Chapter 23
What the parable actually says—and what it doesn't
Condensed Edition
If you have ever suggested that God might offer grace at the moment of death, someone has probably quoted this parable back at you. I know, because it has happened to me more times than I can count. The objection always sounds the same: "What about the rich man and Lazarus? The chasm is fixed. Case closed."
It isn't closed. Not yet. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is the single most-cited passage against any kind of opportunity beyond this life.1 We owe it a careful reading. And a careful reading will show that the text does not say what the standard objection says it says.
Let me start by putting the full text in front of us.
“There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house—for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’” Luke 16:19–31 (ESV)
That is the whole text. Read it again slowly, because nearly every sentence matters for what follows.
The standard evangelical reading goes like this. The rich man died, went to Hades, and found his fate sealed. The chasm between him and Lazarus is fixed and can't be crossed. He has no hope, no opportunity, no second chance. Death ended his options. As Wayne Grudem puts it, this passage shows that one's condition after death cannot be changed.2 Millard Erickson agrees: death ends all chance for decision.3 Ludwig Berkhof calls Luke 16:19–31 the most important biblical text showing that the state of the unsaved after death is fixed.4
I want to be fair to this reading. It is not silly. It is not a distortion. J. I. Packer puts it bluntly: the chasm between the blessed and the condemned can never be crossed, and that settles it.29 Darrell Bock argues that the image is strong. How we respond in this life, he says, decides where we end up in the next.30 Hendriksen reads the chasm as permanently fixed, with no crossing in either direction.31
If you read the parable quickly and assume it is a window into the afterlife's geography, the case against later opportunity does look strong. The rich man asks for relief and gets none. The chasm is called "fixed." Abraham gives no hint of hope. On a quick reading, the case looks settled.
But quick readings of parables are how bad theology gets built. And I think four observations, taken together, reframe this text completely.
This is the single most important observation, and it is almost always overlooked.
The parable pictures Lazarus in "Abraham's side" or "Abraham's bosom." The rich man is in ᾅδης (Hadēs), the Greek word for the realm of the dead. Both of them are in the pre-Christ intermediate state. Neither is in heaven. Neither is in the final hell. They are in the two-chamber Hades that first-century Jews expected: a place of comfort for the righteous, a place of torment for the wicked, with a barrier between them.5
The "Bosom of Abraham" is the paradise chamber of pre-Christ Hades, the resting place of the Old Testament righteous who died before Christ's death, descent, and resurrection. Lazarus is there because he lived and died in the pre-Christ era. After Christ's resurrection, the righteous were transferred from this holding place to the presence of God (see Chapter 20 for the full two-stage history, and Chapter 22 on Eph 4:8–10). This means the scene in the parable belongs to the old arrangement, not to the present age.
The intertestamental literature confirms the picture. In 1 Enoch 22, the dead are kept in distinct chambers under the care of angels, separated by barriers, awaiting the final judgment.6 The parable draws on that shared imagery. Jesus is not inventing a new picture of the afterlife. He is using a picture his audience already knew.7
Why does this matter? Because what happened in the pre-Christ Hades is not the same as what happens now. As we saw in Chapter 20, Christ's death, descent, and resurrection changed the entire landscape of what death looks like. He descended to the dead. He proclaimed victory. He led the righteous out of the paradise chamber. The old arrangement ended.8 And in the present age, this book argues, every dying person meets the risen Christ at the moment of death itself.
The parable does not picture that meeting. It pictures a scene under the old system, before Christ changed the architecture of the afterlife. That means any conclusions we draw about the parable's geography need to be held carefully. We are looking at the old floor plan, not the new one.
Thomas Talbott makes this point sharply. The setting of the parable is long before any kind of final judgment. The rich man's torment begins well before the death and resurrection of Jesus, before the return of the Messiah, before Death and Hades are cast into the lake of fire.9 The parable depicts an intermediate state, not a final state. And nothing in it tells us how long that intermediate state lasts or whether it is truly permanent.
Context matters. What is Jesus doing in Luke 16?
