I was recently asked, “when we die do, we just go in the box until Christ’s return?” You can tell from the question that this individual believes that Jesus Christ is going to return. The theological term for this belief is “soul sleep.” The doctrine gained acceptance during the reformation era and was an early teaching of Martin Luther. He later changed his teaching to one where the soul does not sleep.[1] This widely held and taught doctrine during the reformation still has a foothold today even though it is not supported in the Scriptures. To refute soul sleep, we simply need to look to Scripture.
First let’s look at how Jesus responded to the thief on the cross. Jesus told him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.”[2] Jesus did not say that when you awake you will be with me in heaven. Jesus said today. So, this one verse refutes soul sleep, but let’s look at a couple more Scriptures.
Our second example is Jesus telling His parable about Lazarus and the rich man. Jesus said, “Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried. In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and *saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom.”[3] Jesus here is teaching that the Christian immediately goes to heaven and the non-Christian is immediately going to hell. We see the non-Christian’s consequences are immediate later in the parable when the rich man said, ‘Then I beg you, father, that you send him to my father’s house—for I have five brothers—in order that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.”[4] If the consequences for the non-Christian was not immediate then the rich man would not have been worried about his brothers because they also would have been dead.
Our third example is from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. I used this same Scripture in last week’s post about Christian’s fearing death. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord—for we walk by faith, not by sight—we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.”[5] Paul is clearly teaching that upon death the Christian goes immediately to be with Christ.
Soul sleep was not a doctrine of the early church fathers and it is not supported by Scripture. Given the facts presented, we should reject any teaching or ideas that support or prolong this false doctrine.
In Christ,
Don
[1] James Leo Garrett Jr., Systematic Theology: Biblical, Historical, and Evangelical, Second Edition., vol. 2 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014), 744.
[2] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Lk 23:43.
[3] NASB95, Lk 16:22–23.
[4] NASB95, Lk 16:27–28.
[5] NASB95, 2 Co 5:6–8.