The point of this blog is thinking. That said, thinking is fostered and helped when ideas worth thinking about are posited. Ergo, I posit here an idea I think you’ll find worth thinking about. Your civil comments are most welcome:
When a person dies, their body goes to the grave. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. As the Lord said to Adam, “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”[i] So goes the physical body. But mankind is more than body, for we are made in the image of God, and as God is triune in nature, so mankind is triune in creation -body, soul and spirit[ii].
Of course, we understand that we have a body – that is our physical self. We can see that. We know we have a soul – that is our mind, even though we cannot ‘see’ it, nor can science or physical instruments perceive it; they can only perceive activity in the brain – they can only measure the link between soul and body, not the soul itself.
What we cannot see nor perceive is our spirit. One has to wonder why that is.
When God made Adam and Eve in the garden, He said, “From the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” [iii] From this verse we derive the doctrine of death for sin, so Paul writes, “For the wages of sin is death”[iv] We are all sinners, so we all die[v]. That much we know and accept and to this point I would expect every evangelical Christian to agree. It is worth pointing out that we don’t experience death the moment we sin – instead each of us ages and eventually succumbs to either disease, accident, injury or some combination of those.
In thinking about this, it occurs to me that the Lord’s Word cannot be broken. When He declares of sin that , “in that day…you shall surely die”, He must have meant it. So I reason that we did die, “in that day”. Again, it is commonly accepted that all unbelieving persons have dead spirits. Sticking to the apostle Paul in how I reason; he points out in Ephesians, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.”[vi]
It would seem reasonable to me then, that on birth into this world (for we were conceived and born in sin)[vii] our spirit dies. What does that mean? The spirit is not dust, but spirit. So it makes sense that it would go to the abode of the dead, leaving the abode of the living (for that is the very definition of death – separation from the living). The abode of the dead is that place that God created for the dead (as He created the earth for the living). In Hebrew this is defined as ‘Sheol’, in Greek this is defined as ‘Hades’.
At this point many will begin to object. Isn’t Hades hell? Well, no, actually it isn’t hell. Hell would be that place which no one can get out of (ever) and I would therefore define hell as the lake of fire. In fact, Rev 20:14 explicitly says that Hades is thrown INTO the lake of fire, so Hades isn’t the same place. That Hades (or Sheol if you’re reading the OT) is in effect a holding place for the dead is again explicit in the verse preceding. This same verse indicates that the dead eventually get out of Hades for the purpose of judgment; “And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds.”[viii]
This isn’t to say that all spirits go to hell in the end - there is one condition under which your spirit may escape the sentence. That is, if you judge yourself PRIOR to being brought to the judge of all the earth and find yourself guilty of sin, agree with God and so appeal to the judge of the living and the dead[ix] for mercy[x]. In that case, calling out to Jesus Christ to save you from your sins, you are judged to be in Him (thus we died with Him, were buried with Him and are then raised with Him[xi]). So God creates for you a new spirit. Paul witnesses to that when he says in 2Cor that we have a new spirit, the old is passed, the new has come.[xii] That such a new spirit is in heaven is understood from Eph 2:6.[xiii]
What then you say is the point of Sheol/Hades? Indeed. We know that Christ’s sacrifice was at a set point in history[xiv] and that prior to that point righteousness was credited by God to those who looked to Him[xv]. In turning to God prior to Christ’s day, God Himself effectively marks the doorposts of their lives (figuratively) with Christ’s blood. But till that sacrifice was complete they could not have a new spirit.
To that end I reason that prior to Christ’s sacrifice all spirits of men were in Sheol. Certainly many verses in Scripture indicate that people in the OT expected to go to Sheol.[xvi]. Subsequent to Christ’s sacrifice the unsaved spirits are in Hades, the saved spirits in heaven. Thus, 1Peter 4:6 makes sense because those OT saints who were in Sheol awaiting their salvation by means of faith in God were rewarded through the preaching of the gospel even to the dead.
