Luke 16:22–23

Is there a life beyond the grave? Often and anxiously people argue the question. The Son of God answers it for us here. The beggar died. He did not cease to exist, and he did not sleep for centuries. At once the angels carried him into Abraham's bosom... The rich man also died, and of him it is said, "he was buried." Why is this added in his case? Clearly because the Lord would carefully distinguish between body and soul. The man's body was buried, no doubt with all the pomp that suited so wealthy a person. Right after that we read that "in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes."

What a reversal at death! "The rich man died and was buried." The poor man, Lazarus, died also. The rich man's name is not told us: it was not worth remembering. Whether Lazarus had a burial or not does not matter. As to his spirit and soul, the angels carried him into Abraham's bosom. This tells us that his faith had been in the living God, for he is "blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith" (Galatians 3:9)... The rich man may have had a beautiful, imposing funeral. It made no difference to his torment after death.

Angels are ministering spirits. If one of our loved ones is called home, the angels serve as pallbearers. They carry that soul and spirit right into the presence of God (Luke 16:22). They are "ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation" (Hebrews 1:14).

There is not a word of his burial. Perhaps he was not buried at all. But he "was carried away by the angels into Abraham's bosom." For a Jew that was the place of special blessedness in the unseen world, and the most honourable of God's servants waited on him.

The Jews believed that their forefather Abraham was in the highest place of happiness. Their writings show that "to be with Abraham" and to be in his bosom were terms they used for the highest security and happiness. So our Lord used a phrase His hearers knew well. It needed no explanation. It stands in contrast to hell, or Hades, and was therefore a figure of heaven.

For the Jew, Abraham had the highest and most blessed place in the other world. To be in his bosom was to be in the next best place to him — like the beloved disciple in Jesus' bosom at the table.

Since the day of Luke 16 Christ has died and risen again, and has gone up as Man into God's glory. So the blessedness of believers who have died is now described in wholly different terms. It is "to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better," and to be "away from the body and at home with the Lord" (Philippians 1:23; 2 Corinthians 5:8). Neither the rich man nor Lazarus had yet reached eternal circumstances. The rich man was in Hades, not yet in the lake of fire, and neither he nor Lazarus had yet risen from the dead.

After that direct blow came the tremendous parable of verses 19-31, if indeed it is a parable. The Lord uses a few figurative expressions such as "Abraham's bosom," but He relates it all as fact. Verses 19-22 tell the very ordinary facts of a life that ends in death and burial. There the curtain drops for us. As we begin verse 23 the Lord lifts the curtain and brings into our view the things which lie beyond.

Who could tell us the truth about the future but He? And love was behind the telling of it, for it is the way of true love to warn when its appeals fail.

Hades is not Gehenna. Gehenna is the lake of fire, where God sends the lost after the judgment of the Great White Throne. Hades is the word God uses for the in-between state, when the soul has no body.

The rich man is not in hell in body and soul. The resurrection has not taken place, as all admit. The day of judgment has not come, and he has brothers on earth who may still be reached and saved. Hades and gehenna are not the same.

Death demands the body; hades claims the soul... We should drop our English word "hell" and put "hades," meaning the unseen, in its place. People have tried to fix the location of hades. It is impossible to do so. It is a state rather than a place. It refers to the condition of all the dead, good and bad, after death and before the resurrection. For believers, hades is to be with Christ; for unbelievers, hades is to be in torment.

So we have clear proof that, even before the judgment, the wicked man is in torment. The Lord uses figures, no doubt, but figures built on what we can most easily understand. It is through the body that we feel the world.

But torment is consciousness. Lifting up his eyes is consciousness. It does not matter whether you take the language literally or symbolically — it conveys the sense of full consciousness.

This was not a wicked man in the eyes of the Jews. He was no drunkard, thief or robber, or anything of that kind. He was a man highly respected, and a man marked by self-indulgence. We do not hear of any swearing or scoffing... he still called Abraham his father even while he was in torment... In other words, people might think him highly respectable, but there was no faith, no repentance, no looking to God.

The angels carried the godly soul to the bosom of God's friend. The rich man left the empty, passing show of this world and opened his eyes in the flame of Hades. The sight of the blessed far off made it worse — yes, the sight of the very man who on earth stirred only his disgust.

Our Lord draws back the veil and says, "Now look into the everlasting habitations."... Here is a rich man using everything for himself now, and you see the result. So do not use the world for your own enjoyment now. Use it with another world in view... It shows how the other world contradicts the whole of the present.