Chapter 18
Hebrews 9:27, Luke 16, and 2 Corinthians 5:10
If you have ever shared the case for postmortem opportunity with a fellow Christian, you already know what comes next. Within a sentence or two, three passages will be quoted back at you—often quickly, often confidently, and often with the assumption that the conversation is over. Hebrews 9:27. The parable of Lazarus and the rich man. Second Corinthians 5:10.1
My thesis is straightforward: none of these three passages, when read carefully and in context, actually teaches what restrictivists claim. Each passage is doing real theological work. None of them is doing the particular work of slamming the door of grace shut at the moment of death. That conclusion is read into the texts, not out of them.
Because Hebrews 9:27 is the most cited verse in the entire debate, I will spend the largest share of this chapter there. After that, I will turn briefly to Luke 16 and then to 2 Corinthians 5:10.
What this chapter is not. I am not arguing that these passages prove postmortem opportunity. The positive case for postmortem opportunity rests on the texts and arguments developed in Chapters 11–17. What I am arguing here is something more limited but still important: the standard objections from these three passages do not succeed. Their failure clears the ground for the positive case to be heard on its own terms.
Let us start by reading the passage in the context the author of Hebrews actually placed it in. Restrictivists rarely quote more than half of verse 27. The fuller passage tells a very different story.
Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. (Hebrews 9:25–28)2
Read the four verses together and the subject jumps off the page. The author of Hebrews is not writing about your eternal destiny or mine. He is writing about Jesus. Specifically, he is contrasting the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ with the repeated, never-finished sacrifices of the old covenant priests. The point is the sufficiency and finality of Christ's work, not the irrevocability of your last breath.3
The flow of the argument is shaped by a parallel. Look closely at verses 27 and 28:
The whole point of the comparison is the word "once." Death happens to a human being one time. Likewise, Christ's atoning death happened one time. As James Beilby puts it, the parallelism between verses 27 and 28 "draws attention to the fact that humans only die once. That is the point of the passage. The point of saying 'death then judgment' is to reinforce the idea that death only occurs once."4
If this passage is an argument against any belief at all, it is an argument against reincarnation, not against postmortem opportunity.5 The author is saying that you do not get to die over and over again, just as Christ did not have to suffer over and over again. Whatever you make of that, it tells you nothing about what God may do between the moment of your death and the final judgment.
Three influential evangelical writers have used Hebrews 9:27 as a knockout text against postmortem opportunity. Their arguments deserve a fair hearing.
Millard Erickson reads the verse as if it "seems to assume an invariable transition from one to the other, with no mention of any additional opportunities for acceptance."6 Ronald Nash goes further, claiming that the passage teaches that "the judgment of each human reflects that person's standing with God at the moment of death."7 J. I. Packer, asked directly in Christianity Today whether the dead can be converted, answered no, and pointed to Hebrews 9:27 as part of his rationale.8
Here is the problem with all three readings: there is nothing in the text itself to justify them. Beilby is blunt: "These interpretations are surprising, for there is nothing in the text whatsoever to justify these specific claims."9 The verse says people die once and then face judgment. It does not say when the judgment occurs. It does not say judgment happens in the next second, the next hour, or the next millennium. It does not say nothing else can happen between death and judgment. All of that is being smuggled in.
Stephen Jonathan presses the same point with a quiet but devastating question: "Two thousand years nearly have come and gone since these words were written: has judgment come?"10 Most evangelicals who quote this verse also believe in a future, public, final judgment. They believe Christ will return, the dead will be raised, and the great assize will take place. If "after that comes judgment" means "immediately after death," then most evangelicals have a serious problem with their own eschatology. They cannot have it both ways. Either there is a temporal gap between physical death and final judgment—in which case the verse does not foreclose what may happen during that gap—or there is no gap, in which case the rest of the New Testament's eschatology has to be rewritten.
