Luke 23:42, 43—“And he said, Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom. And he said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise”; cf. 2 Cor. 12:4—“caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter”; Rev. 2:7—“To him that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God”; Gen. 2:8—“And Jehovah God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.” Paradise is none other than the abode of God and the blessed, of which the primeval Eden was the type. If the penitent thief went to Purgatory, it was a Purgatory with Christ, which was better than a Heaven without Christ. Paradise is a place which Christ has gone to prepare, perhaps by taking our friends there before us.
(d) That their state, immediately after death, is greatly to be preferred to that of faithful and successful laborers for Christ here.
Phil. 1:23—“I am in a strait betwixt the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ; for it is very far better”—here Hackett says: “ἀναλῦσαι = departing, cutting loose, as if to put to sea, followed by σὺν Χριστῷ εἶναι, as if Paul regarded one event as immediately subsequent to the other.” Paul, with his burning desire to preach Christ, would certainly have preferred to live and labor, even amid great suffering, rather than to die, if death to him had been a state of unconsciousness and inaction. See Edwards the younger, Works, 2:530, 531; Hovey, Impenitent Dead, 61.
(e) That departed saints are truly alive and conscious.
Mat. 22:32—“God is not the God of the dead, but of the living”; Luke 16:22—“carried away by the angels into Abraham's bosom”; 23:43—“To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise”—“with me” = in the same state,—unless Christ slept in unconsciousness, we cannot think that the penitent thief did; John 11:26—“whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die”; 1 Thess. 5:10—“who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him”; Rom. 8:10—“And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness.” Life and consciousness clearly belong to the “souls under the altar” mentioned under the next head, for they cry: “How long?” Phil. 1:6—“he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ”—seems to imply a progressive sanctification, through the Intermediate State, up to the time of Christ's second coming. This state is: 1. a conscious state (“God of the living”); 2. a fixed state (no “passing from thence”); 3. an incomplete state (“not to be unclothed”).
(f) That they are at rest and blessed.
Rev. 6:9-11—“I saw underneath the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: and they cried with a great voice, saying, How long, O Master, the holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And there was given them to each one a white robe; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little time, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, who should be killed even as they were, should have fulfilled their course”; 14:13—“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; for their works follow with them”; 20:14—“And death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire”—see Evans, in Presb. Rev., 1883:303—“The shadow of death lying upon Hades is the penumbra of Hell. Hence Hades is associated with death in the final doom.”
2. Of the wicked.
Of the wicked, it is declared: