The rich man and Lazarus

The story

Jesus told a story about two men whose fortunes were reversed at death.

“There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

The rich man begs for a drop of water, then for a messenger to warn his five brothers. Abraham refuses both: there is a great gulf fixed, and the brothers have Moses and the prophets. “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31).

This story is often read as a window into the afterlife: the saved in comfort, the lost in flames, both fully conscious immediately after death. If that is what it is, then everything in the previous chapters is wrong. So we need to ask what kind of passage this is and what Jesus meant by it.

It is a parable

Luke 16 opens with “He also said to His disciples: There was a certain rich man...” (Luke 16:1), the parable of the unjust steward. The story of the rich man and Lazarus begins with the identical formula: “There was a certain rich man.” It is the last in a series of parables that runs from Luke 15 (the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son) through Luke 16, every one aimed at the Pharisees, who “were lovers of money” and “derided Him” (Luke 16:14). Jesus is not pausing in a run of parables to deliver a geography lesson on the afterlife.

And the story is full of features that cannot be literal. The saved are in Abraham’s bosom, a figure of speech for the feast of the kingdom; they are not literally reclining on the patriarch. Heaven and hell are within shouting distance of each other, with conversation possible across the gulf. A single drop of water on the tongue would relieve the flames. The rich man, whose body was buried, has eyes, a tongue and fingers. If we take the details literally, we have the righteous and the wicked spending eternity watching and talking to each other, which no Christian believes. If we take the details as the furniture of a story, we must ask what the story is for.

What the story is for

Jesus took a popular tale of His day and turned it against His hearers. The Pharisees believed that wealth was a sign of God’s favour and poverty a sign of His displeasure. Jesus reverses it. The rich man, dressed like a priest in purple and fine linen, is lost; the beggar, whom the dogs pitied more than the rich man did, is saved. The man who had every opportunity to hear Moses and the prophets did not listen to them, and no sign, not even a resurrection, would have changed that. Within weeks a real Lazarus would come back from the dead, and the same leaders would plot to kill him (John 12:10). Within months Jesus Himself would rise, and they would bribe the guards to say otherwise (Matthew 28:12-13). “Neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.” The parable is a warning about hard hearts and about how we treat the poor. It is not a doctrine of the intermediate state.

Letting the plain texts govern

Here is where the rule from the Introduction does its work. We have dozens of plain statements that the dead sleep, know nothing, do not praise God, and wait in the dust until the resurrection. We have a parable, in a series of parables, with details that no one takes literally. The plain statements must interpret the parable, not the other way round. Even on its own terms the parable sets the rich man’s torment after he “died and was buried”, in Hades, the grave, which Revelation says will itself be cast into the lake of fire at the end (Revelation 20:14). Judgment and reward are real; the parable pictures them vividly. But the picture is a story, and Jesus did not tell it to teach that the dead are awake.

Souls under the altar

A similar question arises from Revelation, where John sees a vision of the martyrs:

When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then a white robe was given to each of them; and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer, until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed.

Are these conscious souls in heaven? Notice where they are: under the altar, which is where the blood of sacrifices was poured out at the base (Leviticus 4:7). The martyrs have been poured out like sacrifices. And notice what their cry is: a cry for justice, exactly like Abel’s blood, which God said “cries out to Me from the ground” (Genesis 4:10). Abel’s blood was not conscious. Its cry was the cry of a wrong demanding to be righted. Hebrews uses the same figure of “the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel” (Hebrews 12:24). Revelation is a book of symbols: a Lamb with seven eyes, a dragon, a woman clothed with the sun. The martyrs under the altar are a symbol of the same kind, and what they are told confirms it: rest a little while longer. The martyrs rest. The day of judgment is coming. Their blood speaks until then.