We are courageous, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.
Short answer
The Bible’s central hope is resurrection: Christ was raised, and those who belong to Him will be raised bodily at His coming. Scripture also speaks of believers who die being “at home with the Lord,” and of a judgment for all. It gives far fewer details than people often assume.
The short answer
Scripture does not treat death as the end. Its main hope is not that the soul escapes the body but that the dead will be raised, as Christ was raised. Until then, the New Testament speaks of believers who die as being with Christ. It also says that everyone will face judgment. Beyond these points the Bible gives few details, and Christians read some of them differently.
The resurrection of the body
But now Christ has been raised from the dead. He became the first fruit of those who are asleep. For since death came by man, the resurrection of the dead also came by man. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
Paul calls the risen Christ the first fruit, the beginning of a harvest still to come. Later in the same chapter he says the body is “sown perishable; it is raised imperishable” (1 Corinthians 15:42). Jesus says of Himself, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). The hope reaches back into the Old Testament, where Daniel 12:2 speaks of those who “sleep in the dust of the earth” awaking.
Between death and resurrection
A few passages speak of what happens to believers at death, before the resurrection.
We are courageous, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.
Paul would rather be away from the body and present with the Lord.
Jesus said to him, “Assuredly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
Jesus answers the criminal crucified beside Him.
Paul also describes dying as the desire to “depart and be with Christ, which is far better” (Philippians 1:23), and the Book of Wisdom says that “the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God” (Wisdom 3:1).
Catholic, Orthodox and most Protestant Christians read these passages as meaning that those who die in Christ are consciously with Him while they await the resurrection of the body. Some Christians, including Seventh-day Adventists, understand death as an unconscious sleep until the resurrection. They point to the New Testament’s frequent description of the dead as having “fallen asleep” (1 Thessalonians 4:13), and note that the earliest Greek manuscripts have no punctuation, so in Luke 23:43 the word “today” can be read with “I tell you” rather than with “you will be with Me.”
Judgment
Inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once, and after this, judgment,
Jesus speaks of an hour when “all who are in the tombs will hear His voice” and come out (John 5:28–29), and His parable of the sheep and the goats ends with “eternal punishment” and “eternal life” (Matthew 25:46). Paul writes that “we must all be revealed before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10). Christians agree that Christ will judge; they describe the relation of faith and works in that judgment differently, and Scripture gives no timetable.
Purgatory
Catholic teaching holds that those who die in God’s grace and friendship, but are not yet fully purified, undergo a final purification before entering heaven; this is called purgatory (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1030–1032). It points to the prayers and sacrifice offered for the dead in 2 Maccabees 12:43–45 and to Paul’s image of someone saved “as through fire” (1 Corinthians 3:15). Protestants generally do not accept the doctrine, and most do not regard 2 Maccabees as Scripture. Orthodox Christians pray for the dead but do not define a purgatory in the Catholic way. See Is purgatory in the Bible?
Grief with hope
Paul wrote to a church mourning its dead. He does not tell them not to grieve, but not to grieve “like the rest, who have no hope.”
But we don’t want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those who have fallen asleep, so that you don’t grieve like the rest, who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we tell you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will in no way precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with God’s trumpet. The dead in Christ will rise first, then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. So we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore comfort one another with these words.
The Bible’s last picture of the future is not of souls floating away but of God dwelling with His people in a renewed creation:
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more. The first things have passed away.”
What the Bible does not say
Scripture gives no map of heaven and no detailed account of what the dead experience. Paul calls the change that comes with the resurrection “a mystery” (1 Corinthians 15:51). Its emphasis falls on whom the dead are with rather than on what it is like. If you are grieving, the Grief and loss page gathers passages for mourning, and Hope follows the promise forward.