What is paradise? Is it different than heaven? Where do people go when they die until Christ comes back?

This truth is not confined to the present portion of our Gospel. We have similar teaching elsewhere. Does not the account of the rich man and Lazarus intimate the same thing? Yea, more; not only the existence of the soul separate from the body, after death, of course, but also blessedness and misery at once. They are not absolutely dependent on the resurrection. Besides, there is the final publicly adjudicated portion of misery for body and soul before the great white throne. But, in Luke 16, blessedness and misery at once are felt by the soul in the dissolution of the link with the body. The figures, no doubt, are taken, as they must be, from the body. Thus we find the desire for cooling of the tongue, which men of speculative mind use to prove that it was the time of being clothed with a real body. Nothing of the sort. The Spirit of God speaks to be understood, and (if He is to be understood by men) He must deign to use language adapted to our comprehension. He cannot give us the understanding of a state which we have never experienced, unless it be by figures taken from the present state. A similar truth appears also later on in the case of the converted thief. The point there is just the same — immediate blessedness, and not merely when the body is raised from the dead by and by. That is what he looked for when he sought to be remembered, when Jesus comes in His kingdom. But the Lord adds more — immediate blessedness now: "This day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Depend upon it, we cannot be too stringent in maintaining the importance both of the resurrection, and of the immediate blessedness or misery of the soul separate from the body before the resurrection. To give up the reality of the soul's existence in either misery or blessedness at once is only a stepping-stone to materialism; and materialism is but a prelude to giving up both the truth and the grace of God, and all the awful reality of man's sin and Satan's power. Materialism always is essentially infidel, though far from being, the only form of infidelity.

For the moment we are at home in the body and absent from the Lord, left here to walk not by sight but by faith. Paul's confidence was such that he was willing — even more than willing, pleased — to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. This is his portion today, and the portion of all those who have died in the faith of Christ. They are absent from their bodies which have been laid in the grave, waiting the moment when they shall be clothed in bodies of glory. But even now they are present with the Lord, and in all the conscious blessedness of His presence, as the opening verses of 2 Cor. 12 bear witness.

Nevertheless it is an error to depreciate the blessedness of those who, absent from the body, are present with the Lord. When the word of truth in its simplicity and its fulness speaks out, this may not be touched. To the dying robber, who prayed the Lord to remember him when He should come in His kingdom, Jesus said, "Verily I say to thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise." He thus proffers a blessing beyond and better than he asked, to the renewed mind a dearer prize than any outward display, however glorious: the joy of being that very day with Christ Himself, where the Father delights to love and honour the Son. It is not that the presence of Christ will be lacking in the kingdom, nor shall we be less able to enjoy it in that day. But He promised him this blessed companionship at once on high before He comes in His kingdom. This none should disparage: no honour or reward can equal it; and thanks be to God, we shall have it for ever.

Paradise. — A word on paradise. It is Greek, and said to be derived, whether rightly or not, from the Persian, and is used of an enclosed garden or pleasure park (Cant. 4:13; Neh. 2:8). In the New Testament it occurs as descriptive of the present place of the unclothed saints (Luke 23:43; 2 Cor. 12:4), and also of their future place of bliss, in which will be found the tree of life (Rev. 2:7). Understanding that the word is used of an enclosed park or pleasure ground, there need be no surprise to find it applied to the garden of Eden of old, to the present abode of the departed saints, and to the future place of bliss likewise. St. Paul clearly distinguishes it from the third heaven. He was caught (2 Cor. 12:2) up to, or as far as, the third heaven where God dwells. He was caught up into paradise, the place where the unclothed saints now are, and there heard what he could not communicate to mortals on earth. It was of this place that the Lord spoke to the thief. Paradise then is used of definite places or regions provided for the blessing of men, whether on earth, as in the past, or elsewhere, as now, and in the heavenlies in the future.

But the Lord Jesus promised Him much more than he asked, with the positive declaration that, not in the distant future, but on that very day he would be with Christ in paradise. This is decisive! Though their bodies were buried, yet their spirits and souls were that day in paradise. Paradise is the third heaven, as 2 Corinthians 12:2-4 declares and Revelation 2:7 confirms; that is, the very presence of God. Some have been confused by the wording of the King James Version of Scripture in its quoting Christ as saying, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption" (Acts 2:27). The word "hell" in that verse is not "Gehenna," the lake of fire, but "hades" (or in Hebrew "sheol") which does not indicate a place, but a state. It is the unseen state of the soul and spirit as separated from the body. His spirit and soul were therefore in the unseen condition called "hades," but in the place called "paradise," the third heaven. In resurrection His soul would not be left in this unseen condition, nor His body allowed to see corruption: both would be reunited.

