Q. 37. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death?
A. The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory; and their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection.
“So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord—for we walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Cor. 5:6-7)
To a world ruled by fate and the whims of capricious gods, Christianity brought the promise of everlasting life. At the core of the Christian faith was the assertion that the crucified Jesus was resurrected by God and present in the church as "the body of Christ." The message was clear: By submitting to death, Jesus had destroyed its power, thereby making eternal life available to everyone. This Christian affirmation radically changed the relationship between the living and the dead as Greeks and Romans understood it. For them, only the gods were immortal - that's what made them gods. Philosophers might achieve immortality of the soul, as Plato taught, but the view from the street was that human consciousness survived in the dim and affectless underworld of Hades. "The Resurrection is an enormous answer to the problem of death," says Notre Dame theologian John Dunne. "The idea is that the Christian goes with Christ through death to everlasting life. Death becomes an event, like birth, that is lived through." - Kenneth L. Woodward, "2000 Years of Jesus," Newsweek, March 29, 1999, 55.
"Souls are like wax waiting for a seal. By themselves they have no special identity. Their destiny is to be softened and prepared in this life, by God's will, to receive, at their death, the seal of their own degree of likeness to God in Christ. And this is what it means, among other things, to be judged by Christ." -Thomas Merton, "New Seeds of Contemplation"
The transition from “earthly” life to “heavenly” life is part of the Kingdom of God and is a reality that all persons face. Reformed faith takes death seriously. While physical death is associated with sin, death is also part of the natural biological processes. For the disciple of Christ the processes of justification, adoption, and sanctification is complete and made perfect in holiness.
The Christian hope of eternal life includes the “resurrection of the body” and the resurrection of the dead as we affirm when we join together in worship and declare our faith in the Apostles’ Creed. This hope emerges from the resurrection of Jesus Christ in his act of defeating death on the cross. God redeems the whole person, not just the “immortal soul,” but the whole existence. Paul asserts that “we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Rom. 6:5)
This resurrection is the new life that emerges from the physical death of this earthly existence, it is God’s act for us. (1 Cor. 15:42ff). Our resurrection bodies will be “ours” in that in some mysterious way, our own selves will be raised from the dead, our own bodies not another human being, but we are the ones who will be “changed” (1 Cor. 15:51-52).