The "death then judgment" gap. Most evangelicals affirm a long list of events between physical death and final judgment: the conscious intermediate state, the second coming of Christ, the bodily resurrection, the gathering of the nations, and the great white throne. The postmortem-opportunity view simply asks whether the offer of the gospel might also be among the events that occur in this gap. Adding one more event to a sequence already populated with events is hardly the radical innovation it is often portrayed to be.11
A short note on language helps here. The Greek word translated "judgment" in Hebrews 9:27 is krisis (κρίσις). The word does not, by itself, mean "endless punishment in hell." It is a flexible legal term meaning a decision, a trial, or a verdict—and the meaning in any given verse has to be determined by context.12 The same word group is used in the New Testament to describe the believer's appearance at the judgment seat of Christ for rewards (1 Cor. 3:11–15), and even of the disciples' future role in judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19:28). The word does not entail eternal torment, irrevocability, or even hell. The author of Hebrews simply says some kind of accounting follows death. He does not specify its duration, its severity, or the criteria by which it will be conducted.
William Harrison helpfully presses three interpretive questions that the proof-texting use of this verse rarely pauses to ask: Which type of judgment? Judgment for whom—believers or unbelievers? And how long will this judgment last? On all three counts, Hebrews 9:27 is silent.13 Reading determinate answers into a silent text is a methodological mistake regardless of one's theological starting point.
Andrew Hronich, building on Greg Boyd, makes the point with characteristic force. Boyd argues that the restrictivist habit of reading "and after that comes judgment" as if it meant "immediately upon death" simply "reads too much into the text." As Boyd puts it, "While this verse certainly rules out reincarnation, it does not rule out the possibility of intermediate events between death and judgment."14
Hronich adds a further consideration that I find quite striking. The author of Hebrews tells us nothing about the nature of the judgment. Restrictivists almost always assume the judgment is purely retributive—a final sentencing with no possibility of appeal. But the text does not say that. As Hronich points out, "the author of Hebrews says nothing concerning the nature of the judgment, and, for all we know, the judgment may have a restorative purpose in mind."15 When you stop reading retributive assumptions into a silent text, the verse loses its supposed teeth.
Hronich also raises a point that is harder to wave away than it might first appear: not everyone, in fact, dies only once. The widow's son at Nain, Lazarus of Bethany, Jairus's daughter, and others were raised from the dead and then died again. Some of those raised in Scripture were not believers prior to their first death. If "appointed for man to die once" is a metaphysical absolute, the Bible itself contains exceptions. The cleanest reading is that the verse states a general truth about the human condition (death is not a recurring event under normal providence) rather than a metaphysical wall against any divine action.16
Packer's response is interesting for what it does not say. When asked how Hebrews 9:27 actually rules out postmortem conversion, he quickly pivots away from the verse and starts arguing about prevenient grace—the work of the Spirit drawing a sinner to Christ. Packer claims that "Scripture says nothing of prevenient grace triggering post-mortem conversions."17
Two problems. First, Packer's pivot is itself an admission that Hebrews 9:27 is not doing the work he wants it to do. If the verse straightforwardly taught that the dead cannot be saved, he would not need to switch topics to prevenient grace at all. Second, his claim about prevenient grace is an argument from silence. Scripture does not explicitly say prevenient grace operates after death, but neither does it say it does not. As Stephen Jonathan observes, "one might argue that the prevenient grace of a Divine Being who is described as Love (1 John 4:8, 16) would continue to reach to those who remained unchanged whilst on earth."18 Packer's whole apparatus for ruling out postmortem grace assumes the very point at issue.
A summary of where Hebrews 9:27 actually leaves us. The passage is a Christological argument about the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ. The "death then judgment" clause functions analogically to reinforce the once-ness of human death. The text says nothing about when judgment occurs, what kind of judgment is in view, or what may happen between death and judgment. It rules out reincarnation. It does not rule out postmortem opportunity. To make the verse do that work, you have to add at least three premises that are nowhere in the text.
The second standard objection comes from Jesus' story of the rich man and Lazarus. Restrictivists point to one detail above all: the "great chasm" fixed between Lazarus in Abraham's bosom and the rich man in Hades. Surely this proves, they say, that there is no movement, no second chance, no hope of crossing over after death.
