At death and at the resurrection

This week's questions

What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death? 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.

Question 37

What benefits do believers receive from Christ at the resurrection? At the resurrection, believers being raised up in glory, shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment, and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God to all eternity.

Question 38

Last week Question 36 counted the benefits of this life; these two follow the believer through death and beyond. They close the catechism's first part, what we are to believe, and next week the duty God requires begins. How that part ends where Question 1 began is shown in the library's introduction.

At death: at once, and still his

Question 37 speaks first of the soul. Its first proof text names among the company of heaven "the spirits of the righteous made perfect" (Hebrews 12:23): at death the lifelong struggle with sin is over, and the soul passes into glory ‘immediately’. Paul, weighing life against death, wrote: "I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better indeed" (Philippians 1:23). The dying thief heard, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43).

Of the body the answer says something more surprising: even in the grave it remains united to Christ. Paul gives the dead in faith a gentle name:

For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, we also believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him.

1 Thessalonians 4:14

They have not fallen out of Christ but asleep in him. Their bodies, says the Larger Catechism, "rest in their graves as in their beds, till at the last day they be again united to their souls" Larger Catechism, Q. 86. To lay a Christian in the earth is not to let the body go but to entrust it to the Lord. In the Bedford preacher John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, as Christian sinks in the river of death, his companion calls, "Be of good cheer, my brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good" The Pilgrim's Progress. For those who mourn, see How can I bear grief?

Most of the church has held that in this intermediate state believers are consciously with Christ. Seventh-day Adventists, and some sixteenth-century Anabaptists before them, take the New Testament's word for death, sleep (John 11:11), plainly: the dead rest unconscious until the resurrection. In Catholic teaching, some who die at peace with God are not yet wholly clean: sure of salvation, they are cleansed after death before heaven, a cleansing called purgatory; and from early on the church has prayed for the departed Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1030–1032. The Orthodox remember the departed in their liturgy and pray for them, but set out no doctrine of purgatory. The Westminster Confession says that souls "neither die nor sleep", and that besides heaven and hell "the Scripture acknowledgeth none" WCF 32.1, as does the Reformed Baptists' Second London Confession (1689) 31.1. Death and the intermediate state compares these views.

At the resurrection: acknowledged, and full of joy

All the churches confess the resurrection of the body and the judgment in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. Question 38 looks to the body's glorification. Its first proof text compares the body to a seed: "It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power" (1 Corinthians 15:43). Believers will be openly acknowledged, as Jesus promised: "Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father in heaven" (Matthew 10:32). The Son of God, says the Belgic Confession of the continental Reformed churches, "will confess their names before God his Father, and his elect angels" Belgic Confession, Art. 37. And they will be acquitted: the justification received by faith is declared before all. "Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies" (Romans 8:33).

Our works still matter. "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive his due for the things done in the body, whether good or bad" (2 Corinthians 5:10). Fire will test each builder's work: one whose work survives is rewarded, one whose work burns suffers loss, yet is saved (1 Corinthians 3:12-15). The Reformed confess these as rewards of grace, not wages: God, "looking upon them in his Son, is pleased to accept and reward that which is sincere, although accompanied with many weaknesses and imperfections" WCF 16.6.

Last comes the full enjoying of God:

Beloved, we are now children of God, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when Christ appears, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is.

1 John 3:2

Now we see a dim reflection; then, face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12). Augustine, bishop of Hippo in North Africa, ends The City of God with that day: "There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise" The City of God 22.30. See also Resurrection, judgment and the new creation, What happens after death? and Will we recognise each other in heaven?

To ponder this week

What will ‘the full enjoying of God’ be, and where can you taste something of it this week? "You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand" (Psalm 16:11). The Heidelberg Catechism speaks of feeling now "the beginning of eternal joy" Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 58. Each evening, note one moment when you delighted in God. If someone you know is grieving, go and sit with them.

Practice