He is talking about money. The whole chapter is about money. The chapter opens with the parable of the dishonest manager (16:1–13), which teaches about the right use of wealth. Then Luke tells us that the Pharisees, "who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him" (16:14). And then Jesus tells this parable. It is aimed at people who love wealth more than they love God's law.10
Richard Bauckham makes the point well. The parable's unity, he argues, hinges on Abraham's unexpected refusal of the rich man's request. The focus is not on mapping out the afterlife. It is on the injustice of one man feasting while a poor man starves at his gate.11 Beilby notes the same thing. All three parables in Luke 16 address wealth and how it is used. Together they bracket Jesus' rebuke of the Pharisees who "loved money."12
This does not mean the parable contains no eschatological content at all. Erickson is right that a parable can assume a stance on eschatology even if it does not argue for one.13 But it does mean we should be cautious about turning the parable's furniture into doctrine. As N. T. Wright says plainly, "The parable is not, as often supposed, a description of the afterlife."14
I think the right approach sits between the extremes. This is a parable, a teaching story, told to a specific audience for a specific purpose. Its main point is about wealth, justice, and listening to God's word. Its afterlife imagery is borrowed from the common cultural stock of first-century Judaism. We can draw theological observations from it. But we should not build an entire eschatology on parabolic imagery, any more than we would teach that God is a vineyard owner because of the parable of the tenants.
With those two frames in place, look at what the text actually gives us.
Two men die. Both enter the pre-Christ intermediate state. One is comforted in Abraham's bosom; the other is in torment. They are conscious. They can see each other. A great chasm separates them. The rich man asks Abraham for help and is refused. He asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his living brothers. Abraham refuses again: they have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen.
Notice something odd here. The rich man and Abraham are having a conversation across the chasm. If the chasm were truly impassable in every way, even speech would not cross it. The parable takes this for granted. Words travel where bodies cannot.32
Notice something else. The parable gives us no information about why the rich man is in the place of torment. Abraham says only, "You in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish" (v. 25). There is no mention of the rich man's morality, his faith, or his religious standing. Some scholars have argued that his crime was the misuse of wealth or the failure to help a starving man at his own gate. Others think the reversal is simpler: the rich were rich; the poor were poor; and now God sets it right.33 Either way, the parable is not about a man who was damned for failing to profess Christ. That would be impossible in the story's own setting, since Christ had not yet come.
That is what the text says. Now notice what it does not say.
It does not say the rich man had no encounter with God during his dying. The parable skips from "the rich man also died and was buried" to "in Hades, being in torment." We see him after he is already in Hades. Whatever happened between his last breath and his arrival in that place of torment, the parable does not describe.15
It does not say the chasm was imposed at the instant of biological death, before any encounter could happen. The chasm is described as a present reality in the scene we are shown. It is not described as a barrier that existed from the moment the rich man's heart stopped beating.
It does not say the rich man is permanently lost. Talbott observes that not one word in the story implies the chasm will remain in place forever.16 That may reach beyond what this book argues, but the observation stands: the text is silent about permanence.
And it does not say that every person who dies without a public profession of faith ends up where the rich man ended up. The rich man had Moses and the Prophets. He knew God's law. He chose to feast while a starving man lay at his gate. His is not the story of someone who never heard.
This book proposes: the rich man encountered Christ at his moment of death. In that encounter he was shown his life, including his treatment of Lazarus, his contempt for the poor, his refusal to obey the law he knew. He was offered grace. He refused. The scene we see in the parable is after the encounter, after the refusal. The chasm is the consequence of his decision, not a barrier imposed before he ever had the chance to decide.
This is the heart of the chapter's re-reading, and I want to linger here.
The standard reading treats the chasm as a wall that was there before the rich man arrived. He died, woke up in Hades, and the wall was already in place. No conversation. No meeting. No chance. Just the wall.
But that is not what the text says. Abraham says, "Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed" (v. 26). The word "fixed" (ἐστήρικται, estēriktai) is a perfect passive: it describes a state that is already in place when Abraham speaks.17 It tells us the chasm exists now. It does not tell us when it was set in place or why.
The chasm is fixed for this rich man, who has already refused. Think of it this way: if you have already turned down the only bridge across a canyon, the canyon is now uncrossable for you. But the uncrossable canyon is the result of your refusal, not a wall that existed before you were ever offered the bridge. The chasm in Luke 16 is the aftermath of decision, not the absence of opportunity.
Forbes adds a striking observation. The chasm, he suggests, is meant to contrast with the gate in verse 20. The rich man could have crossed through that gate every day to help Lazarus, but he never did. Now Lazarus cannot cross to help him, because the gate has become a great chasm, a chasm the rich man's own choices dug.18 The image is poetic justice: the man who refused to cross a gate now faces an uncrossable void.