The first question to ask is genre. Is this a literal report of postmortem geography, or is it a parable? The opening formula—"There was a rich man"—matches the opening of the dishonest manager parable just a few verses earlier (Luke 16:1).19 Both stories begin the same way; both are unmistakably parables. Even Thomas Talbott notes that in a different cultural context, Jesus might just as well have used the words "Once upon a time."20
The vast majority of contemporary biblical scholarship—across the theological spectrum—reads Luke 16:19–31 as a parable, not a documentary report.21 N. T. Wright is direct: "The parable is not, as often supposed, a description of the afterlife." Robert Yarbrough adds, "It is widely accepted that this story is parabolic and not intended to furnish a detailed geography of hell."22
Richard Bauckham, in a careful study, argues that the parable's primary subject is wealth and poverty, not eschatology. Luke 16 is dominated by parables about money. The dishonest manager parable (16:1–9) opens the chapter; the rich man and Lazarus closes it. In between, Luke records Jesus rebuking the Pharisees, "who loved money" (16:14). The parable is a stinging warning to the rich about the inexcusable injustice of ignoring the poor at their gate.23
Hronich, following Bauckham, presses an embarrassing question for any literal reading of the parable. If the great reversal in the parable is determined by wealth and poverty—as the actual text says ("in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things")—then a literal reading would have to teach that wealth itself sends a person to hell and poverty itself brings a person to paradise. But this cannot be what the parable teaches, because Abraham himself was wealthy in his earthly life, and yet he is in the place of comfort. The parable is not laying out the criteria for final judgment. It is delivering a moral indictment of those who use wealth callously.24
Suppose, however, that we set aside the parable question and read Luke 16:19–31 as if it were a literal description. Two further considerations show that even then the passage does not refute postmortem opportunity.
First, consider where the rich man is. The Greek text says he is in Hadēs (ᾅδης), not in the lake of fire (Gehenna or the eschatological judgment depicted in Revelation 20). Hades, throughout the New Testament, is the intermediate state—the realm of the dead before the final resurrection and judgment.25 Lazarus, similarly, is in "Abraham's bosom"—a Jewish image for the comfortable side of the intermediate state, not the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21–22. The "great chasm" is therefore a feature of the intermediate state, not necessarily of the final state. Beilby makes this point clearly: "the statement 'you cannot cross from there to here' most plausibly only applies to the intermediate state and the inability of persons to move from Hades to paradise."26
Second, consider what the rich man actually asks for. He never asks to be saved. He never repents. He never expresses faith in God. He asks for a drop of water on his tongue, and he asks for someone to warn his brothers. As William Harrison points out, the rich man is suffering, and he wants relief from suffering, but nothing in the text indicates that he has come to faith in the God of Abraham, much less in Christ. "There is nothing in the passage that states or even implies that the rich man had such faith."27 The parable does not show us a soul in hell who repented and was rejected. It shows us a soul in Hades who has not repented at all. The text is silent about what would have happened had he done so. To use the parable to prove the impossibility of postmortem repentance is to import a teaching the parable simply does not address.
Add to this the obvious theological awkwardness of taking the parable's eschatology literally. Are we really to believe that the saved in heaven can converse with the damned in hell, observe their torments, and watch them beg for mercy? G. B. Caird is right: "It was not the intention of Jesus to propagate a strict doctrine of rewards and punishments … or to give a topographical guide to the afterworld."28
The narrowest possible reading. Even granting maximum concessions to the restrictivist—the parable is literal, the geography is real, the chasm is permanent—the most this passage rules out is that the unrepentant in Hades cannot, by their own initiative, walk over to paradise. It does not rule out that God can extend the gospel to those in Hades. It does not rule out that Christ can preach there (cf. 1 Pet. 3:18–20; 4:6, treated in Chapters 11–12). It does not even tell us what would happen if the rich man had repented.
