Life after death

 

I have often thought about those loved ones who make a profession of faith shortly before they die - is it genuine?  Also as a Christian is it my place to pursue a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ for those who may be facing death shortly?  What evidence is there in scripture to affirm that whilst a person may not genuinely show Christ in their life, that they however may be saved by showing a small interest in the things of God?  Can we pray for those who have departed to know that they are in heaven?  How can I as a person who believes in Jesus Christ as my Saviour know with assurance that I will be in heaven one day?  Many people would refer to the thief on the cross who died with Jesus but was promised to be in heaven that same hour.  And in doing so they make the excuse that there is still time for them.  One day they will make the decision - but is this wise?  Should we really wait until we feel the time is right?  I have recently been reading J C Ryle's book on Holiness and he devoted an entire chapter to all these questions.  I have decided to quote the chapter in its entirety as I feel it very appropriate in answering mine (and maybe even your) questions.

THE PENITENT THIEF – Luke 23 verses 30 – 43

CHRIST’S POWER AND WILLINGNESS TO SAVE SINNERS 

Jesus Christ is “mighty” to save – Isaiah 63 verse 1.

He was a wicked man, a malefactor, a thief, if not a murderer.  We know this, for such only were crucified.  He was suffering a just punishment for breaking the law.  And as he had lived wicked so he seemed determined to die wicked, for at first, when he was crucified, he railed on our Lord.

And he was a dying man.  He hung there, nailed to a cross, from which he was never to come down alive.  He had no longer power to stir hand or foot.  His hours were numbered, the grave was ready for him.  There was but a step between him and death.

If ever there was a soul hovering on the brink of hell, it was the soul of this thief!  If ever there was a case that seemed lost, gone and past recovery, it was his.  If ever there was a man whom the devil made sure of as his own, it was this man.

But see now what happened.  He ceased to rail and blaspheme, as he had done at the first; he began to speak in another manner altogether.  He turned to our blessed Lord in prayer.  He prayed Jesus to remember him when he came into his kingdom.  He asked that his soul might be cared for, his sins pardoned and himself thought of in another world. Truly this was a wonderful change!

And then mark what kind of answer he received.  Some would have said that he was too wicked a man to be saved – but it was not so.  Some would have imagined that it was too late, that the door was shut, and that there was no room for mercy; but it proved not too late at all.  The Lord Jesus ..

Returned him an immediate answer

Spoke kindly to him

Assured him that he would be with him that day in paradise

Pardoned him completely

Cleansed him thoroughly from his sins

Received him graciously

Justified him freely

Raised him from the gates of hell

Gave him a title to glory.

Of all the multitude of saved souls none ever received so glorious an assurance of his own salvation as did this penitent thief.  Go over the whole list, from Genesis to Revelation and you will find none who had such words spoken to him as these “... today you will be with me in paradise.”

I believe the Lord Jesus never gave so complete a proof of his power and will to save as he did upon this occasion.  In the day when he seemed most weak, he showed that he was a strong deliverer.  In the hour when his body was racked with pain, he showed that he could feel tenderly for others. At the time when he himself was dying, he conferred on a sinner eternal life.

Christ “is able to save completely those who come to God through him.” Hebrews 7 verse 25.  Behold the proof of it.  If ever a sinner was too far gone to be saved, it was this thief.  Yet he was plucked as a brand from the fire!

“Christ will receive any poor sinner who comes to him with the prayer of faith and cast out none”.  Behold the proof of it.  If ever there was one who seemed too bad to be received this was the man.  Yet the door of mercy was wide open even for him.

“By grace you may be saved through faith, not of works, fear not, only believe” Behold the proof of it.

This thief was never baptised.

He belonged to no visible church

He never received the Lord’s Supper

He never did any work for Christ

He never gave money to Christ’s cause

But he had faith – and so he was saved!

“The youngest faith will save a man’s soul, if it only is true?  Behold the proof of it.  This man’s faith was only one day old but it led him to Christ and preserved him from hell. “

Jesus is a Physician who can cure hopeless cases.  He can quicken dead souls.

Never should any man or woman despair!  Jesus is still the same now as he was 2000 years ago.  The keys of death and hell are in his hand.  When he opens none can shut.

IF SOME ARE SAVED IN THE VERY HOUR OF DEATH, OTHERS ARE NOT

This is a truth that stands out plainly in the sad end of the other malefactor and is only too often forgotten.  Men forget that there were 2 thieves.

