My question regarding this verse had to do with Jesus’ promise to the criminal who asked Jesus to remember him. He replied “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise”. There is no punctuation in the Greek so that verse could  also read “Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise”. Moving the comma gives the verse a completely different meaning. How was it decided that the comma should be placed before today rather than after today? The question came up because I had a relative who just lost her brother. Several people comforted her by telling her that her brother was in heaven now. But is that a Biblical teaching or is it something that modern Christianity adopted? Thanks.

Dear Thoughtful Christian,

I must provide a disclaimer: I am no New Testament scholar.

Let’s look first at your question about the placement of the comma in Luke 23:43. I can’t find any modern Bible translation that opts for your proposal.  Looking at the Greek, I don’t think your idea really works.  Here’s what The New Greek-English Interlinear New Testament has for the verse: (Forgive my crude Romanization!)

Usually when you have légō (I say) it comes right before an important saying.  It fact it’s often used right before a direct quote. Also, notice that the adverbial amēn (truly) and soi (to him) which modify légō are placed before. I would wager that if sēmeron (today) was meant as an adverb describing légō, which is what you are suggesting, it would have been placed before légō with those two other words.  Where it sits in the text suggests that sēmeron is meant to modify ésē (you will be).

I realize this presents potential problems for traditions like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventists who advocate “soul sleep”. “Soul sleep” is the view that the soul is unconscious or even dead from the point of bodily death until the last days at which point God raises everyone from the dead to face judgment.  This passage might be seen to challenge that doctrine because it could be construed to say that the soul goes right to heaven to be with God at the point of death — not waiting until the end of history.

I don’t however think the two views are mutually incompatible. Recall that in the Gospel of Luke eschatology (end times) is front and center. Jesus comes proclaiming freedom to captives, healing to the injured, cancellation of debts, etc. Those jubilee events do not happen in the time frame of the entire book of Luke!  (In fact they still haven’t happened.) Unless the gospel writer is simply incorrect, he or she seems to understand sēmeron (today) to refer to something happening outside of normal time.  Note that sēmeron is also used in Luke 4:21 by Jesus after he preaches his first sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth. Jesus indicates that the events described in the prophet’s scroll that he read from have been fulfilled today. Time for eschatological prophets can be a bit confusing for us moderns to understand. They apparently have no trouble describing something as happening now which does not appear to have happened yet in our ordinary world.

Now as to your question about the accuracy of saying “He (or she) is in heaven now” at the funeral of a loved one, that is never an easy situation. Everyone wants to help the grieving. There’s rarely anything we can actually do to ease the suffering. Consequently, we will try to say comforting words instead. In my experience I would advise caution when speaking to a grieving person. Most so-called comforting words are at best negligible in their benefits and insensitive or even offensive at worst!

But your question was regarding the correctness of the statement, not it’s pastoral appropriateness. That’s a hard one to answer, as I don’t think the Bible speaks with one voice on the matter. Given Jesus’ response to the repentant thief above, it seems like a reasonable thing to say. Nevertheless, the Old Testament patriarchs knew of nothing of an afterlife; therefore, God’s promise to them regarded having numerous descendants (e.g. the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:2.) Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 seems to be arguing for yet another position when he advocates something akin to the “soul sleep” I mentioned before.

Consequently, when it comes to the afterlife, I tend to be uncomfortable giving answers that betray more certainly than I think we have. I will say things like “He (she) is with God now” or “Her (his) suffering is now over.” I think those are fair statements that the diversity in the Christian tradition can support. But I don’t really think we human beings — this side of the veil of death — can have much knowledge about what comes afterwards. I wonder if we could even understand what comes next since we can’t really grasp God?

I hope my answer makes sense to you and gives you something to aid you in your spiritual journey.

God’s Peace,

+Chris.