The third standard objection cites a Pauline text:
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. (2 Cor. 5:10)
The argument is that the phrase "what he has done in the body" limits the basis of judgment to earthly, premortem deeds. If only earthly deeds count, then there cannot be any postmortem decision that matters salvifically.29
The first issue is the audience. Is Paul addressing all human beings here, or only believers? The Pauline scholar Murray Harris has argued, and Beilby concurs, that Paul is most likely speaking to believers in this passage. Where Paul applies the principle of recompense according to works to all people (Rom. 2:6), he describes "two mutually exclusive categories of people" (the saved and the lost), not "a delineation of two types of action" (good and evil deeds) "which may be predicated of all people."30
The flow of the passage supports this. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:9 that "we make it our aim to please him." Verse 10 is the motivation: gar ("for") connects the two. Paul is exhorting believers to live for Christ because they will appear before the judgment seat (the bēma, βῆμα) and receive what is due for their conduct.31 The parallel passage 1 Corinthians 3:11–15 confirms this: the bema seat for believers is about reward and loss of reward, not about salvation versus damnation.
If Paul is speaking to believers about a believers' judgment, then the passage simply is not addressing the question of the unevangelized at all. Stephen Jonathan summarizes the point well: "Since this text is quite patently referring to a believers' judgment of works, those who claim that it disproves posthumous salvation … are claiming far more than this verse permits. This verse has no bearing to those who have not heard the gospel during their lives."32
Even if we grant that Paul is addressing all people in this verse, the restrictivist argument still does not work. Beilby is decisive: "There is no explicit justification using this passage to claim that people are judged solely based on premortem factors. This passage implies only that judgment includes premortem factors and to claim that there could be no postmortem factors is an argument from silence."33
The verse says that what we do in the body matters at the judgment. Of course it does. Postmortem opportunity has never claimed otherwise. What the verse does not say is that what we do in the body is the only thing that will ever matter. To get from "earthly deeds count" to "earthly deeds are the only thing that ever counts" requires an additional premise the text simply does not supply.
Three passages, three failed objections. Hebrews 9:27 is a Christological argument about the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ; its reference to death and judgment ensures that human death does not repeat (anti-reincarnation), and it says nothing about the timing or content of judgment. Luke 16:19–31 is a parable about wealth and the dignity of the poor; its eschatological details, even if pressed literally, describe the intermediate state of one unrepentant rich man, not the impossibility of postmortem grace. Second Corinthians 5:10 is most plausibly a believer's-judgment text; even if read more broadly, it is at best an argument from silence about whether postmortem factors might also figure into divine judgment.
None of this proves postmortem opportunity. That work is done elsewhere in this book. What it does prove is that the most commonly cited objections to postmortem opportunity are not nearly as strong as their frequent repetition suggests. As we will see in the next chapter, the rest of the proof-text arsenal is no stronger. The case against postmortem opportunity has often relied less on the strength of any one verse and more on the cumulative impression created by a stack of verses, none of which, on close examination, actually says what it is claimed to say.
Death does not silence the God who is love. It does not bind the hands of the One who holds the keys of Death and Hades (Rev. 1:18). The verses most often cited to suggest otherwise turn out, on careful reading, to teach nothing of the sort.
