The End of Physical Life

Having considered the eschatological nature of the kingdom of God, its final form as the church triumphant, and entrance into the church triumphant by persevering in faith to the end of life, we are now ready to look at what we call personal or individual eschatology. This topic concerns the end of our individual lives and what happens thereafter. We will begin with the last event of our lives: physical death.

Physical death, which is the separation of our physical bodies from our immaterial souls, comes to all people except for a select few: Enoch and Elijah, who were taken directly to heaven, and those believers who are alive at the time of Christ’s return (Gen. 5:24; 2 Kings 2:1–12; 1 Thess. 4:13–18). Even Jesus Himself did not escape physical death (Mark 15:37). He could not, for as the Savior who came to bear the curse of sin, including death, He had to die in place of His people to redeem them (Gen. 2:16–17; Mark 10:45).

But if Jesus bore the curse of sin, including the curse of physical death, why do believers in Him still die? Why must we endure the separation of soul and body? The answer is that while Jesus has suffered all penal aspects of God’s curse on sin, the Lord has chosen to not yet remove all the effects of sin on creation, including physical death. We die not as a punishment for our own sins but to complete our sanctification. Louis Berkhof writes that “the death of believers must be regarded as the culmination of the chastisements which God has ordained for the sanctification of His people. While death in itself remains a real natural evil for the children of God, something unnatural, which is dreaded by them as such, it is made subservient in the economy of grace to their spiritual advancement and to the best interests of the Kingdom of God.”

Death, in other words, has a salutary effect on believers, who are otherwise tempted to cling to the world, the flesh, and the devil. Berkhof says that “the very thought of death, bereavements through death, the feeling that sickness and sufferings are harbingers of death, and the consciousness of the approach of death . . . serve to humble the proud, to mortify carnality, to check worldliness and to foster spiritual-mindedness.” It allows us to share in the sufferings of Christ so that we can better know the power of His resurrection now and experience it firsthand when He raises our physical bodies to life again at the last day (Phil. 3:10–11).