On the moment-of-death model, the timing works like this. The rich man's encounter with Christ happened during his dying, before the scene we are shown. By the time the parable picks up his story in Hades, the encounter is already past. His refusal is already complete. The chasm is the consequence of that refusal, and it is real. I'm not softening the picture. The refusal was genuine, and its result is torment. But the refusal came after an encounter, not instead of one.
I want to be clear about something. This reading does not claim that Luke 16 teaches the moment-of-death encounter. The parable says nothing about it one way or the other. What I am saying is that the parable is compatible with it. The silence between "the rich man also died" and "in Hades, being in torment" is a gap in the narrative, not a denial of anything that might have happened in that gap.
The second half of the parable (vv. 27–31) shifts to the rich man's request that Lazarus be sent to warn his five living brothers. Abraham refuses: "They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them."
This is sometimes read as proof that there is no help after death. But look at what Abraham is actually saying. The brothers are still alive. They have access to Scripture. They should listen now, while they still can. Abraham is talking about antemortem revelation, not about what happens at the moment of death.19
This fits the book's view perfectly. The moment-of-death encounter does not replace antemortem hearing. It does not make missions pointless or Scripture irrelevant. The brothers should absolutely listen to Moses and the Prophets. The moment-of-death encounter is a gracious safety net, not a substitute for hearing God's word while you are alive.20
Abraham's final line is even more striking. "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead" (v. 31). Many scholars hear an echo of the resurrection here.21 Luke may be pointing forward to Jesus' own rising, and to the fact that many still refused to believe even after it happened. The parable is not just about the rich man. It is about the pattern of human refusal in the face of clear evidence.
And that pattern, I would argue, is exactly what the moment-of-death encounter addresses. Some people refuse God's grace when they have Moses and the Prophets. Some refuse even in the face of the resurrection. And some, this book argues, refuse even when they meet the risen Christ face to face at the threshold of death. The rich man is a portrait of that refusal: not a man who was never offered anything, but a man who was offered everything and turned it down.
The chasm is fixed for the rich man because his encounter is already over and his refusal is already complete. The text does not say the chasm was imposed the instant his heart stopped. It says the chasm exists at the time Abraham describes it. On the moment-of-death model, the rich man's opportunity happened during his dying. What we see in the parable is the result of his choice, not the absence of one.
But isn't this reading the moment-of-death model into the text? Yes, in a sense. The parable does not describe the moment-of-death encounter. But neither does it rule it out. The parable is silent about what happened between the rich man's death and his appearance in Hades. The moment-of-death model fills that silence with a proposal the text does not address one way or the other.22
What about the argument that this is just a parable, so we can't draw any conclusions about the afterlife from it at all? I think that goes too far. I treat the parable as a teaching story that uses first-century Jewish imagery about the afterlife. Its main point is about wealth and justice. But it does assume a real conscious intermediate state, and I take that assumption seriously.23 The point is that the parable's imagery gives us a picture of the afterlife, not a systematic doctrine of it. And the picture it gives is of the old, pre-Christ arrangement, not the present age.
What about the fact that the rich man seems to show some concern for his brothers? If he were truly hardened, would he care about them? Talbott thinks this is actually evidence against reading the rich man as finally lost. A person in a genuinely irredeemable state, he argues, would not show real concern for others.24 I'm not sure Talbott is right about that. Self-interested people can want good things for their families without wanting repentance for themselves. But his observation does highlight how carefully we need to read these details, rather than treating the whole parable as a flat photograph of eternal reality.
If Luke 16 does not rule out the moment-of-death encounter, then the most common proof-text against it loses its force. That does not prove the encounter is real. But it clears the road.
Beilby puts it this way: there is nothing in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man that teaches that one's salvific status is fixed at death.25 Jonathan agrees. The parable depicts a pre-Christ intermediate state. The chasm applies to that intermediate arrangement. It does not rule out the possibility that God provides opportunity at the moment of dying itself.26
One more text stands between us and a clear road: Hebrews 9:27, the verse about dying once and then facing judgment. We turn to that in the next chapter.
I want to close with a word for anyone who has stood at a funeral and heard this parable used like a hammer.
You have heard it used to slam the door. Your father, your friend, your neighbor who never went to church is on the wrong side of a chasm. Sealed there forever, the instant his body stopped working. And you have been told that Scripture says so. That it's settled.