1 Andrew Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved: The Logic of Apokatastasis (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2023), chap. 6, "Defending Universalism: Texts of Terror," under "Hebrews 9:27." ↩
2 Hebrews 9:25–28 (NIV; cf. ESV). I cite the NIV here because Beilby's discussion uses this rendering and the wording is widely familiar; the ESV reads the verse identically in substance: "And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him." ↩
3 Stephen Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave: Is Salvation Possible in the Afterlife? A Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Evaluation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014), 89: "The point of this verse is to illustrate the once-for-all aspect of the work of Christ, as opposed to the unfinished nature of the Old Testament sacrificial system, and is not a reference to personal eschatology." ↩
4 James K. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation After Death (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021), 109. ↩
5 Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 109: "Consequently, if this text is an argument against any particular position or belief, it is reincarnation, not Postmortem Opportunity." ↩
6 Millard J. Erickson, "Is There Opportunity for Salvation After Death?" Bibliotheca Sacra 152 (1995): 142, as cited in Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 108, and Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, 87. ↩
7 Ronald Nash, Is Jesus the Only Savior? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 151, as cited in Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 108 (emphasis original). ↩
8 J. I. Packer, "Can the Dead Be Converted?" Christianity Today 46, no. 2 (Jan. 21, 2002): 82, as cited in Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, 87–88. ↩
9 Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 108. ↩
10 David Field, "The Andover Theory of Future Probation," Bibliotheca Sacra 44 (1887): 469, as cited in Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, 88. The pointedness of the question—written more than a century ago—remains uncomfortably current. ↩
11 Gregory A. Boyd, as cited in Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, 89: most evangelicals already affirm "other events between death and judgment, such as Christ's return and the bodily Resurrection, and the postmortem view merely adds one more event or process, namely, the evangelization of the previously unevangelized." ↩
12 William Harrison, Is Salvation Possible After Death? (privately published, 2019), chap. 7, "Jesus, the Evangelist of Hell? (Part 2: Hebrews 9:27 and Luke 16:19–31)," under "Which type of judgment is this referring to, and is it for believers or unbelievers?" Harrison provides a brief but useful lexical survey of krisis and its variability across NT usage. ↩
13 Harrison, Is Salvation Possible After Death?, chap. 7, "Jesus, the Evangelist of Hell? (Part 2)," under "Hebrews 9:27: does this passage teach endless judgment or just judgment?" ↩
14 Greg Boyd, as cited in Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved, chap. 6, "Defending Universalism: Texts of Terror," under "Hebrews 9:27"; cf. also Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, 89, citing the same Boyd quotation. ↩
15 Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved, chap. 6, "Defending Universalism: Texts of Terror," under "Hebrews 9:27." ↩
16 Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved, chap. 6, "Defending Universalism: Texts of Terror," under "Hebrews 9:27." Cf. 1 Kings 17:17–24 (the widow's son raised by Elijah); 2 Kings 4:18–37 (the Shunammite's son); Mark 5:35–43 (Jairus's daughter); Luke 7:11–17 (the widow of Nain's son); John 11:1–44 (Lazarus of Bethany). All eventually died a second physical death. ↩
17 Packer, "Can the Dead Be Converted?" 82, as cited in Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, 88. ↩
18 Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, 88. ↩
19 Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, 78: "The opening formula is also identical to 16:1 and would indicate that this story is a parable and not an actual historical account." ↩
20 Thomas Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014), chap. 5, "The Rich Man and Lazarus." ↩
21 For a survey, see Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, 78–86, and Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 112–113. ↩
22 N. T. Wright and Robert Yarbrough, both quoted in Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 113. ↩
23 Richard Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead: Studies on the Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 97–117, as cited in Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 111–112, and Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, 79–86. ↩
24 Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved, chap. 6, "Defending Universalism: Texts of Terror," under "Luke 16:19–31"; cf. Bauckham, Fate of the Dead, 105 (cited in Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, 86). ↩
25 The lexical and theological distinction between Hades (intermediate state) and Gehenna / lake of fire (final state) is treated more fully in Chapters 11–12 (descent of Christ) and Chapter 23 (the divine presence model of hell). ↩
26 Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 112. ↩
27 Harrison, Is Salvation Possible After Death?, chap. 7, "Jesus, the Evangelist of Hell? (Part 2)," under "Is it impossible to have faith after death?" ↩
28 G. B. Caird, Saint Luke, Pelican Gospel Commentaries (London: Penguin, 1963), 191, as cited in Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, 87. ↩
29 See, e.g., Nash, Is Jesus the Only Savior?, 151, as cited in Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 114: "physical death marks the boundary of human opportunity." ↩
30 Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 405, as cited in Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 115. ↩
31 Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, 90: "'For' (gar) indicates that the requirement to appear before the judgment seat of Christ is the motivation for believers to live lives that are pleasing to the Lord." ↩
32 Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, 90. ↩
33 Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 115. ↩