet when most people think of life, they also think of its termination—of death. Then they begin to think of their preferences. Sometimes a person would rather not be alive, but at the same time he also does not want to be dead.
Although there is much teaching about what happens after this life, people still do not understand it. Some teach that the soul sleeps, and they refer to the Scripture which speaks of those who sleep in Christ (I Thessalonians 4:14). Yet the Bible also speaks about the cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1). James tells us that the body without the spirit is dead (James 2:26). When a person’s spirit departs, that is the end of the physical body; it deteriorates back to dust. The soul sleeps because the soul is the switchboard between the physical body and the spirit. The teaching which says that the soul sleeps is right as far as it goes, but it does not make provision for the human spirit. The spirit remains alive.
It is important for you to know what happens to a person when he dies. It is also important for you to know whether or not you really have to die. One of the early Church fathers once made the statement that in the time of the end there will be believers who will forget to lie down and die. That is a true statement; there will be people who will not die. They will not be conditioned to die as people have been throughout the past generations. Instead of thinking in terms of death, they will begin to believe in life.
You must realize that the spirit, the soul, and the body are very closely interrelated. The victories that you feel in your spirit are often transmitted until every part of you feels good. On the other hand, whatever affects you physically often affects you spiritually. When a certain sin or a tendency toward that sin dwells in the physical flesh, then the soul and the spirit (especially the spirit) often reach into that contamination. For this reason Paul said, “Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (II Corinthians 7:1). There are sins that affect the flesh and sins that affect the spirit.
We are concerned about what it means to live, what it means to be alive. People can have a physical existence and still be dead. That is why Paul wrote, “You who were dead in your trespasses and sins He has made alive” (Ephesians 2:1). The human spirit actually can be in a state of death even in people who are alive physically. They are already dead. They are already condemned. Only with belief in Jesus Christ does the spirit come alive. That is what we call being born of the Spirit, being born again. Jesus said that unless you are born again, you will not see the Kingdom of God (John 3:3). You have a physical birth, but you must also have a birth of your spirit.
All of this helps us to understand what we read in II Corinthians 5:1–10. For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. This is speaking of the housing—that which houses you. A somewhat comic illustration of this is the child who goes up to his father who is sleeping, lifts up the father’s eyelid, and then says, “Yes, he’s still in there.” Indwelling within your physical tabernacle is the real person, your spirit and your soul. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven; inasmuch as we, having put it on, shall not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan (Romans 8:23 speaks of our groaning as we wait eagerly for the redemption of our body), being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed, but to be clothed, in order that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord—for we walk by faith, not by sight—we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore also we have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ…
In funeral services, this passage is often quoted in reference to death as most people understand it. However, this passage is not referring to the attitude, “We prefer to die”; nor does it refer to the attitude, “We do not want to die, but when we do, we will be with the Lord.” Instead, it actually points out three different states of being. The third, the least desirable state, is the one in which we exist at the present time. This existence as we know it—living a mortal life, knowing that the mortal body houses an immortal spirit—is the least desirable way of life.
The second choice, preferable to that, is to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord, being fully in tune with the whole realm of God. That is by far more desirable than the life which we have now. Paul spoke of that when he said, “I have a desire to depart and to be with the Lord, which is far better; but it is expedient for you that I stay here” (Philippians 1:23–24). He had been caught up into the spirit world and he knew what it was. Therefore he said, “This life is not to be compared with the glory which is to be revealed” (Romans 8:18).
What is the first choice, the state that we are to dwell in? Paul said, “We are still groaning in this existence.” We want to do more than just throw off this old body. We know that if this happens, we have another body prepared for us in the heavens; but if it is at all possible, we desire to reach in and lay hold of that spiritual body and slip it on now. It is not that we want to die, and Paul did not indicate that we necessarily have to die to attain it. It is possible that we could attain it without dying. We must not have such a firm conviction that death is necessary. Our faith in death must be thoroughly shaken.
A passage of Scripture from Philippians 3 will help establish this truth further. Paul was willing to count everything as a loss, that he might win Christ. In verses 8–9 he said, … I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own… In verse 10 Paul expressed his deep ambition: that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection (this was what Paul was reaching for) and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death. Paul wanted to experience vicariously the death of Christ, being conformed to His suffering; but he had in mind first of all to reach into resurrection life. In New Testament times there was a great deal more emphasis on resurrection than has existed at any other time in the history of the Church. Every sermon that is recorded in the New Testament has as its theme resurrection life—that Jesus was raised from the dead.
It can be established historically that many people have already entered into resurrection life. There are some things that have come down to us in the Scriptures only as little hints. In Matthew 27:52–53 we read that at the death of Jesus Christ the graves were opened and a great host of the saints arose and appeared in Jerusalem. We have no way of knowing how many hundreds of people broke into it. Some people in former generations who read the Scriptures concerning these things may have believed them. Jesus said, “He who lives and believes in Me shall never die” (John 11:26). There must have been a few people who truly believed that and broke through to resurrection life. The writings of the ante-Nicene Fathers record many incidents where people actually witnessed resurrections.