It isn't settled. What Scripture actually gives us in Luke 16 is a parable told to money-loving Pharisees, set in the old, pre-Christ Hades. It is about a man who ignored a suffering neighbor at his own doorstep. The chasm in the parable is real. But it is the result of refusal. It is not a wall thrown up before anyone was asked.
The book's proposal is that your loved one was asked. At the moment of death, Christ met them. He showed them the truth of their life. He offered himself. And what they did with that offer is between them and God. You are not authorized to pronounce judgment on that meeting. But you are not required to believe it never happened, either.27
The chasm in Luke 16 is not a fence God built around the dying to keep grace out. It is the far side of a decision already made. And the love that stands at the threshold, offering itself before that decision is sealed, is the love that crossed a far greater chasm on a cross.28
↑ 1. Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, p. 76, notes that Berkhof calls this "the most important biblical text" showing the state of unbelievers after death is fixed. Erickson, Grudem, Feinberg, Frame, and Packer all invoke it as a primary proof-text. See also Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, pp. 110–13.
↑ 2. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 822–23. Grudem uses Luke 16:26 as evidence that the concept of postmortem opportunity "is difficult to reconcile with other parts of the New Testament." See also Grudem, "Christ Preaching through Noah: 1 Peter 3:19–20 in the Light of Dominant Themes in Jewish Literature," Trinity Journal 7.2 (1986): 230.
↑ 3. Millard Erickson, "Is There Opportunity for Salvation After Death?" Bibliotheca Sacra 152 (1995): 142. Erickson acknowledges that a parable's secondary details should not be pressed into doctrine, but still reads the chasm as evidence that death seals one's fate.
↑ 4. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 4th ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1941), 693.
↑ 5. On the two-chamber structure of the pre-Christ intermediate state, see Chapter 20. The intertestamental background is crucial. In 1 Enoch 22, the angel Raphael shows Enoch four chambers where the dead are kept until judgment: the righteous and the wicked in distinct compartments. See also 2 Esdras 7:75–101 for a related picture of separated post-mortem states awaiting judgment.
↑ 6. 1 Enoch 22:1–14. Kreitzer, "Luke 16:19–31 and 1 Enoch 22," New Testament Studies 43 (1997): 139–42, traces the parallels between the parable's imagery and the Enochic tradition. See also Aalen, "St. Luke’s Gospel and 1 Enoch," New Testament Studies 13 (1966): 1–13.
↑ 7. Richard Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead: Studies on the Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 97–101. Bauckham traces both Egyptian and Jewish versions of the reversal-of-fortunes story and argues that Jesus is reworking a well-known tale for his own purposes. Hock, "Lazarus and Micyllus: Greco-Roman Backgrounds to Luke 16:19–31," Journal of Biblical Literature 106.3 (1987): 447–63, broadens the literary background further. Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, rev. ed. (New York: Scribner's, 1963), 183, identifies seven versions of the reversal story in Jewish tradition.
↑ 8. See Chapter 21 (1 Peter 3:18–19 and 4:6) and Chapter 22 (Ephesians 4:8–10) for the full treatment of the descent and the transfer of the Old Testament righteous.
↑ 9. Thomas Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014), ch. 4. Talbott notes that the rich man's torment would have begun well before the death and resurrection of Jesus, before the return of the Messiah, and before Death and Hades are cast into the lake of fire (Rev 20:14).
↑ 10. Luke 16 contains three parables, each about wealth: the Dishonest Manager (vv. 1–13), the intervening rebuke of the money-loving Pharisees (vv. 14–15), and the Rich Man and Lazarus (vv. 19–31). The topical grouping is strengthened by the observation that Luke 15 also groups three parables around a single theme (defending Jesus' mission to outcasts). See Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, pp. 111–12.
↑ 11. Bauckham, Fate of the Dead, 105, 117. Bauckham argues that the parable belongs to "the popular religious folklore of the poor" and addresses the injustice of coexisting wealth and poverty. Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, pp. 83–84, draws on Bauckham's work extensively.
↑ 12. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, pp. 111–12.
↑ 13. Erickson, "Is There Opportunity," 142. This is a fair point: a parable can assume a stance on eschatology even if it does not argue for one. The question is what stance Luke 16 actually assumes.
↑ 14. N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 255. Robert Yarbrough goes further: "It is widely accepted that this story is parabolic and not intended to furnish a detailed geography of hell." See Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, p. 113, for the Yarbrough and Wright citations in context.
