Where Do Christians Go When They Die?
In our previous article, we examined the four words in the Bible translated as “hell.” Two of those words—Hades and Sheol—refer to the place of the dead, which, we observed, has both a good side and a bad side. That raises a question: if Hades/Sheol is the place of the dead, with both a good and a bad side, does that mean believers who die go there?
To begin with, notice that in the Hebrew scriptures (the Old Testament), it is assumed that everyone—godly and ungodly alike—goes to Sheol:
Jacob said, “I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning” (Genesis 37:35) and “you would bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol” (42:38)
Job said, “Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until your wrath be past…” (Job 14:13)
David wrote, “For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption” (Psalm 16:10)
Jonah prayed, “Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice” (Jonah 2:2)
So, it was assumed that everyone who died would go to the place of the dead. A person’s right relationship with God did not exempt him. Is that still true? This question can be answered by a careful look at what Scripture says happened after Jesus died.
1. Paradise In Hades
Pastor Doug Wilson of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, explains:
Jesus tells us that as Jonah was in the fish three days and three nights, so the Son of Man, He says, will be three days and three nights in the heart of the Earth [Matthew 12:40]. So, Jesus says where he's going to be.… But He tells the thief on the cross, ‘Today you'll be with me in paradise’… [Luke 23:43]
The Penitent Thief on the Cross by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). (Public Domain)
So, if Jesus was going to be in the heart of the earth for three days, but the thief on the cross would be with Him in paradise that very day, then (by logical deduction) “paradise” must have been someplace in the heart of the earth. This “paradise,” Wilson concludes, must have been the good side of Hades—called Abraham’s bosom (or side) in Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-30).
To add to that, we might observe that after Jesus was resurrected, when He appeared to Mary near His empty tomb, He said, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father” (John 20:17). In other words, He hadn’t returned to heaven yet. He’d been dead for three days, but not in heaven. Where had He been? “In the heart of the earth”—in Hades.
Side note: the biblical testimony is that the place of the dead (Hades/Sheol) is in the earth’s center. Not only does Jesus affirm that in the statement above about Jonah, but it’s also indicated or implied in passages like Numbers 16:30-33, which records how the ground opened beneath a group of rebellious Israelites and they “went down alive into Sheol” (16:33).
2. Preaching In Hades
So, what was Jesus doing in Hades for three days? Peter writes that after Jesus was put to death, “he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared” (1 Peter 3:19–20).
So, while in Hades, Jesus spent at least some of His time announcing His victory to the spirits of the wicked people from Noah’s time. The word for “proclaimed” here, Wilson points out, “is kerusso, not euangelio.” That means Jesus was not preaching in the sense that His hearers would have an opportunity to repent (they had had that opportunity during their lifetime and rejected it); instead, He was announcing their final defeat.
3. Paradise Moved
In Ephesians 4:8, Paul quotes Psalm 68:18 to say, “When [Christ] ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” The Bible answer site GotQuestions explains one interpretation of this: “It may be that Paul uses the phrase led captivity captive [or “led a host of captives”] to refer to those who had died before and who awaited Jesus’ sacrifice for the forgiveness of their sin to have access to heaven. If that is Paul’s meaning, then, after Jesus descended to the grave (Sheol), Jesus would have led those who had been in captivity to death into the promised freedom of life with God.”
If that’s what happened, then there was a mass migration of the spirits of pre-Christian saints from Hades to heaven at that time. Indeed, the next occurrence in the Bible of the word “paradise,” after Jesus’ conversation with the thief on the cross, is when Paul uses it interchangeably with “the third heaven” (2 Corinthians 12:2-3).
Wilson summarizes:
So, I believe that Jesus died on the cross, descended into Hades, announced their final defeat to the spirits who were in Hades, then rose from the dead, led captivity captive, ascended into heaven, and gave gifts to men—such that, by the time of Paul, Paul was caught up into paradise. So, Jesus locates paradise in the heart of the earth, but by the time of Paul, paradise is associated with the third heaven.
To conclude, we know from Scripture that, for the Christian, to “be away from the body” is to be “home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8), that is, with Jesus. Where is Jesus? He is “seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1), to which He ascended forty days after His resurrection (Acts 1:3-9). So, while believers before Christ’s resurrection went down to Sheol like the rest of humankind, believers after Christ’s resurrection go to heaven.
This article was originally published in Project 18:15. If you read it here first, you’re late to the party. Don’t miss the next one!