Death, a defeated foe

                                                     "Jesus wept" (John 11:35).*

The Master could control Him self no longer. Days before Lazarus died, Mary and Martha had sent Him the message that their brother was gravely ill, and if He could only come, the curse of lingering death would pass away and the freshness of life would once more smile on Lazarus' face. As part of the emerging community of faith, the valiant three of Bethany believed and affirmed that Jesus is God in flesh, that He held the keys of death and life, and that He was Israel's long-awaited Messiah.

Now death had snatched away one of the three. Jesus stood before the grave, surveyed the grieving and curious crowd, consoled the inconsolable Mary and Martha, and identified Himself with the grief of humanity. He wept.

But after the weeping came the command "Lazarus, come forth" (verse 43). The raising of Lazarus is not just a beautiful story. It is a reality check on human nature and death. It answers the question of what happens after death. It speaks of the hope of resurrection. It presents the One in whom alone is eternal life.

Human nature

"Lazarus is dead," Jesus told His disciples (verse 14). In that statement He recognized that death is the common lot of humanity. When Adam and Eve were placed in the garden of Eden, God gave them a simple command: "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:17). Life was conditional upon continual obedience to the Creator.

God did not bestow upon Adam and Eve unconditional immortality. Neither did He create them to die. He created them to live forever on the condition that they exercise their free will to cast perpetually their lot on God's side. Had our first parents not sinned, surely the history of the world would have been different. Sin would not have reigned, and death would have had no place. But sin came, and with sin death (see Rom. 5:12). The sequence is inevitable: "For the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23). Thus death is the lot of all humanity. It comes to the rich. It comes to the poor. It comes to the famous. It comes to the lowly. It comes without prejudice. It recognizes no fence. It has one universal message: humanity is mortal, sinful, and subject to the final foe.

The Bible also makes it clear that only God has immortality, original and unconditional (see 1 Tim. 6:16). But thank God the Bible also declares that Jesus Christ "has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (2 Tim. 1:10). The biblical position is clear: through Christ alone can we have immortality. Eternal life is not inherent in human beings; indeed, humans have no right to it. The Word of God leaves no room for doubt on this score. Search the 66 books of the Word, and you will not find one verse to support the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. On the other hand, scores of passages speak to the unconscious status of the dead.

Nature of death

But one might ask, "Doesn't the Bible say that at death 'the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it' [Eccl. 12:7]?" One might also ask, "Is it not true that most Christians believe that upon death the soul goes to heaven or hell or an intermediate state?" The answer to both questions is yes, but that does not make the immortality of the soul a biblical doctrine.

To understand the biblical teaching, we need to address several other basic questions: What is the nature of the soul? What is the status of the dead? and What is the biblical answer to the problem of death?

The nature of the soul. The first reference to soul in the Bible is found in Genesis 2:7: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (KJV). The Creator took the dust of the ground, formed it into a particular shape, breathed into it His life-giving power, and there came the human being the living soul. The divine formula of soul that emerges from Genesis is this: body + the breath of life = living soul. Thus we see that in the act of Creation God did not put an independent entity called "soul" into the body. The human being is the soul. In fact, other translations (NASB, NKJV, NIV, for example) render the phrase "living soul" as "living being." Therefore, when the Bible speaks about soul, it speaks not of an independent entity apart from the body, but the total person. This is further borne out by the He brew word nephesh, which is translated "soul." The literal meaning of the word is "that which breathes." Nephesh is translated as "person," "mind," "creature," "heart," "will," "life," and in several other ways (see Gen. 14:21; Deut. 18:6;Lev. ll:46;Prov.23:7;Eze. 16:27; 1 Kings 19:4).

Consider Exodus 1:5, which speaks of about 70 nephesh that came out of the loins of Jacob. Surely it cannot mean 70 bodyless, immaterial substances. It simply means 70 persons. Scores of other passages may be cited, but suffice to say, nowhere does the Bible speak about the soul as an entity independent of the human being. The soul does not exist by itself. The soul is the person. The person is the soul.

What, then, happens to the soul at death? Consider a simple analogy. Several years ago our family moved into a mission house in India. The house was simple and spacious, though not as comfortable as we would have liked. One thing it lacked was built-in wardrobes.

We hired a carpenter to build us a wardrobe, and in a week's time he had it installed, new and shiny. It was a fine piece of handiwork, built of the finest teak, and it served us well. However, we moved again, and this time to a house that had built-in closets. We decided to dismantle the wardrobe and save the teak boards for some future use. The carpenter did the job again, and he even bundled the screws for us.