What became of the other thief who was crucified?  Why did he not turn from his sin, and call upon the Lord?  Why did he remain hardened and impenitent?  Why was he not saved?  It is useless to try to answer such questions.  Let us be content to take the fact as we find it and see what it is meant to teach us.

We have no right whatever to say this thief was a worse man that his companion, as there is nothing to prove it.

Both plainly were wicked men;

Both were receiving the due reward of their deeds;

Both hung by the side of our Lord Jesus Christ;

Both heard him pray for his murderers;

Both saw him suffer patiently.

But while one repented – the other remained hardened;

While one began to pray – the other went on railing;

While one was converted in his last hours – the other died a wicked man, as he had lived;

While one was taken to paradise – the other went to his own place, the place of the devil and his angels.

Now these things are written for our warning.  There is warning as well as comfort in these verses – and that is a very solemn warning, too.

They tell me loudly that though some may repent and be converted on their deathbeds it does not at all follow that all will.  A deathbed is not always a saving time.

They tell me loudly that 2 men may have the same opportunities of getting good for their souls, may be placed in the same position, see the same things and hear the same things – and yet only one of the two shall take advantage of them repent, believe and be saved.

They tell me, above all, that repentance and faith are the gifts of God and are not in a man’s own power, and that if any one flatters himself he can repent at his own time, choose his own season, seek the Lord when he pleases and like the penitent thief, be saved at the very last, he may find at length he is greatly deceived.

And it is good and profitable to bear this in mind.  There is an immense amount of delusion in the world on this very subject.  Many are allowing life to slip away quite unprepared to die.  Many know they ought to repent but always put it off.  One grand reason is that most men suppose they can turn to God just when they like!  They wrest the parable of the labourer in the vineyard, which speaks of the eleventh hour, and use it as it never was meant to be used.  They dwell on the pleasant part of the verses and forget the rest.  They talk of the thief that went to paradise and was saved – and they forget the one who died as he had lived and was lost.

Look at Saul and David – they lived about the same time; they rose from the same rank in life; they were called to the same position in the world; they enjoyed the ministry of the same prophet, Samuel; they reigned the same number of years.  Yet one was saved – and the other lost. 

Look at Sergius Paulus and Galilio.  They were both Roman governors; they were both wise and prudent men in their generation; they both heard the apostle Paul preach.  But one believed and was baptized, the other “showed no concern whatever.” Acts 18 verse 17

Beware of presumption.  Do not abuse God’s mercy and compassion.  Do not continue in sin, I beseech you and think you can repent and believe and be saved just when you like, when you please, when you wait and when you choose.  “While there is life there is hope.”  But if you would be wise, put nothing off that concerns your soul.

Beware good thoughts and godly convictions slip away if you have them.  Cherish them and nourish them, lest you lose them forever.  Make the most of them, lest they take to themselves wings and flee away.  Have you an inclination to begin praying?  Put it in practice at once.

Late repentance is seldom true.  You cannot be certain if you put off repenting, you will repent at all.

You may say “Why should I be afraid? The penitent thief was saved.”  I answer “That is true; but look again at the passage which tells you that the other thief was lost.

THE SPIRIT ALWAYS LEADS SAVED SOULS IN ONE WAY

Men look at the broad fact that the penitent thief was saved when he was dying and they look no further.  They do not consider the evidences that this thief left behind him, they do not observe the abundant proof he gave of the work of the Spirit in his heart.  The Spirit always works in one way and that whether he converts a man in an hour, as he did the penitent thief, or whether by slow degrees, as he does others, the steps by which he leads souls to heaven are always the same.

I want to put you on your guard, I want you to shake off the common notion that there is some easy royal road to heaven from a dying bed.  Every saved soul goes through the same experience and that the leading principles of the penitent thief’s religion were just the same as those of the oldest saint that ever lived. 

See how strong this man’s faith was

He called Jesus “the Messiah”.  He declared his belief that he would have a “kingdom”.  He believed that he was able to give him eternal life and glory, and in this belief prayed to him.  He maintained his innocence of all the charges brought against him. “... this man, said he has done nothing wrong ...”  Others perhaps may have thought the Lord innocent – none said so openly but this poor dying man.

