Are the Dead in Christ Alive or Dead?

Last updated on: October 2, 2025 at 6:18 am by Clark Elder Morrow

Are the Dead in Christ Alive or Dead? 2025-10-02T06:18:07-07:00 Clark Elder Morrow

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Apparently there are two senses in which you exist after your body ceases to function: you are dead in the clinical sense, and you are alive in the spiritual sense. This may sound rather obvious to many people, but the Bible leaves the matter in a bit of obscurity. Here’s what I mean:

In Mark 12:27, as the Sadducees are trying to convince Jesus that there is no resurrection of the dead, Christ responds by reminding them that God had told Moses that He, God, was “the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” — all of whom had died long before the first century AD. Jesus goes on to add: “He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err.” That part about “ye therefore do greatly err” was added to make it clear that Christ was endorsing the doctrine of resurrection for the physically dead.

So it seems that individuals can be both dead bodily and still be alive … somewhere. Where that “somewhere” is lays beyond the purposes of this little essay, but one must assume that the dead maintain an identity that can be resuscitated at some point in the future. And, apparently, this is the rationale behind the Catholic Church’s doctrine that encourages praying to “dead” saints.

At the same time, however, Scripture has other things to say about those folks lying in graveyards and churchyards. Psalm 115:17 says “The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence”. Isaiah 38: 18-19: “The grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee … The living, the living, he shall praise you”. Psalm 6:5 is even more adamant on this point, and maintains that “in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?”

If the dead can be resurrected, then what are they doing in the meanwhile if they have no memory of even God Himself? Some sects will insist on a sort of “soul sleep” between physical death and bodily resurrection at this point, but Christ’s parable (or history) of Lazarus and the rich man — who were both quite conscious of their surroundings after their respective deaths — would seem to put that theory out of contention. What are we left with?

Of course the natural (though paradoxical) assumption is that human beings can be both alive and dead at the same time: alive in the sense that they know what’s going on in Heaven or Hades before they’re given a renewed body, but dead in the sense that their earthly bodies are rotting and they’re being mourned by those they left behind. It is a dual existence — and one that has caused a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding over the centuries. If it is, as the philosophers maintain, a virtue to be able to hold conflicting ideas in one’s mind without feeling the need to tilt toward one or the other, then here is a good opportunity for the devout Christian to practice that virtue.

The twelfth chapter of Hebrews tells us that believers are “compassed about” with a “great crowd of witnesses”. This may or may not refer to a stadium full of the great Heroes of the Faith (described in the eleventh chapter) who watch what we accomplish on Earth, and perhaps cheer us on. Perhaps. We don’t know from the passage whether the author of Hebrews — when he says “witnesses” — is talking about the martyrs (“witnesses” can very well mean “martyrs” here) of the past, or simply those people who are watching what Christians are doing at the time of the book of Hebrews. Once again, we are left with a measure of ambiguity.

But what of that? Isn’t the more important point the fact that the dead are resurrected? Even if the deceased are both alive and dead, those who have died in Christ will — one superb and radiant day — be alive in every possible sense of the word. “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” That, I should think, must settle the question regarding our consciousness in Heaven, even if it doesn’t necessarily settle the question as to our ability to see or interact with those still on Earth. Second Corinthians 5:8 would thus appear to be a massive amplification and clarification of Psalm 6:5. And a massively encouraging one. It is just possible, after all, that we will not need to remember God in Heaven, because we will be seeing Him face to face.

Basic Theology

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Christian view of death

death

dual existence

paradox of the living dead

resurrection

soul sleep

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