Does the Bible Allow for a Doctrine of Reincarnation?

In Hebrews 9:27, we get this simple declaration from God: "It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment." Here is a totally unambiguous description of our personal eschatology, i. e., the events that will happen to each of us individually in the hereafter, as opposed to the big events that will affect the whole world.

It will be the normal event for every individual to die, and to be immediately judged. We get a similar indication in John 3:18, where Jesus tells us, "Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." The key term here is "already," indicating that it is not something waiting for the future.

While there is a future Judgment, these verses tell us that it will be a judgment of ratification. Knowledge of our eternal state is not waiting for that day.

However, another implication of the Hebrews verse is something quite contrary to any Christian version of reincarnation. If the person is judged already, then he cannot have second, third, fourth, etc., chances in additional lives. Rather, we are explicitly told that both the godly (II Corinthians 5;8, Philippians 1:21-23) and the wicked (II Peter 2:9) are already spiritually present in their ultimate destinations, whether Heaven or Hell, awaiting the resurrection, not to learn their fates, but rather to have their bodies join their spirits in their designated abodes. There is nothing to indicate a return to this world for rebirth! Any assertion to the contrary must deny either the inerrancy of the Scripture or the judgment, turning a profession of Christianity into a baptized form of Hinduism.

The Good News of Double Imputation

"A penal death and a perfect righteousness imputed, the one for pardon and the other for acceptance - these are the things which make the Gospel glad tidings of great joy. To deny these is to deny Christ" (James Henley Thornwell, "The Necessity and Nature of Christianity").

In his comment above, Thornwell quotes the Christmas passage from Luke 2:10, when the angel proclaims to the shepherds in the fields, "Fear not, for I bring you glad tidings of great joy!" The glad tidings were that our Savior had come, the One for whom His people had been waiting since He was first foretold in Genesis 3:15. I cannot read those words without thinking of Linus, as he spoke them, in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special.

I think even that idea is ruled out now in our politically-correct society. However, even Linus did not explain why the coming of Jesus was supposed to bring us great joy. Thornwell knew, and tells us. It isn't the part that Linus told us, but the part John the Baptist told us: "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29; see also Matthew 1:21). Jesus came to take away the sins of everyone for whom He died, not just of Israel, as the Jews expected, but in all nations (cf., Matthew 28:19-20)!

That is justification! We are set free from the burden of sin and the judgment that it brings. 

However, as Thornwell notes, Jesus didn't just cancel the debt of sin, and then leave us in some neutral state. No, He also gave us His righteousness, so that we are now His holy people: "For our sake He [God the Father] made Him [God the Son] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God" (II Corinthians 5:21).

The Crucifixion, and What It Reveals About the Law

"That representation of Christianity which makes the sufferings of Jesus a full and perfect satisfaction of the penalty of the law, and His life of spotless obedience the ground to all claim of eternal bliss... rears the fabric of grace, not upon the ruins, but [upon] the fulfillment of the law. God is never seen to be more gloriously just, nor the law more awfully sacred, than when He spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all. The impression which this event makes is, indeed, solemn, awful, sublime. It was a wonder in Heaven, a

Aspects of Crucifixion

terror in Hell, and is the grand instrument through which the rebellion of earth is subdued and the stout-hearted made to melt at the remembrance of sin" (James Henley Thornwell, "The Necessity and Nature of Christianity").

There is a common teaching among Evangelicals that God has rid us of the Law with the coming and crosswork of Jesus. That is not just the ceremonial law, with which I would agree, but also the moral law, with which I cannot. Some people simply deny the distinction between ceremonial and moral. However, then they have to ignore the usages of Paul who describes the abrogation of the former in Galatians, but maintains the latter in I Timothy 1:8-10, even referring to it as "in accordance with the gospel" in verse 11. And he specifically applies the law to members of the church at Corinth in I Corinthians 5:1 (Leviticus 18:8, Deuteronomy 22:30). Paul certainly didn't believe in the abrogation of the moral law!

There is also the problem of Christ's crosswork. Have we forgotten that He was beaten, whipped, and crucified? If the Son of God had to suffer so horribly "to magnify His law and make it glorious" (Isaiah 42:21, in one of the Servant passages), just for the law to be dispensed, was His suffering not unnecessary? What a horror for the Father to treat His Son in such a manner, when He was just going to get rid of the law anyway! Can we truly accuse God of such injustice?

