A waiting-room after death?
A reader asked, "After we die, where do we go to await judgment?" If there was a text that definitively settled this question for believers the question might not keep coming up so there must be some ambivalence about the New Testament witness. But I’m one of those that think Philippians 1:21-24 settles it or comes so close as makes no difference. I say that despite the fact that a mountain of material has been written on these verses and scholars continue to debate it. Still, for the most part, the argument revolves round the precise meaning of "with" Christ. Most believe the believer goes to be with Christ but for one reason or another they think the believer "sleeps" until the resurrection or receives the resurrected body immediately and there are even some that think the believer literally ceases to exist until newly created. (You might take a look at the brief remarks on Conditional Immortality.)
Paul says he feels himself in an emotional quandary and doesn’t know which to prefer (1:22). There’s the possibility that he’s close to dying at the hands of the Romans (he may be writing from Rome or, perhaps more likely, Caesarea) and that generates the two strong desires he feels. He’d like to stick around and continue his work here because above everything else he was a missionary with a glorious gospel that filled him to the brim. It looks to him that the Philippian needs require his continued presence and, of course, others that would reap the benefit of God’s ministry through him. On the other hand there was something that was so much better and grander for him—to depart this phase of human history and go to be with Christ. He uses a word that soldiers used when they pulled up the stakes of their tent (and march home) or when a ship was loosed from its mooring (to sail on home).
I’m of the opinion that Paul’s words here should be taken at face value. The believer dies and goes wherever Christ is (spatial geography is another matter—a rocket ship can’t take you to some cosmic location that is "heaven"). I don’t think we should go for an immediate resurrection body and I certainly don’t think Paul would have thought a state of unconscious sleep was very far better than his present life of adventure and service. But even though he knows he will go to be with Christ, between his death and the resurrection, he would be in anintermediate state since he would be disembodied and that is not the completed work of God. God completes his work in Christ when the believer experiences full redemption from the curse (see Romans 8:18-23 and Philippians 3:20-21). To speak of the intermediate state is not to speak of an intermediate place. There is our present earthy state (we are embodied beings), there is the intermediate state (when we suffer death and are robbed of our bodies—the notion of death as the enemy comes in here) and the final state when we are gloriously transformed and immortal. While we wait the glorification that comes with the end of this phase of human history those who die are with Christ.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.