Life After Life After Death: Our Great Hope

When the New Testament talks about what happens after we die, it describes two phases. The first is what theologians call the intermediate state — life after death. The second is what one scholar memorably called life after life after death — the resurrection of the body, when Christ makes all things new.

The “intermediate state” simply means the period between death and resurrection. The apostle Paul writes about this in Philippians 1:23. From a Roman prison, after years of hardship and persecution, he tells the church in Philippi: If I die, I’ll be with Christ—and that is far better. To be “absent from the body.” He makes the same point in 2 Corinthians 5:7, To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

This is good news. Upon death, a believer goes to be with Jesus, consciously present with Him. Yet Paul insists this is not the final word. It is good, but it is not complete. What we ultimately long for is not to be permanently disembodied, but to be clothed with resurrection bodies, just as Jesus was on that first Easter morning. Paul's great hope is for the day when the dead in Christ rise.

The resurrection of Jesus is the model and the beginning of new creation. Paul says in Philippians 3:21 that Christ will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body. That body is recognizable, continuous with the one that went into the tomb, yet glorified and transformed. It is a body fit for the new heaven and new earth.

So the story is not finished. Revelation 6 even shows martyrs in heaven longing for more, crying out, “How long, O Lord?” They are with Christ, but they are still waiting for resurrection, for vindication, for the new creation.

This is what we confess each Sunday when we say, I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Our loved ones in Christ are already with Him, but they are also waiting, alongside us, for the day when Jesus returns, raises the dead, and ushers in the new heavens and the new earth. That is our hope.

The resurrection of Jesus was God’s first act of new creation. The new heaven and new earth that Revelation 21 describes are the culmination of what began that day.

And here’s the mystery: if you are in Christ, you already share in that new creation now. Paul says, If anyone is in Christ—new creation! Through faith, you participate in this new reality even while you wait for your body to catch up. You live today as someone renewed from the inside out, awaiting the day when all of creation will be made new.

So the Christian hope unfolds in two movements. First, the intermediate state: to be present with Christ, which is far better. Then, the eternal state: resurrection, new bodies, new creation.

We live now as people already participants in the new creation through Christ, yet still awaiting its fullness. And every confession of faith, every act of worship is a reminder: the story God began in Jesus' resurrection will be brought to completion.