The subject of resurrection life is not without historical fact to back it up; but if someone does not believe, then it is not a truth for him at all. A truth only applies to someone who believes it. It only works for a person who believes it. God could make a promise and it would seem to be a lie unless someone else believed it. Someone has to believe that promise in order for it to work. There are truths in the Bible that have yet to be established. Jesus said that if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you can move mountains. We only have His Word for it because no one has yet believed that enough to do it. However, one of these days it will be established as an eternal truth, because someone will believe it. In the meantime we must labor with our unbelief and ask the Lord to help us to believe those fantastic statements.
Paul explained why he wanted to be conformed to Christ’s death: in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Philippians 3:11. He was believing to attain to the resurrection from the dead. In John 11:21–24, Martha expressed her belief that Lazarus would be raised on the last day, but Paul was not talking about the last day. He was talking about something he wanted to experience in his lifetime.
Paul continued: Not that I have already obtained it (that resurrection from the dead), or have already become perfect, but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. (Our resurrection is what God has in mind.) Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind (unless you forget the past, you cannot reach into anything much in the future) and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you. Philippians 3:12–15.
Paul was pressing to reach into resurrection life. Was that foolish? Did he want to hurry up and die so that he could be resurrected? No, he was not talking about dying. He was talking about reaching into life without dying. He was pressing toward it, reaching toward it. In Romans 8:23 he described it by saying, “We are groaning for our adoption, the redemption of our body.” In II Corinthians 5:2 he wrote, “We groan,” and in verse 4 he said, “While we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened.” Like Paul, we want to get into the heavenly body that is waiting for us.
What will happen to our physical body? We do not know; neither do we know exactly what the heavenly body will be like. In some way the functions of the physical body will be retained and yet they will be superseded by something better than the restrictions we have in the physical body. This is not just a strange, metaphysical idea. There are scientists who are methodically trying to establish the fact that there is life after death.
Experiences have been recorded of many people who actually died and were revived. Although these accounts are of great interest, we do not need to dwell on that aspect. Our concern is resurrection life. We want to know what Jesus’ body was like when He arose from the dead, for our bodies will be like His glorious body. For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself. Philippians 3:20–21.
We must be concerned with the way that we walk with God now; however, resurrection life is also to be sought as being attainable now. What Jesus said about life and death and the way He came forth from the grave must be within our thinking. We are going to have a body like His. We do not know the structure of it, but in some way it will have a penetrating quality. We will find that what seems to be solid is not as dense as we think. Physicists who study the molecular structure of matter realize that the atoms are like little universes and that there is a great deal of empty space within each atom. A door that appears to be solid in the physical world actually has a lot of empty space in it, but a person still cannot walk through that door without opening it. In the realm of spirit it is different. After the resurrection, Jesus came into the room where the disciples were gathered, without opening the door. Then He ate with them (Luke 24:36–43). Even in His glorified body, He still carried the wounds of His suffering. In some way, the wounds in His hands and His side were transmitted (John 20:19–29). In some way also the two disciples on the road to Emmaus did not recognize Him—in spite of the fact that they had often seen Him—until God opened their eyes. Then they knew Him (Luke 24:13–31).
There are many things that we do not know yet, but the whole gospel hinges around the fact that our Lord died for us and He rose from the grave. He is the firstfruits of them that sleep, and after Him come those who are Christ’s at His Parousia (I Corinthians 15:20, 23). We are to participate somewhere in the firstfruits resurrection, in the resurrection of Christ, the firstfruits. We must reach into resurrection. We may not know exactly how we will attain the resurrection, but we should heed the admonitions of the Word and reach for it and want it.
The first step in obtaining anything from God is to have someone preach it to you. Many Christians do not have even the basic blessings that are found in the Word because no one has taught them about those blessings. If healing is not taught to you, how can you receive it? If no one has told you about the Holy Spirit, how can you be filled with the Spirit? How can you move in a ministry or learn to speak a Word from the Lord unless someone has taught you about that? The man who preaches has to believe first. If he believes a promise and brings it out of the Word to you, then his faith generates a faith in your heart. After a while you find yourself thinking according to the Word. You begin to lose the conditioning of unbelief and the past responses that you have learned, and you begin to reach for something more in God.
Let your heart be stirred to begin to believe in resurrection life. Reject death just as you reject sin. If you love righteousness, you have to hate sin. In the same way, if you love life, you have to hate death. I Corinthians 15:54–55 says, But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality (notice that it says “put on”), then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
Begin to think, to pray, to believe, to anticipate, and to appropriate His life. Do not make a memorial out of His empty tomb, nor yearn for one yourself. Instead, look to be found in His image.