What Happens After Death?

2 Corinthians 4:16; 5: 5

One of the most important questions which all of us have to face is
"What will happen to me when I die?"

First, there are those who say that when you die, nothing at all happens.
They would say that you simply pass out of existence.
Like a candle going out, your light goes out into darkness, and there is nothing left.
There is no experience, no feeling, no reaction, and no knowledge.
They would say that you simply cease to exist, and that is the end of it.

Almost all those who endorse an atheistic philosophy of life would tend to hold that view.
The problem with that of course is its absolute despair.
There is no hope and no further development or experience.
With this philosophy human personality with all its possibilities and wonders is ended,
and there is no hope at the end.

Of course, the result of a life with no hope is the spreading of existential despair
throughout our present existence.
So with those who hold this view, everything is "now," and people are urged to live
for the present because there is no other life to come.

But thank God, there is the Christian answer.
It is the answer of the Word of God based upon the teaching of the only One
who as far as all history has recorded clearly, openly, and ultimately, conquered death.
Jesus, returned to the very ones that He had taught before He died, was crucified.
He conquered death, and has given us an assurance of security that we can rest upon.

He sent His apostles to tell the good news that in Jesus Christ there is a certain
and secured future of glory and peace awaiting each one who has received him as Saviour and Lord.
However, for those who are without him there lies a future of endless frustration, pain, regret,
and eternal death.

So, in this passage from 2 Corinthians beginning with verse 16 of chapter 4 and and going through
the opening verses of chapter 5, the Apostle Paul lifts his eyes from the experience
he is going through at the moment to the hope that lies beyond.
He introduces it with that characteristic word that we see all through this letter,
the great cry of encouragement and hope.

"So, we do not lose heart.
Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day.
For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen;
for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."
(2 Corinthians 4: 16-18)

So here is that great cry, "We do not lose hope."
There is a reason for hope, not only coming from our present experience of the grace of God
(as Paul has been describing it), but also as we look to the future.
So, we do not lose hope.

Then, he gives three great reasons why he has such a hope in the hour of death:
"Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day."
(2 Corinthians 4:16)
That gives him hope.
It is true that the outward man is perishing.

Now we need to clearly understand that there is a difference between the "outward" man
and the "old" man which we read about in Scripture.
The "old" man, of course, is what the Bible calls the "flesh," the evil moral nature we inherited
from our fallen forefather, Adam, to which we died when we came into Christ.
It is no longer "us."
It is still present in us to tempt us, but as an alien with which we are no longer identified.

But the "outward" man whom Paul speaks of here is the body and the mind,
which he says are slowly falling apart.
(We can all give testimony to that -- the newspaper print get smaller and smaller all the time.
-- our hearing and our eyesight diminishes, our health declines.)

We simply have to face the fact that the outward man is deteriorating, growing weak and feeble,
and subject to much groaning and agony.
"Well, that is what is happening to me, too," Paul says, "but I don't get discouraged
because the inner man is being renewed day by day."

The "inner" man, of course, is the real "me."
It is the human spirit inside that has its conscious expression in the soul.
Thus the inner man is that combination of soul and spirit which makes mankind
so different from the animals.
Paul experiences this as being daily renewed.

The word he uses is, "made new," "made over afresh."
He is speaking of the kind of inner stimulation of mind and spirit that keeps him triumphant,
rejoicing, optimistic, faithful, trusting, expectant, as he lives day by day,
even though the outward things, his body and his mind are gradually declining.
This renewal is the hope of the believer.
Paul says this very fact testifies that we are being inwardly prepared for something great to come.

What is the basis for this kind of renewal?
Paul gives us the second great reason for our hope for the future:
"For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory
beyond all comparison." (2 Corinthians 4:17)

Every now and then you run into a verse of Scripture so full of possibilities -- the language is so rich,
that you can ponder it and contemplate it for hours at a time.
This is such a verse.

What does "an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" mean?
What could that be describing?
The amazing thing is that Paul links it directly to the afflictions and the struggles of our present time.