And when did all this happen?  It happened when the whole nation had denied Christ, shouting “Crucify him! Crucify him!” And “we have no king but Caesar” when the chief priests and Pharisees had condemned and found him guilty of death; when even his own disciples had forsaken him and fled; when he was hanging, faint, bleeding and dying on the cross, numbered with transgressors and accounted accursed.  This was the hour when the thief believed in Christ and prayed to him.  Surely such faith was never seen since the world began.

The disciples had seen mighty signs and miracles.  They had seen the dead raised with a word and lepers healed with a touch, the blind receiving sight, the dumb made to speak, the lame made to walk.  They had seen thousands fed with a few loaves and fishes.  The had seen their Master walking on the water as on dry land.  They had all of them heard him speak as no man ever spoke, and hold out promises of good things yet to come. Some of them had a foretaste of his glory in the Mount of transfiguration.  Doubtless their faith was “the gift of God” but still they had much to help it.

The dying thief saw none of the things mentioned.  He only saw our Lord in agony and in weakness, in suffering and in pain.  He saw him undergoing a dishonourable punishment, deserted, mocked, despised, blasphemed.  He saw him rejected by all the great and wise and noble of his own people, his strength “dried up like a potsherd”.  His life drawing “near to death”.  He saw no sceptre, no royal crown, no outward dominion, no glory, no majesty, no power, no signs of might.  And yet the dying thief believed and looked forward to Christ’s kingdom.  Would you know if you have the Spirit. Then mark the question I put to you this day “where is your faith in Christ?”

See what a right sense of sin the thief had

He says to his companion “we are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve.”  He acknowledges his own ungodliness, and the justice of his punishment.  He makes no attempt to justify himself, or excuse his wickedness.  He speaks like a man humbled and self-abased by the remembrance of past iniquities.  This is what all God’s children feel.  They are ready to allow they are poor hell-deserving sinners.  They can say with their hearts as well as with their lips “we have left undone the things that we ought to have done, and we have done those things that we ought not to have done an there is no health in us.”  Would you know if you have the Spirit?  “Would you feel your sins?”

See what brotherly love the thief showed to his companion

He tried to stop his railing and blaspheming and bring him to a better mind.  “Don’t you fear God” he says “since you are under the same sentence?”  There is no surer mark of grace than this!  Grace shakes a man out of his selfishness – and makes him feel for the souls of others.  When the Samaritan woman was converted, she left her waterpot and ran to the city, saying "Come see a man who told me everything I've ever done.  Could this be the Messiah?”  When Saul was converted, immediately he went to the synagogue at Damascus and testified to his brethren of Israel that Christ was the Son of God – Acts 9 verse 20.  Would you know if you have the Spirit?  Then where is your charity and love to souls?

In one word you see in the penitent thief a finished work of the Holy Spirit.  Every part of the believer’s character may be traced in him.  As short as his life was after conversion, he found time to leave abundant evidence that he was a child of God.  His faith, his prayer, his humility, his brotherly love are unmistakable witnesses of the reality of his repentance.  He was not a penitent in name only – but in deed and in truth.

Let no man think, because the penitent thief was saved, that men can be saved without leaving any evidence of the Spirits work.  Let such a one consider well what evidences this man left behind, and take care.

Deathbed evidences.  People have little things to give them a comfortable hope that a person was saved.  Christ may never have been named, the way of salvation may never have been in the least mentioned.  But it matters not; there was a little talk of religion – and so they are content.

Nothing is so unsatisfactory as deathbed evidences.  The things that men say, and the feelings they express when sick and frightened are little to be depended on.  Often, too often, they are the result of fear and do not spring from the ground of the heart.  Often, too often, they are things said by rote, caught from the lips of ministers and anxious friends but evidently not felt.  And nothing can prove all this more clearly than the well-known fact that the great majority of people who make promises of amendment on a sick bed, and then for the first time talk about religion – if they recover, go back to sin and the world!

When a man has lived a life of thoughtlessness and folly, I want something more than a few fair words and good wishes to satisfy me about his soul, when he comes to his deathbed.  It is not enough for me that he will let me read the bible to him, and pray by his bedside, that he says he has “not thought so much as he ought of religion and he thinks he would be a different man if he got better.”  All this does not content me; it does not make me feel happy about his state.  It is very well as far as it goes – but it is not conversion.  It is very well in its way – but it is not genuine faith in Christ.  Until I see conversion, and faith in Christ, I cannot and dare not feel satisfied.  Others may feel satisfied if they please and after their friend’s death say they hope he is gone to heaven.  For my part I would rather hold my tongue and say nothing.  I would be content with the least measure of repentance and faith in a dying man, even though it be no bigger than a grain of mustard seed.  But to be content with anything less than repentance and faith seems to me next door to infidelity.

What kind of evidence do you mean to leave behind as to the state of your soul?  Take example by the penitent thief and you will do well.

Let us have some solid proof of your repentance, your faith and your holiness so that none shall be able for a moment to question your state.  Depend on it, without this, those you leave behind can feel no solid comfort about your soul.  We may use the form of religion at your burial and express charitable hopes.  If you die without conversion to God without repentance and without faith, your funeral will only be the funeral of a lost soul; you had better never have been born! 

WHEN BELIEVERS IN CHRIST DIE – THEY ARE WITH THE LORD

“Today you will be with me in paradise.”  Paul says in Philippians 1 verse 23 that he has a desire to “depart and be with Christ.”

Believers after death are “with Christ”.  They enjoy a blessed rest, a rest from labour, a rest from sorrow, a rest from pain – and a rest from sin.  But it does not follow because I cannot explain these things that I am not persuaded they are far happier than they ever were on earth.  I see their happiness in this very passage they are “with Christ” and when I see that I see enough.

If the sheep are with the shepherd, if the members are with the head, if the children of Christ’s family are with him who loved them and carried them all the days of their pilgrimage on earth, then all must be well, all must be right.

In paradise Christ is there – nothing else compares to this.  “You fill me with joy in your presence.” Psalm 16 verse 11  Paradise is a place where Christ is.

THE ETERNAL PORTON OF EVERY MAN’S SOUL IS CLOSE TO HIM

“Today you will be with me in paradise.”  He names no distant period; he does not talk of his entering into a state of happiness as a thing “far away”.  He speaks of today – “this very day in which you are hanging on the cross.”

How near that seems!  How awfully near that word brings our everlasting dwelling place!

Happiness or misery,

Sorrow or joy,

The presence of Christ or the company of devils –

All are close to us.  “... there is only a step” says David “between me and death” 1 Samuel 20 verse 3.  There is but a step, we may say, between ourselves and either paradise or hell.

It is high time to shake off the dreamy state of mind in which we live on this matter.  We are apt to talk and think, even about believers, as if death was a long journey, as if the dying saint had embarked on a long voyage.  It is all wrong, very wrong!  Their harbour and their home is close by and they have entered it.

Some of us know by bitter experience what a long and weary time it is between the death of those we love and the hour when we bury them out of our sight.  Such weeks are the slowest, saddest, heaviest weeks in all our lives.  But, blessed be God, the souls of departed saints are free from the very moment their last breath is drawn.  While we are weeping, and the coffin is preparing and the mourning being provided and the last painful arrangements being made, the spirit of our beloved ones are enjoying the presence of Christ.  They are freed forever from the burden of the flesh.  They are where “the wicked cease from turmoil and ... the weary are at rest.” Job 3 verse 17.

The very moment that believers die they are in paradise.  Their battle is fought; their strife is over.  They have passed through that gloomy valley we must one day tread; they have gone over that dark river we must one day cross.  They have drunk that last bitter cup which sin has mingled for man; they have reached that place where sorrow and sighing are no more. Surely we should not wish them back again.  We should not weep for them – but for ourselves!

We are warring still – but they are at peace.

We are labouring – but they are at rest.

We are watching – but they are sleeping.

We are wearing our spiritual armour – but they have forever put it off.

We are still at sea – but they are safe in harbour.

We have tears - but they have joy.

We are strangers and pilgrims – but as for them, they are at home.

Surely, better are the dead in Christ than the living!  Surely the very hour the poor saint dies, he is at once higher and happier than the highest upon earth.

Many have a notion that there is some interval or space of time between death and their eternal state.  They imagine they shall go through a kind of purifying change and that though they die unfit for heaven, they shall yet be found meet for it after all!

But this is an entire mistake;

There is no change after death;

There is no conversion in the grave;

There is no new heart given after the last breath is drawn.

The very day we go, we launch forever; the day we go from this world, we begin an eternal condition.  From that day there is no spiritual alteration, no spiritual change.  As we die - so we shall receive our portion after death; as the tree falls – so it must lie.