A few days after we had torn it down, our 4-year-old daughter asked, "Dad, where is the wardrobe?"

Had I answered that it had gone to the carpenter, that would have made me dishonest. Or had I said that it was in the teak planks or in the bundle of screws, that would have made me look insane or stupid.

Well, I was not insane, I was not stupid, and I did not wish to be dishonest. So I gave my little girl the only answer I could: "The wardrobe is no longer there."

Just that simple. Planks plus screws put together by a wise carpenter according to a wise plan gave us the wardrobe. When the two constituents were separated, what happened? The wardrobe was not in the planks, nor in the screws, nor with the carpenter. But the carpenter had the power to remake it.

The analogy may not be all that brilliant, but doesn't it drive the point home? The body plus the life-giving power of God makes the living soul. At the time of death the power of God is withdrawn. "Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it" (Eccl. 12:7). This spirit that returns to God is not the soul. The spirit is the life-giving power of God, under whose gracious providence "we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).

When this spirit is withdrawn, death strikes and the human being described in Genesis 2:7 as the "living soul" (KJV) no longer exists. The soul simply ceases to be. It is not in the dust. It does not go to God. It does not go to hell. But one thing is certain: God has the power to remake or, to use the biblical phrase, "resurrect" the body and bring the dead to life again.

Meanwhile, what is the status of the dead?

State of the dead. Let us return to the story of Lazarus. Lazarus was dead, but note how Jesus described that status: "Our friend Lazarus sleeps" (John 11:11). In describing death as sleep, Jesus was not simply waxing poetic. He was echoing the words He had inspired the Old Testament writers to record. Wrote the psalmist, "Enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death" (Ps. 13:3). Said Job: "So man lies down and does not rise. Till the heavens are no more, they will not awake nor be roused from their sleep" (Job 14:12). Nearly 66 times in 17 books, the Bible uses sleep as the figure of speech to describe death. And when Jesus authenticated such usage, He established two significant realities: the unconscious state of the dead, and the certainty of their waking up either for judgment or for eternal life.

State of the dead. Like sleep, death is the end of all activities: "For there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going" (Eccl. 9:10). Like in sleep, "the dead know nothing" (verse 5). Like sleep, death prevents participation in the activities of those who are awake or living. "For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, their hatred, and their envy have now perished. Nevermore will they have a share in anything done under the sun" (verses 5, 6). The dead are dead. They cannot think; they cannot plan (see Ps. 146:4). They cannot work (see Eccl. 9:10). They cannot re member God (see Ps. 6:5). Nor can they praise Him (see Ps. 115:17), and that means the dead in Christ are not in heaven, for heaven's chief occupation is praise.

Thus death is the antithesis of life. Everything that is present in life is ab sent in death. Everything that makes people what they are personality, thought processes, social life, free will, worship, moral obligations ceases at the moment of death. A person dies wholly and completely.

But the dead will not forever remain dead. In the final events of earth's history, as part of God's process of cleansing the earth of sin and its consequences, and the establishment of a new heaven and a new earth, God will raise the dead. As Jesus said, "the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation" (John 5:28, 29). The book of Revelation also speaks of two resurrections: the first involving the righteous, who receive their reward at the second coming of Jesus; the second involving the wicked, who receive their judgment at the end of the millennium, when Jesus returns again with the saints to set up His kingdom on this earth (see Rev. 20:9, 10, 13, 15).

If such is the case, why do most Christians believe in a soul that survives death and goes on to live as an independent entity? Where did this idea of an immortal soul originate?

Doctrine of immortal soul. The first discourse on the natural immortality of the soul came, not from a preacher or philosopher or guru, but from Satan himself, the father of lies (see John 8:44). Against the proclaimed word of God, Satan announced in the garden of Eden: "You will not surely die" (Gen. 3:4).

Ever since Adam and Eve gave heed to Satan's first great deception, the immortality of the soul has become the cornerstone of apostasy. Ancient Egyptians built an elaborate system of tombs and pyramids to protect the corpse as securely as possible for the return of the soul. Oriental religions such as Hindu ism proclaim the transmigration of the soul, teaching that death is but a door to a new form of life, high or low, depending on how good a life one leads now. Reincarnation has become the mantra of today, from Hollywood fantasy to university research.

