Written by James Murphy, Ph.D. |
Wednesday, August 10, 2022
The Bible is a treasury of humanity’s highest ideals and yet the Bible is brutally realistic about human evil. The clash between those ideals and human reality gives the Bible great dramatic power.

The Bible is blamed for virtually every evil under the sun. Here is a summary of the rap sheet: Slavery and racism began with Noah’s curse on his son Ham. The Crusades, Western imperialism, Islamic jihad, and even Nazi genocide were all inspired by biblical holy war. The degradation of nature, cruelty to animals, and overpopulation are all endorsed by God when he commands Adam to subdue the Earth. God’s election of Israel as his chosen people led to three thousand years of conflict in the Middle East. When God tells Eve “your husband shall rule over you” we see the origin of all the horrors of patriarchy, from polygamy to wife-beating. As for child abuse, think of Abraham’s appalling plan to make a burnt offering of his son, Isaac. Biblical condemnations of sodomy gave us centuries of cruel persecution of homosexuals. It would appear that the Bible has a lot to answer for.
At the same time, many champions of human equality, the emancipation of slaves, the liberation of women, vegetarianism, pacifism, respect for nature, the rights of children, and the abolition of the death penalty also claim to be inspired by the Bible. After all, the Bible does insist that God created every human being in his own image, male and female alike, and that in Paradise we shall see war no more, nor killing of any kind. What could be a more ringing endorsement of human equality than the biblical assertion: “there is no longer slave or free, Jew or Greek; there is no longer male or female, for all of you are one”? As the most revered and reviled book in history, the Bible is routinely blamed for our evils and credited for our ideals.
In one dramatic biblical scene, Jesus debates Satan and both support their arguments by quoting verbatim from the Bible. Notoriously, the Bible can be quoted to defend contradictory positions about virtually all moral controversies. Whatever your opinion about slavery, gay marriage, divorce, capital punishment, polygamy, patriarchy, corporal punishment, race, sacrifice, war, or socialism, you’ll find support in the Bible. How could there be a coherent biblical ethics when the Bible is deployed as a weapon by all sides on every issue—when even the devil quotes Scripture?
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Desponding, struggling, exhausted saint, call the Lord Jesus to mind. Bring his sweet remembrance — and living presence — into the inner chambers. Think much of him, and the stone under your head shall become a pillow, the gall in your soul become sweetened. Do you feel weighed down by this life? Do sins cling to your mind? Do you begin to faint on the journey, tire from all the running, wonder how you will make it through the week? Look to Jesus. Call him to mind, and therefore have hope.

“As [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7 KJV). What a man thinks in his heart — not what he says with his mouth — is where to find the man naked in his natural habitat. He may say warmly enough to be convincing, “Sit, eat, and drink,” but sweet words can coat a bitter heart. He may brood against you while he bids you to his table. What he thinks inwardly, his soliloquy uttered in secret chambers — that is the man as he is.
But we may go further: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so he will become.” That man in the inner chamber may change — for better or worse — depending on where he sets his innermost thoughts. Beautiful or beastly, peaceful or disturbed, heavenly or hellish — as a man thinketh in his heart, so he will become.
Knowing this, Scripture knocks loudly upon the inmost door.
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:1–3)
Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. (Romans 8:5–6)
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. (Romans 12:2)
The Holy Spirit would open the windows and flood our soul’s inner rooms with fresh beauty and light:
Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Philippians 4:8)
Have such texts prevailed with you? The secret thoughts of your inner man — upon what do they dwell? Are you being transformed by the renewal of your mind?
Thoughts in the Darkness
This principle makes all the difference for us in life generally, but especially in our suffering. As a man thinketh in his heart while under the knife of affliction, so he will become — hardened and drifting away or “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10).
We see this truth illustrated after one of the darkest events in holy Scripture: the destruction of Jerusalem. The book of Lamentations is aptly named, its pages stained with tears and blood. In it, the poet brings us into the ruins of his heart and the conquered city he loves. From within that cave, Jeremiah teaches us how to find warmth amidst the bitterest winter: he calls truth to mind.
As others sink irretrievably, Jeremiah goes down to the threshold of his heart, unlocks the door, and forcibly turns the thoughts of his soul away from his “affliction and . . . wanderings, the wormwood and the gall” (Lamentations 3:19), to his half-remembered God.
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” (Lamentations 3:21–24)
In the midnight of despair, he brings the lantern of memory into the secret place of his spirit and there reads of God’s goodness and faithfulness from the sacred ledger. Behold the heavenly alchemy. He has seen recent nights haunted by unspeakable terrors and sins, yet he pens lyrics of God’s every-morning mercies and tireless love. His world has been stripped from him, but “the Lord is my portion,” he catechizes the inner man. “Therefore I will hope in him.”
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Life after death is not one that begins only after the great resurrection of the dead or with the second coming of Christ. Even after the body and soul have been separated in death, there is an ongoing existence of the soul even after the body has decayed.  

One of the more common questions I’ve been asked since 2020 relates to death. Covid-19 has brought a sense of urgency to many. That urgency has led some to search the scriptures to find the answers to their deepest questions: What happens after we die?
Many people have been taught a generic “afterlife” concept. There is a generalized cartoony afterlife in mind among some of my friends who are unbelievers (some quite staunch atheists). This cartoon takes on either a “darkened red glow” or a “blue shining glow”. The red place is a place of torment, torture, and pain. The red place in many Americans’ minds is a place of a general deprivation of all things entertaining, lovely, and delightful. The blue place is a place of happiness, light, relief, rest, music, and peace. The blue place in many Americans’ minds is a place of general presence of all things pleasing, akin to an eternally open theme park or beach.
There are other generalizations that accompany these two cartoonish pictures of eternity. Some have vague notions that the afterlife spells an eternity spent floating on clouds. Others speak of disembodied souls. Some have hope of reunification with lost loved ones, though they know not how this is possible when the bodies once inhabited are long since decayed. Some have an ascension in mind, that this life is dirty and less than the life to come, and that in that life to come a loss of the physical state is a new promise of freedom.
These questions are partially what has led me to preach on this topic in August of 2021, and the two audio read-aloud series we are doing currently on YouTube. The Saint’s Everlasting Rest by Richard Baxter is a beautiful book of devotional delights as Baxter contemplated and exposited what God’s Word has to say about the believer’s eternal life after death (you can click here to access that playlist and join along listening to the book). Andrew MacLaren preached a set of sermons on the book of Philippians, a letter from the Apostle Paul to a church without a hint of rebuke, but instead an abounding measure of praise and joy. Often this praise and joy Paul speaks of in Philippians come from reminders of the eternal joy Christians have awaiting them after death.
So as I’ve been pondering these things, studying these things, and preaching on these things, we come again to the question at hand.
What Does God’s Word Have to Say About What Happens After We Die?
It is good to expose whatever we may believe, think, or imagine to the truth of God’s Word (Psalm 139:1). Like a patient in need of life-saving surgery, we risk much by coming to the Word of God. In searching God’s Word, are we open to what God has to say? Are we willing to listen and follow where Jesus speaks and leads (Or will we come away sad like the rich man before Jesus in Mark 10:21-22)? If God’s Word says something very different from what we’ve been taught, will we lay aside our own notions and cling to the revealed truth of God? It is a dangerous thing to submit to the sword of the Spirit (Hebrews 4:12). We may lose face, our friends may think our faith strange, and our relatives may betray us (As they did to Jesus, thinking him crazy in Mark 3:21)! Yet for all that we lose by seeking God’s revealed truth, we gain much more (Mark 10:29-31).
‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus replied, ’no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.’—Mark 10:29-31
When we come to God’s Word we do not enter into a conversation with a friend over coffee, offering speculations. When we come to the Word of God we are on holy ground. We are in the presence of Truth revealed. What a blessing God has given to us in His Word! It pushes the darkness of doubt away and lays open the treasures of reality.
So recall your cartoony thoughts. Remember what you’ve been taught about what happens after we die. Bring to mind what you’ve considered while mourning for lost loved ones in the Lord. Bring these thoughts and beliefs captive before the Lord of glory and face the exposure of the truth of God’s Word.
Passages from God’s Word
1. God’s Word makes clear that death itself is a consequence of sin. Death is not natural to God’s created order for mankind. In other words, without sin, there would be no death. Death first came to humanity as a result of Adam’s sin. Death is not a glory in itself, death is a consequence.
By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust, you will return. (NIV Genesis 3:19)
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned. (NIV Romans 5:12)
2. God’s Word makes clear that mankind has been given a physical body inhabited with a living soul. At death, the body ceases its activity, while the spirit or soul continues. There are at the foundations of who and what we are as humans these two components; a body and a soul. We ought to guard that we do not overemphasize either of these two components which can lead to new-age paganism, agnosticism, or materialism. The sacred scriptures speak of both the body and the soul as being impacted at death.
Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
…and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. (Ecclesiastes 12:7)
…because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay. (Psalm 16:10)
You, LORD, brought me up from the realm of the dead; you spared me from going down to the pit. (Psalm 30:3)”
3. God’s Word makes clear that in death our body and soul are separated. Our bodies return to the ground (to dust is the often-used expression), while our spirits depart from our bodies. The speech of Jesus to the thief on the cross in Luke 23:43 is particularly telling as it indicates that the bodies of the thief and Jesus would be dead yet, Jesus spoke of the thief being with him in paradise. It is this separation of body and soul which occurs at death. The material body after death to experience decay (or corruption is often the term biblically), and the immortal soul to dwell outside the body in another place.
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10:28)
Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43)
When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. (Revelation 6:9)
4. God’s Word makes clear that there are multiple destinations or locations for those who have died. There is after death awaiting God’s people eternal rest, and awaiting the enemies of God an absence of rest. These destinations are spoken of biblically in many word pictures throughout various passages.
Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. (Matthew 25:41-46)
If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where ‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.’ Everyone will be salted with fire. (Mark 9:42-49)
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