The common method of dealing with this text is by altering the punctuation. They would have us read the words, "Verily I say unto thee today: thou shalt be with me in Paradise." That is, "today, this day of my humiliation, I say to thee." But the order of the words in the sentence is all against them. With the emphasis they give it, semeron "today" should precede the verb. As compare in the Greek, Matt. 16:3; Mark 14:30; Luke 19:5, 9; Acts 13:33; Heb. 3:7, 15. But, beside this, the Lord is answering a prayer in which a time wherein the thief sought to be remembered was expressed. He had said, "Lord, remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom." The Lord says virtually, "You shall not wait for that: today you shall be with Me." This is the simple, intelligible reason for the specification of time: "Today," not when I come merely, "shalt thou be with me in Paradise."

Not less inconsistent with the low and superstitious idea is the light conveyed by the apostle Paul's words in 2 Cor. 12:2-5. He identifies being caught up to "the third heaven" with being caught up into "Paradise." It is the highest view of heaven that scripture discloses; it leaves no room for the idle dream which consigns to some lower receptacle a soul whose fitness to partake of the inheritance of the saints in light is not achieved. For this meetness is taught by Col. 1:12 to be already conferred by grace on all believers here. The scheme, so widely preached now, is a dark unbelief of the gospel, derived from mere Jews and Gentiles, not from scripture, and meant to comfort those who die in their sins without Christ by a hope wholly unwarranted. There is not the smallest ground for it in inspiration.

The testimony of our Lord in Rev. 2:7 is if possible more explicit and absolutely decisive. For to the overcomer in the church at Ephesus He promises that He will give him to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of God. No one can question that this contemplates the future glory when that which is perfect is come, and the redeemed are changed into His image even for their bodies. Yet He calls it paradise; and in Rev. 22:2 we see it fulfilled. Both texts therefore of this wondrous final book of scripture concur to explode as unfounded the assumption that paradise is not heaven. It is its most favoured quarter, where Christ went when His atoning work was done; where those who die in faith of Him and His work go to be with Him; and where they shall taste its sweetest enjoyment, when they have their bodies changed into the likeness of His glory at His coming. The revival of patristic tradition is a revival of heathenism, entirely at issue with what has now been manifested by the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel (2 Tim. 1:10).

Some writers believe that Paradise is in the heart of the earth and has two compartments, one for believers and the other for unbelievers. This idea has no foundation in Scripture. 2 Corinthians 12:2 and 4 identifies Paradise with “the third heaven”—the immediate dwelling place of God, whilst Revelation 2:7 speaks of it as “the Paradise OF GOD,” where the tree of life is.

If, as Bishop Browne holds, hades and paradise are two names applying to the same state, it would seem to follow that paradise must apply to the place of departed saints, and hades to their state as separate from the body. For 2 Corinthians 12:2, 4 naturally connects paradise, not with heaven merely, but even with the third heaven, where the Lord is (cf. Luke 23:43); and Revelation 2:7 is decisive, that in this very paradise of GOD will the faithful have their future reward at Christ's coming, when risen from the dead or changed. It is an error, therefore, to think that "it was not heaven"; for the latter scripture certainly identifies the scene of the separate spirits of the saints with that of their future glorification.* They are with the Lord now as they will be when changed, and thus completely and for ever with Him; but now as then in heaven. The ancients who denied this were as wrong as the moderns, who popularly hold the soul's passing at once to its final reward with very little thought of the resurrection at Christ's second coming, or of the kingdom.

How strikingly different is the kind of comfort men habitually administer now! The thought they present to the bereaved (throughout Christendom) almost always is that their friends are gone to heaven. Nobody denies this in the case of deceased believers. They depart to be with Christ. They are not consigned to some place of detention in obscurity and seclusion from the Lord; they are imprisoned in no subterranean abode far from that heaven to which even here they belonged. Absent from the body they are at home with the Saviour, which is far better. If it were only a poor robber before his death converted on the cross, he was that very day with Christ: such and so great and so immediate the efficacy of His blood. Is Paradise a garden of gloom, not of delights? Not even the earthly paradise of Adam in itself had a cloud; and is not the Paradise of God far brighter than where the first man was tempted by the devil? Error on this head I refer to, not only because it is pernicious but as showing how quickly the early church departed from the truth, for the notion here combated was, so far as the early Fathers speak, all but universal, and to this day the Greek and other ancient bodies are under similar illusions. They conceive that departed Christians are waiting in darkness till the resurrection, and therefore offer prayers on their behalf. They do not pray to them like the still more deluded Romanists; but they think their spirits are detained in that place of need till Christ comes.