But it was the Greeks, under the fertile imagination of Socrates and Plato, who gave systematic form to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The foundation of the Greek teaching is a simple dualism. The Greeks divided the uni verse into matter and spirit. Matter is bad. Spirit is good. That which is bad is temporary, and that which is good is eternal. Once this was conceded, it was easy for the Greeks to divide the human being into body and soul. The body is physical and so evil and temporary. The soul is good and therefore eternal. Plato says in his Phaedo: "The soul is most like the divine, and the immortal, and the intelligible, and the uniform, and the indissoluble, and the unchangeable."'

This belief in the immortality of the soul was not simply a philosophic slogan with the Greeks. It was a way of life, as revealed in the death of the man who embodied the Greek thought in its seminal form. When the Athenian court pronounced that Socrates must die, the old philosopher approached death with complete peace and composure. He considered death as a friend who had come to liberate his soul. Just before drinking the poison, he told his friends, "I am as sure as I can be in such matters that I am going to live with gods who are very good masters. And therefore, I am not so much grieved at death; I am confident that the dead have some kind of existence, and, as has been said of old, an existence that is far better for the good than for the wicked."²

What a contrast: human reason and divine revelation! The Greeks thought of death as a friend. But Inspiration regards death as an enemy (see 1 Cor.15:26), an intruder that has marred the beautiful creation of God. The Greeks considered the physical body to be evil. But the Bible teaches that the body is good. Indeed, the Genesis account considers the whole creation, including the physical, as "very good" (Gen. 1:31). The Greeks thought of the body as a prison house with no particular value or importance. But the apostle Paul values the body as "the temple of the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 6:19). The Greeks taught the immortality of the soul. But the Word of God proclaims the resurrection of the dead (see 1 Thess.4:16,17; 1 Cor. 15:51-54). Whom should a Christian believe: Plato or Paul?

Pagan intrusion. Unfortunately, the early church did not make a clear distinction, and chose a road of compromise. So long as the apostles lived, the church held firmly to the revealed Word of God, despite the onslaughts of the philosophical systems of the day. But soon after the apostles, Greek thought increasingly infiltrated the church. Some of the leading converts to the Christian faith were nurtured more in the writings of Plato than in the writings of Moses or Isaiah or Solomon.

Is there a better way of describing this pagan intrusion into the Christian church than the words of Ellen White? "Many who professed conversion still clung to the tenets of their pagan philosophy, and not only continued its study themselves, but urged it upon others as a means of extending their influence among the heathen. Serious errors were thus introduced into the Christian faith. Prominent among these was the belief in man's natural immortality and his consciousness in death." ³

Thus, little by little, pagan thought found its way into the Christian church and through subtle ways became established as Christian precepts. As early as A.D. 150 Justin Martyr spoke of some Christians who claimed that "there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven." ⁴ By the beginning of the third century, Tertullian, bishop of Carthage, wrote of the "natural immortality of the soul." ⁵ In his Treatise on the Soul he says, "The soul, then, we define to be sprung from the breath of God, immortal, possessing body, having form, simple in its substance, intelligent in its own nature, developing its power in various ways, free in its determinations, subject to be changes of accident, in its faculties mutable, rational, supreme, endued with an instinct of presentiment, evolved out of one (archetypal soul)." ⁶

Upon what did Tertullian base his conclusions? The Old Testament? No. The New Testament? No. Let him say for himself: "I may use ... the opinion of a Plato, when he declares, 'Every soul is immortal.'" ⁷

At least Tertullian is more forthright than most theologians who teach the soul's inherent immortality as a scriptural doctrine. Plato's dogma became authoritative for many of the early Church Fathers. It did not take long for the church to accept what nearly every one wanted to believe. Finally at the Fifth Lateran Councilinl513, under the direction of Pope Leo X, the Roman Catholic Church officially proclaimed the immortality of the soul as an article of Christian belief.⁸

Such is the tortured route through which the unbiblical teaching of an immortal soul came into the Christian church. But that does not make it right. As Oscar Cullmann, one of the great biblical theologians of this century, wrote, the Christian hope rests on resurrection and not on immortality of the soul. "The teaching of the great philosophers Socrates and Plato can in no way be brought into consonance with that of the New Testament." ⁹ If a Christian wants to be true to the New Testament, the answer to the problem of death is resurrection. Nothing else.

Resurrection: the biblical answer

Let us return once again to Lazarus. Until Jesus commanded Lazarus to come forth, he remained dead, unconscious, and in the grave. Martha had a problem with obeying the command of Jesus to roll away the stone. She let her fear of the stench rival her faith in the resurrection.