This is important is because I would reason our souls are tied to our bodies. When freed from a body owing to death (our bodies then being returned to dust till the resurrection), the soul goes to the spirit. If the spirit is in Sheol/Hades, then it goes there. If, by the sacrifice of Christ and the grace of God a new spirit has been made for us, then the soul goes to heaven. In one of those two places we await the resurrection of our body (in either the 1st or 2nd resurrection from the dead). When our body is re-made (resurrected), our soul AND spirit will join again. Now being once again whole we are faced with judgment for the acts we committed while in the body.
It makes sense then that people in the OT wouldn’t think of Sheol/Hades as a ‘bad place’. They thought of the abode of the dead as being a place where everyone went and a place of no particular suffering (indeed, the Psalmist refers to that place as both dark and ‘the land of forgetfulness”[xvii], a place no one praises God but is epitomized by silence[xviii]).
It also makes sense then that Christ talks about Hades being a ‘fiery hell’ to those He was speaking to. He would want them to understand that the abode of the dead is not a place you want to go to. For they were already talking to the judge - Christ being that judge (yet not judging then but waiting till the appointed time). At that appointed time (the last resurrection) both Hades and the grave would be thrown into hell. Jesus knowing that, can now tie Sheol/Hades (the abode of the dead) to hell, for all who reject Him are destined to be reunited with their spirits and resurrected bodies and then judged. Hence, the abode of the dead and those who reject the Lord (and whose names are blotted out of the book of life) have the same destiny post-cross. For all practical purposes in our day then, Hades is hell.
To summarize, the thinking goes like this:
Your spirit died even the day you were born (perhaps the day you were conceived, but that’s another argument). As a body and soul with a dead spirit you were an enemy of God (an object/child of wrath, as it were), and with your body being affected by the presence of sin in the world it too eventually dies. You then physically walk in the land of the living, waiting to be united with your spirit in the abode of the dead. If you receive Christ, God re-assigns your soul to a new spirit already created for you, so that on freedom from the body of sin you exist in, you are united to that new spirit in seated with Christ in heaven. Of course he does that even while our ‘old spirit’ is dead in sin.
At the 1st resurrection our bodies are re-formed and are joined with our spirit/soul. So we are ever with the Lord, though we are judged on the acts committed while in the body with regard to reward in heaven (the judgment for our sins having already been made at our testimony of guilt and appeal for Christ’s forgiveness). At the 2nd resurrection the bodies of those whose souls/spirits are Hades are reformed and they are also made whole. They too face judgment, but without a sacrifice for their sins they are judged for all acts committed while in the body, including the rejection of His sacrifice (the sin of unbelief, which is blasphemy of the Spirit, the unforgivable sin).
Sounds ridiculous, right?
Read again from Ephesians:
“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” - Eph 2:1-7, NASB
So think about that. I'll expect comments...
[i] Gen 3:19b, NASB
[ii] 1Thes 5:23, NASB. To see the separation of soul and spirit refer to Heb 4:12
[iii] Gen 1:17, NASB
[iv] Rom 6:23a, NASB
[v] Rom 3:23
[vi] Eph 2:1, NASB
[vii] Ps 51:5. That we are born in sin was understood even by the ancient Jews – see also John 9:34.
[viii] Rev 20:13, NASB
[ix] Acts 10:42, 2Tim 4:1, 1Pet 4:5
[x] James 2:13
[xi] Rom 6:3-8
[xii] 2Cor 5:17
[xiii] Eph 2:6, NASB, “…and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus”.
[xiv] Gal 4:4
[xv] Rom 4
[xvi] (this is a partial listing) Reading the 95NASB, see Jacob in Gen 37:35, 42:38, Israel’s sons in Gen 44:32, some of Israel in Nu 16:30-33, Hannah’s testimony in 1Sam 2:6, David in 2Sam 12:23, 1Ki 2:6, Job in Job 7:9, 17:13,16, the Psalmist in Ps 9:17 (and many others), Solomon in Pro 9:18, Isaiah in Is 5:14, Ezekiel in Ezek 31:15-17, 32:21, Hosea in Ho 13:14, Amos in Am 9:2…
[xvii] Ps 88:12, NASB
[xviii] Ps 115:17, NASB
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