Rather, as Isaiah says, the suffering and death of Jesus did not abrogate the law. Rather, it glorified it! The justice and holiness of God was revealed to the eyes of all men. The high price of rebellion against Him was revealed. At the same time, it revealed His grace, indicating what the love of the Son required that He undertake for His people.

No Cover for Sin

Americans have come to loathe the concept of sin. The popular  preachers, such as Joel Osteen, refuse to use the word. Even the supposedly-great Billy Graham, while he used the word, did not define it, or point out the sins of unbelievers, and even allowed unrepentant apostates to share his podium. So, when I say Americans, I don't have to limit my intent to professed unbelievers, but include even professing Evangelicals, a word that comes from the Greek word for "gospel."

Sin has come to mean, not wickedness, but error or even social injustice. We no longer think of it as it is presented in Genesis 3, rebellion against God and a despising of His word. We no longer talk about it as something which brings God's proper judgment: "Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine: the soul who sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4). Rather, we expect God to put our sins in a balance, with the acts that are good, in our own eyes, on the other side. And every person believes that his good deeds will outweigh his bad deeds. While that is the view of Islam, it is not the biblical view: "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it" (James 2:10), and, "No one does good, not even one" (Romans 3:12, quoting Psalm 53:3).

That is the problem with the objection of atheists, that God is supposedly unjust to send people to Hell just for not believing in Him; since Christians have taught a false view of sin, atheists have taken refuge in a false sense of their goodness. To the atheist, or any non-Christian, I give this warning: at the Judgment, you will not be excused by what men have told you, but rather you will be judged by what God has told you, even if you have refused to hear. To the supposed Christian who fails to warn of sin, I have these words from God: "If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand" (Ezekiel 3:18).

To both groups of people, I give my own warning: There is no salvation in excuses. There is only salvation in the blood of Jesus, received by grace through faith alone.

"The penalty of the law was no vulgar ill, to be appeased by a few groans and tears, by agony, sweat, and blood. It was the wrath of God, which, when it falls upon a creature, crushes him under the burden of eternal death. It is a blackness of darkness through which no ray of light or hope can ever penetrate the soul of a finite being; to all such it must be the blackness of darkness forever. But Jesus endured it, Jesus satisfied it, Jesus bowed beneath that death which the law demanded, and which sinks angels and men to everlasting ruin, and came victorious from the conflict" (James Henley Thornwell, "The Necessity and Nature of Christianity," emphasis in the original).

The Singular Nature of Christianity, Forgiveness of Sins and an Imputed Righteousness

"[The sinner] needs not light but life - not philosophy and science, not new discoveries in heaven and earth, but a Savior - a Savior who can pluck him from the wrath to come, arrest the avenger of blood, seize the sword of justice, put it up into its scabbard, bid it rest and be still. The glory of Christianity is its Savior, and His power to save is in the blood by which he extinguished the fires of the curse, and the righteousness by which He bought life for all His followers. Jesus made [to be] our curse, Jesus made [to be] our righteousness, this, this is the Gospel! All else is philosophy and vain deceit. This it is which gives Christianity its power" (James Henley Thornwell, "The Necessity and Nature of Christianity").

Thornwell above takes two statements from Scripture, and turns them into the beautiful doxology above.

"All who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, 'Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.' Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for 'The righteous shall live by faith.' But the law is not of faith, rather, 'The one who does them shall live by them.' Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree'— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith" (Galatians 3:10-14). Paul draws a parallel between what men are, cursed because of our failure to keep the Law in all of its exhaustive detail, and what Jesus became, cursed by imputation of the sins of God's people to their surety, Jesus Christ.

"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God" (II Corinthians 5:17-21). And this is the imputation the other way, His righteousness becoming ours by means of faith alone.

The truth of double imputation is one of the things that make Christianity unique from any other religion, or any other form of salvation. It is in Christ alone that we find both our needs met in one place, the need to have our sins forgiven and our need to have them replaced with true righteousness.

Sanctification: We Shall Be Like Him

"The justification of a sinner introduces him into a state in which he can no more be left to the dominion of sin and the possibility of the curse than Christ can lose His glory or God be unfaithful to His promises and oath" (James Henley Thornwell, "The Necessity and Nature of Christianity").

In its simplest, justification in Scripture refers to the declaration of "Not Guilty" on the sinner redeemed by the blood of Christ, applied through faith alone: "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9). Look also at verses 4-5: "God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved." See also Acts 15:11 and Romans 3:24. These references are far from exhaustive. However, Thornwell's point above is that our justification is the beginning of God's work in us, not the totality. And the Apostle Paul gave us the same assurance: "I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6).