Yes, resurrection is not an easy doctrine to believe. But Jesus was saying to Martha, "Why should you doubt in regard to My power? Why reason in opposition to My requirements? You have My word. If you will believe, you shall see the glory of God. Natural impossibilities cannot prevent the work of the Omnipotent One." ¹⁰

The stone was removed, and Jesus issued the command. The voice of the Life-giver penetrated the tomb. Life re versed the process of decay. The power of resurrection crushed the power of death. And Lazarus came out, a witness to the authenticity of One who said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die" (John 11:25, 26).

Resurrection is God's answer to the problem of death. This hope helped Job face the mystery of life and death. "If a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my hard service I will wait, till my change comes" (Job 14:14). "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God" (Job 19:25, 26).

The hope that strengthened Job is the same hope that Paul presented to the early Christians as the answer to the puzzle of death. Paul also discloses when this hope will come to fruition. He says: "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words" (1 Thess. 4:16-18).

Mark those words, "Comfort one another." Christians must face death not by deluding themselves with the fictitious doctrine of the immortality of the soul, but by resting in the divine assurance of resurrection. There is no riddle or magic in this message. The Creator who brought the human being into existence can also resurrect that same being. It is as simple as that. No wonder Paul asked King Agrippa, "Why should it be thought incredible by you that God raises the dead?" (Acts 26:8).

Why indeed?

The credibility of the resurrection is founded on the historical truth of Christ's resurrection. Did not our Lord Himself say "Because I live, you will live also" (John 14:19)? And listen to the resounding message of Paul: "The rising of Christ from the dead is the very heart of our message.... And if Christ was not raised then neither our preaching nor your faith has any meaning at all" (1 Cor. 15:12-14, Phillips). "But the glorious fact is that Christ was raised from the dead: he has become the very first to rise of all who sleep the sleep of death. As death entered the world through a man, so has rising from the dead come to us through a man! As members of a sinful race all men die; as members of Christ all men shall be raised to life" (verses 20- 22, Phillips).

Note how beautifully the apostle jells the good news of the gospel. By one man, Adam, sin entered the world. Be cause of sin, death has come upon all the human race. But humanity is not left without hope. Christ died for our sins and rose again for our resurrection. He lives therefore, we have this hope of rising from the dead. Jesus paid the penalty of sin on the cross, and when He rose from the grave on the third day, the anthem of victory moved from prophetic anticipation to an experiential reality: "Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 15:57).

Paul describes this resurrection hope as a"mystery" (verse 5l). It is not some thing that originated out of the fertile imagination of a human being. It is not fiction. It is not myth. It is God's own solution to the problem of death, revealed by His will and guaranteed by the crucified and risen Saviour, to be experienced at the second coming of Jesus.

"In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: 'Death is swallowed up in victory.' 'O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?'" (verses 52-55).

Paul is almost ecstatic in the expression of his hope. He began the chapter with "the good news" of "how Christ died for our sins" (verses 1-3). He ends the chapter with this magnificent chorus of victory: death is dead. And John the revelator joins in the chorus: "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. . . . And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying; and there shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away" (Rev. 21:1-4).

What shall we choose?

There we have the biblical answer to the issue of death. It has no room for the false doctrine of a soul surviving death to go to heaven or hell. That false doctrine has its roots in human reason. What shall we as Christians accept? Reason or revelation? Not that reason should necessarily be in conflict with revelation, but unfortunately the doctrine of an immortal soul has its origin not in God's Word, but in human philosophy in variant forms from the brilliance of Plato to the subtlety of Oriental mysticism to modern spiritualism.

We might admire both views. Both may appear logical. And both may even be defended. But that's not the point. As a Christian, which view should be mine? As a Christian, can I get onto Plato's philosophical boat and sail with him? Or should I accept the Word of God and believe in its declaration that "the soul who sins shall die" (Eze. 18:4)? Plato had no use for the word sin, and so could not think of death as the "wages of sin." To him death was a door to a new life. How can I as a Christian align with Plato when I well know that I am a sinner and that Jesus Christ died for my sins? How can I accept the cross on the one hand and embrace Phaedo on the other? The two are exclusive and contradictory. No wonder Paul said that the cross is "foolishness" to the Greeks (1 Cor. 1:23).

Look at the cross again. There you see God's answer to the problem of sin. There you see the ultimate enemy vanquished by the blood of the sinless Son of God. There lies reconciliation and the hope of eternal life. And from there comes the assurance and the challenge: "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?" (John 11:25, 26).

Do we? Dare we not?