What he is really saying is that there is a direct tie between the afflictions and the glory.
The one is preparing for the other.
We see this intimated in many passages of Scripture.
In Romans 8: 17 Paul says, "We suffer with him in order that we may also be a glorified with him."
In Ephesians there are similar references to the fact that if our time here has included affliction
and trouble and hardship, as it does for every believer, it will therefore make even more sure
the fact that there is a marvelous glory yet to come

Our present sufferings are preparing us for something so incomparable, so amazing,
so marvelous that there are no words to describe it.
That means that no trial, no pain, no isolation, no heartache, no loneliness, no weakness or failure,
no sense of being put aside, is without significance.
All of it is playing its part in accomplishing God's work in your life and the lives of others.
It is building for us an incomparable weight of glory.

How do we know that is true?
The answer is in verse 18, where we have the third reason for our hope.
Paul says, "Because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen;
for the things that are seen are transient, but things that are unseen are eternal."

It has always been difficult for people to believe that there are unseen realities,
invisible to the human eye and investigation, but nevertheless very real and very important.

What are the real things?
Paul calls them, "the things that are unseen," the invisible forces at work of which
the world is almost totally unaware.
The Bible tells us what they are.

There is the Word Of God, the most unchangeable of all things, the divine utterance
from the Lord God who called into existence everything that is.
God spoke, and it was, and that Word can never be altered.

Jesus said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away."
The Word is the one reliable thing in all this unreliable world.
We understand through the Word of God that all things are held together by Him.
He is the Creator and the sustainer and supporter of all things.

God is the God of earth in heaven and all the created universe, and though we do not see Him,
yet, we love Him and follow Him.
He is in control of all history.
As we approach the end of our life these things become more and more significant to us.

When the great evangelist, D. L. Moody, was dying, his last words were,
"Earth is receding. Heaven is approaching. This is my crowning day."
That is the utterance of faith.
That is looking at reality.
Nothing is more encouraging to me than to realize that when I believe the Word of God,
I am becoming more and more realistic.

In the first several verses of chapter 5, we have a further description of the nature of our hope.
Here we learn a little more detail about this "weight of glory beyond all comparison."

Paul describes it this way:
"For we know (notice the word of of certainty there. Not " We guess, " We hope," " We think,"
but we know) that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God,
a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Here we groan, and long to put on our heavenly dwelling, so that by putting it on
we may not be found naked.

For while we are still in this tent, we sigh with anxiety; not that we would be unclothed,
but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life."
(2 Corinthians 5: 1-4)

These are marvelous words!
Here is a description of the present body of flesh and bones contrasted with
the risen and glorified body by the activity of the Spirit of God.
When you compare these words with those in 1 Corinthians 15, you can see that
Paul is talking here about the resurrected body we shall receive when mortality is swallowed up
by immortality.

Paul uses the same terminology here.
It is the body that is to be swallowed up by life.
"In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we shall be changed," and this new body will be given to us.
Paul said that the present body is like a tent, a temporary experience.

I have heard of families who were living in a tent while they were waiting for their home to be finished.
It was very temporary, and they were uncomfortable.
They could not wait for their real habitation to be completed so they could move in.

Don't you sometimes feel like that in this tent of our earthly body -- I sure do!
A tent is not very satisfying.
The stakes begin to loosen, the poles begin to sag, the tent itself sags in various spots, the cold wind penetrates, and it's not very comfortable.

Many of us feel that way as we grow older.
So, we are looking forward to the resurrection body -- that permanent building which God had in mind
when He made us in the beginning -- the permanent dwelling place, designed by God
without any human help.
"A house not made with hands."

Nothing human produces it or can add to it.
Nothing that the undertaker does while our body is being prepared for the grave adds a single thing
to what God will do to produce the body of glory to come.

The point Paul makes is important.
He is telling us that it is already ours in eternity.
He says, "We have."
Notice the present tense.
It is not, "We will have," but it is "We have a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens."
It is already there, and waiting for us to put on.

"In this present one," he says, "we groan, we long" for something better.
Don't you feel that way?
How many of you have said when you wanted to do something,
"The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak"?
We wish we could, but we cannot because our bodies will not let us.
We long for something better.

Paul is very careful here.
He says, "I don't want you to misunderstand. I don't want to simply die and float off
to be with the Lord in a bodiless existence, I don't want to be disembodied."
We are not going to be ghosts, or spooks haunting cemeteries to frighten people.
Such expectations arise from the deceitful spirits.

But Paul says that this new body, the resurrected body, is an experience,
not of being disembodied, but of being further embodied.
He changes the idiom from building to the body, and says it is like being further clothed,
so that it is more than we have at the moment.
Then, he uses this expression, "swallowed up by life," not by death.
It is a further experience of fulfillment and satisfaction.

In the light of that, verse five is very reassuring, for Paul goes on to say,
"He who has prepared us for this very thing is God."
No one would look forward to float around in a bodiless existence.
In effect, Paul said our actual experience will be this:
"You will be further clothed upon at death as believers.
You will have a new body.

There is a weight of glory beyond all description and it will come instantly,
"for the One who has prepared us for this very thing is God."

In 2 Corinthians 5:6-8, Paul says, "Therefore we are always confident, knowing that,
whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)
we are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." (KJV)

1 John 3:1-2 tells us what happens when we are present with the Lord:
"Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us,
that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not,
because it knew him not.
Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be:
but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." (KJV)

In Phillipians 1:21-23 Paul says, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not.
I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ;
which is far better." (KJV)

This passages teach us that we have immediate access -- of being home with God.

There are who propose that God gives us an intermediate temporary body to use in eternity
until our real body gets there.
It sounds like a kind of heavenly bathrobe that we wait in while our real one is coming back
from the cleaners.
There is not a vestige of Scripture to support an intermediate body.

What Paul teaches is that when we leave this body we also leave time and space.
It is not easy to re-train our thinking along these lines because we project time into eternity,
assuming eternity is simply time going on forever, but it is not.
Anyone who studies this subject carefully must distinguish sharply tween the conditions of eternity
and those of time.

Here we are all locked into the same rigid, sequence of events.
All of us experience 24 hours days because this earth rotates on its axis and nobody can speed it up.
No one can choose to live 12 hour days while the rest would live with 24.
But in eternity, there is no past or future; there is simply one great present moment.

Therefore, the events we experience in eternity are never anything we have to wait for,
they are always what we are ready for, and what we are spiritually prepared for.
This passage says that God has been spiritually preparing us for something -- the coming of the Lord
for His own, the return of Christ for His church, and for each individual believer.
The Scriptures clearly teach that when a believer dies, he experiences immediately
the coming of the Lord for His own.

Verse five goes on to say that we have already tasted this in our spirit, although not yet in the body,
since the body is locked into time.
It is redeemed and unresurrected, but in the spirit, in the inner life, we have already tasted
these eternal conditions.
That is why Paul says: " ... (God) has given us the Spirit as a guarantee."

The daily experience of the Spirit's refreshing renewal, which Paul described earlier, is that guarantee.
Something is happening to us.
The old life is deteriorating, the outward man is falling apart, but the inner man is getting
richer and greater and warmer and more loving.
Paul is anticipating the future with increased expectation.
That is a taste of glory.

Living in the 17th century, Samuel Rutherford, a Scottish Covenanter, writings come down
to us in the form of letters written while he was a prisoner for Christ's sake in Scotland.
Some of those letters are expressive of a wonderful faith.
A lady named, Ann Cousins, went back through all of them and culled out certain phrases
and idioms that he used and put them together in a song that was a favorite of D. L. Moody.

" The sands of time are sinking,
The dawn of heaven breaks,
The summer morn w've sighed for,
The fair sweet morn awakes.

Dark, dark has been the midnight,
But dayspring is at hand,
And glory, glory dwelleth
In Immanuel's land.

Oh Christ he is the fountain,
The deep sweet well of love,
The streams on earth I've tasted
More deep I'll drink above.

There too an ocean fullness,
His mercy does expand
And glory, glory dwelleth
In Immanuel's land.

The bride eyes not her garment,
But her dear bridegroom's face.
I will not gaze at glory
But on my King of grace.

Not on the crown he giveth,
But on his pierced hands.
The Lamb is all the glory
Of Immanuel's land."

It is a great hope!
It is a hope to energize us in our present stress.
If we have to go through struggles, we must always remember that the struggles,
though they are God's choice for us now, is part of the immense privilege we have
of sharing His suffering, that we may also "reign with Him" forever.

What a great and glorious hope!

Sermon adapted from several sources by Dr. Harold L. White