And in hades lifting up his eyes, being in torments, he sees Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
The Lord has been speaking about money, and then He tells of a rich man and a beggar who both die. Verse 23 reports what happened to one of them after the funeral, and it raises the questions people most want settled: is he conscious, where is he, and can anything still change?
Up to the burial, the account stays inside ordinary human experience.
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.
Why would He tell us such a thing?
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.
Older English Bibles print "hell" here. The Greek word is hades, and the writers keep it separate from gehenna, the lake of fire.
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 story itself shows his situation is not yet final:
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.
So where is hades? One writer answers that the question itself is the wrong one:
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.
The timing matters. The man suffers while his body lies in a grave and his brothers are still alive.
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.
This also rules out any idea of unconsciousness after death:
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.
Nothing scandalous is said about him. That is what makes him so unsettling.
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 two men change places, and what the rich man now sees deepens his pain.
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.
The Lord tells the story to change how people use what they have now.
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.
- Curtain — Verses 19–22 report an ordinary life and burial. At verse 23 the Lord draws back the curtain and shows what lies beyond, and love is what moved Him to warn.
- Word — "Hell" here translates hades, the unseen state between death and resurrection. It is not gehenna, the lake of fire that comes after the final judgment.
- State — Hades holds all the dead, good and bad. For believers it means being with Christ; for unbelievers, torment. The word alone settles nothing until you know whom the person belonged to.
- Now — He suffers while his body is in the grave and his brothers still live. The soul does not sleep; torment and sight are already real.
- Warning — He was respectable, not scandalous, only self-indulgent and without faith. That is why the story aims at how you use this world before the curtain drops on you.
And he crying out said, Father Abraham, have compassion on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering in this flame.
A man who had everything now begs for a drop of water. He begs it from the man he once ignored. His cry raises hard questions. What happens to a person the moment after death? Is the suffering literal? Can anything still be done about it?
The man cries out from where he is now. One writer explains what that scene shows, and what it does not.
This is not a picture of the final state of judgment, but of a certain condition after death. This is of great importance. Luke gives us both, confirming what is seen in the Old Testament and even adding to it. He gives full prominence to the resurrection elsewhere; but here it was important to know what would be true even now, for man's profit here below.
Readers ask whether the man already had a body, since he speaks of his tongue.
The figures, no doubt, are taken, as they must be, from the body. So we find the desire to have the tongue cooled. Men who like to speculate use this to prove that he had a real body at that time. Nothing of the sort. The Spirit of God speaks to be understood. To be understood by men, He must stoop to use language suited to our understanding. He cannot make us understand a state we have never experienced. He can only do it by figures taken from the state we live in now.
Figurative language does not soften the fact. The same writer states it plainly: "even before the judgment, the wicked man is in torment."
He begs help from the one man he never helped. A commentator leaves the irony as a question.
The rich man pleaded for mercy, but too late! He asked only that Lazarus might be sent to dip his finger in water and cool his tongue, for the heat of the judgment he had to bear was tormenting. Did he remember that he had shown no mercy to Lazarus in his lifetime?
What he asks for is almost nothing — and that is the point.
What a very small favour this would once have been! Utterly despicable — a drop of water, and above all, sent by someone like Lazarus! It would have been detestable to him on earth. But the truth appears when a man has left this life. Do we, then, hear while we are on the earth what the Lord says?
He calls on Abraham. Notice what he never asks for.
He left this life unwillingly. There does not appear to have been any gap before he entered conscious torment in the next. "I am in anguish in this flame," is the cry of a soul that had indulged its slightest whim in his former life. The cravings remained, but he received nothing, however small, to satisfy them. This man, no longer rich, makes no appeal to God for mercy. He had lived without Him, and died without Him, and must remain without Him and without hope for ever. He does not pray for release, for he knows that would be useless too.
Two ideas that comfort people today never come up in this conversation.
Let us tread softly here — human words may well be few. The sufferer was experiencing a sense of pain ("I am in anguish," v. 24); of loss ("he saw Abraham far off," v. 23); and of fear ("I have five brothers," v. 28). Memory also was active (v. 25). He had no expectation of any change of condition. Listen to the conversation between father Abraham and the lost one. Neither side hints that the lost will one day cease to exist. Neither suggests that everyone will be restored in the end.
The Lord told this story to people who could still act on it. What the rich man begged for in vain, God offers freely to the living.
Do you ask, "Is my guilt so great that it cannot be pardoned?" Not now! Now there is no blessing God does not offer you freely; now, but not then. Then only one thing is left for you. Through an endless eternity you will mourn your own terrible folly in rejecting the offer of God's salvation.
- Now, not then. The verse turns on timing. The mercy he begs for after death was within reach every day he ignored Lazarus.
- Now the state is fixed. This is Hades — the condition after death, before resurrection and judgment. The suffering there is already conscious and real.
- Now the words still reach you. The tongue, the finger, the water are figures drawn from the body, because God speaks in language we can grasp.
- Now mercy is still within reach. He begs a drop of water from the man he never pitied. The one who showed no mercy now pleads for it.
- Now is the only offer. Neither speaker hints at a second chance, a later restoration, or an end to existence. Today's refusal is what carries over.