The problem with modern Christians is that we talk about being saved from the wrath of God. And that is, indeed, a wonderful thing which is taught in Scripture: "Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God" (Romans 5:9). Jesus by His blood has brought us into peace with His Father, who had been offended by our sin (Romans 5:1). But that was never intended to be the end of His work.

What were we told when Jesus was born among us? "She will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). This was the promise given to Joseph about the unexpected pregnancy of his betrothed wife. Notice the promise. It is not just that Jesus would save His people from the curse for their sins, as glorious as that is, but from the sins themselves!

We know that this is a gradual process in this life. We grieve as we find in ourselves attitudes of wickedness that are inconsistent with our profession of Christ. Yet, we are also encouraged by the promises of Scripture that we are no longer possessed by sin, and someday, when we see Him face to face, we shall finally be as sinless as our Savior is: "Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is" (I John 3:2).

Paganism and the True and Innate Knowledge of the Triune God

The Apostle Paul records something interesting in Romans 1:18-23: "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things."

In this passage, Paul is referring to the knowledge of God which all men have, through the Law of God recorded in each man's conscience (Romans 2:15), reinforced by god's revelation of Himself in His works of creation (Psalm 19:1-4): "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." 

As Paul tells us in the Romans passage above, the inherent knowledge of God is received with hatred. The unregenerate man seeks to escape his awareness of God and our accountability to Him. One way in which he does so is to replace the true, triune God with mute idols in the forms of men and animals (see also Isaiah 44:9-20). Therefore, the existence of paganism is not a neutral historical event; it happened exactly because men are sinners under the wrath of God, that we know our condition, and we crave some solution that will quiet our consciences. In the case of paganism, the effort is to quiet our consciences while being able to continue in our deception of autonomy from the true God, who yet rails against the unregenerate man in his conscience. 

And Paul was not speaking from mere theory, but from his experience in the pagan world of Greco-Roman culture (Acts 17:16-34). "The religion he [Paul] proclaimed was preeminently that of a sinner - adapted in all its provisions to the spiritual necessities of a fallen being under the righteous government of God. The altars around him were dumb, yet pregnant, witnesses that the wants which the Gospel undertook to relieve were not the fictions of fancy, nor the creatures of superstition, but the urgent demands of the soul" (James Henley Thornwell, "The Necessity and Nature of Christianity").

The Fall and the Dominion Covenant

In Luke 17:10, Jesus makes a surprising comment: "So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, [should] say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.'" This is the nail in the coffin for any works-righteousness religion. If a man were to perfectly fulfill the law of God, then he has still not earned eternal life, because he has only done what he was supposed to do. It is like the employee who completes his assigned duties. Should his boss, therefore, give him a bonus? No, he has only done what he was required to do, and has contributed no additional value beyond what his wage has already purchased.

Think back to the first days of man. The one recorded restriction given to Adam was not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:17). And the Fall occurred when Adam broke that one restriction (3:6). Adam forsook all of the blessings of Eden by that particular sin. Yet, was he thereby promised eternal life if he refrained from eating that fruit? No, he retained his probationary status as long as he did not eat. But His assignment in Eden was far wider than that. Rather, he was to make it fruitful through the practice of agriculture (2:15), to exercise dominion (1:26) and to have families (1:28). Adam actually had an extensive list of responsibilities. The difference here was that the command not to eat the fruit, even if it had been obeyed, would not have advanced the purposes of God. Jesus, the Second Adam, talked about this, too, in the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30). The servants who are praised are the ones who took the master's talents, invested them, and returned a profit. The servant who is cursed is the one who returned what he had been given, with no advancement - no loss, but no profit, either.

"It is only to the just that the confirmed state of blessedness, which the Scriptures mean by life, is infallibly promised. Obedience to the law, righteousness, is the indispensable condition of God's everlasting favor. If, therefore, the scheme of redemption had done nothing more than deliver us from the curse of the law, though it would have conferred an incalculable benefit upon us, an unutterably great salvation, it would not have done all, that the necessities of the case required, to secure the perfection and blessedness of our nature" (James Henley Thornwell, "The Necessity and Nature of Christianity," emphasis in the original).

Particular Atonement Required by Reason

I think that the only doctrine in Scripture hated more than eternal conscience torment in Hell is particular atonement (also called definite atonement, or limited atonement), the belief that Jesus died for a particular group of people, for whom He fully achieved salvation. While this doctrine is often described as Pauline, it is also found in the direct teachings of Jesus. I don't see any way to avoid it in Scripture.