Sleep as description for death

There are a few ways in which sleep is a helpful description of Christian death. And the first is this: that sleep does us no harm. Sleep does us no harm. And this can also be said about death in Christ. Psalm 121:7 says, The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life…. both now—and here is the part I love the most—”and forevermore.” …

Paul said, The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. What does he mean? He says that what makes death death is the sin that brings us under God’s judgment and the curse and penalty of that judgment. Well, Christ satisfied the law by imputing his own righteousness to believers. He took away the sting of sin by suffering sin’s punishment on our behalf. A. W. Pink writes, “He underwent the full horror that is death, and in doing so, he transformed death so that for his followers it is no more than sleep…

But we will not stop there.

Because not only will sleep do you no harm—it is actually very beneficial to you. Very beneficial to the living. So is death for the Christian. Sleep is one of the best prescriptions, isn’t it, for those who are ailing from sickness or fatigue? It restores the body. And the sleep of death does even more for the soul. It transforms the soul into glory. It removes every vestige of sin and sorrow. John Owen writes, When at death the soul departs from the body, it immediately is freed from all weakness, disability, doubts, darkness, and fears. Being free, their souls flourish and expand to their fullest extent. …

Listen to Matthew Henry. He says, Being in union with Christ, they sleep in his arms and are under his special care and protection. Their souls are in his presence, and their dust is under his care and power. They are not lost, nor are they losers, but great gainers by death; and their removal out of this world is into a better one.

Now, this teaching refutes the idea of what is called soul sleep. Soul sleep is a view that says when a Christian dies, not only is their body in the appearance of sleep, but they actually do not have a conscious experience after death until Christ returns. But the Bible teaches that in death, the believer—in our conscious selves—we are awake in the glory of the Lord while our bodies are sleeping in the grave, awaiting the summons to resurrection. The Westminster Confession of Faith puts it this way: The souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies.

I have to guard myself sometimes, because people say things about people in death—you do not want to correct them too severely when they are under emotional distress. And people will say, Well, he’s died. He’s riding a horse into heaven. I want to say two things. Well, he doesn’t have a body—so it’s going to be hard. And he is preoccupied with the glory of God in which he is being bathed. And so of course we think, Oh, they will be enjoying the things they loved in this world. No, actually they will be enjoying something that is so much greater it transcends it: beholding the face of God in light and glory.

…Paul says, For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain, and  My desire is to depart and be with Christ (Philippians 1:21–23). And this expresses the great gain and blessing that comes to the Christian through death. Eric Alexander points out how we often say that someone experienced sudden death. He said, No, for the Christian, it’s sudden glory. …

Well, one last thing to remember: that sleep, like death, is temporary. The death of a Christian is temporary. We go to sleep, and we wake up. Winston Churchill expressed this conviction through his funeral. By the way, wasn’t it wonderful to see an explicitly Christian state funeral yesterday? Just reading the Scripture—it was not, We have to keep our hopes in check. But they read the Scriptures reverently. They sang the hymns. Now, I think she may have missed an opportunity—and I do not mean to criticize wonderful Queen Elizabeth—but Winston Churchill, when he died, he wanted to make a point. And it was the end of an era when Winston Churchill died, and many eyes were weeping in St. Paul’s Cathedral. As the bugler ended—Winston Churchill, who was a military man—his funeral ended with taps, the mournful notes that are played at Christian funerals. But no sooner had the last note drifted away than, unexpectedly, the bugler began playing again—at Churchill’s command. The tune was Reveille, the notes with which soldiers are called to a new day. That Reveille is a trumpet sound to awaken those who are sleeping.  And Christians know that likewise, the sleep of our own deaths will end—and it will end when the trumpet call summons us to greet our returning Lord.¹

Richard D. Phillips