↑ 15. This is a silence in the text, and silences can be filled in multiple ways. The moment-of-death model fills it with the proposal that the encounter happened during the dying process. Critics will note that this is an argument from silence. I agree — but the standard reading also fills the silence, by assuming that nothing happened between death and Hades. Both readings are inferences, not explicit claims of the text.
↑ 16. Talbott, Inescapable Love, ch. 4. Talbott goes further than this book does: he suggests the cross may have already bridged the chasm. That is a universalist extension I am not endorsing here. But his textual observation — that the text does not say the chasm is permanent — stands independently.
↑ 17. The Greek ἐστήρικται (estēriktai) is a perfect passive indicative of στηρίζω (stērizō), "to fix, establish, strengthen." The perfect tense indicates a completed action with an ongoing state: the chasm has been fixed and remains fixed. But the perfect tense is not an eternal tense. It describes the state at the time of Abraham's speech, not a metaphysical permanence. See Darrell L. Bock, Luke 9:51–24:53, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 1377–79.
↑ 18. Greg Forbes, The God of Old: The Role of the Lukan Parables in the Purpose of Luke’s Gospel (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2000), 190. The gate/chasm contrast is a striking piece of narrative artistry: the rich man could have crossed the gate; now nothing can cross the chasm.
↑ 19. Abraham's statement that the brothers "have Moses and the Prophets" addresses antemortem revelation, not the existence or absence of a moment-of-death encounter. The brothers are still alive. Their situation is qualitatively different from the rich man's.
↑ 20. The moment-of-death encounter does not diminish missions, preaching, or antemortem evangelism. As argued in Chapter 32, this model actually strengthens the urgency of missions: those who hear in this life are better prepared for the encounter that comes at death.
↑ 21. John Dominic Crossan, In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 65–66, argues that Luke 16:27–31 is a post-resurrection application of the parable. The parallels between 16:27–31 and Luke 24 include motifs of disbelief (24:11–12, 25, 41), Moses and the Prophets (24:27, 44), resurrection (24:46), and repentance (24:47). See also I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 633–34.
↑ 22. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, p. 111, makes a similar point: "True, the passage does not describe either the rich man or Lazarus receiving a Postmortem Opportunity, but that is, at best, an argument from silence, and their failure to receive a Postmortem Opportunity can be rather easily explained by the fact that they were neither unevangelized nor pseudoevangelized."
↑ 23. David Wenham, The Parables of Jesus (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1989), 17, warns against the "over-simplification" of claiming that Jesus' parables have only one main point. The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus makes several related points: a warning to the rich, a warning against sign-seeking that masks disobedience, an affirmation of Moses and the Prophets, and an announcement of the standards of the kingdom. See also Wenham, 149–50. Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, p. 82, draws on Wenham's analysis.
↑ 24. Talbott, Inescapable Love, ch. 4. Talbott asks: if the rich man were truly in an irredeemable state, from where would his genuine concern for his brothers come? In the case of a parable, the question may simply be part of the story's mechanics. But in a supposed case of final damnation, Talbott argues, it is harder to dismiss.
↑ 25. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, p. 113.
↑ 26. Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, pp. 76–86. Jonathan's treatment of Luke 16 is one of the most thorough in the postmortem opportunity literature. He engages Bauckham, Forbes, Hock, Bock, Marshall, Fitzmyer, and others at length. His conclusion: the parable is not a treatise on postmortem geography, and the chasm does not rule out the possibility of a divine encounter at the moment of death.
↑ 27. For the full pastoral development of this theme — what the doctrine means for those who have lost loved ones — see Chapter 34.
↑ 28. The next chapter addresses Hebrews 9:27, the other major proof-text against postmortem opportunity. See Chapter 24.
↑ 29. J. I. Packer, "Can the Dead Be Converted?" Christianity Today (1985): 82. Packer does not develop an extended exegetical argument here but treats the chasm as self-evidently decisive. See Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, p. 76, for discussion.
↑ 30. Bock, Luke 9:51–24:53, 1377–79. Bock writes that "the image is strong and suggests that how we respond in this life is decisive for where we reside in the next." He acknowledges the parabolic genre but still reads the chasm as bearing doctrinal weight. Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, pp. 81–82, notes that Bock reads a fixed-destiny doctrine into the parable against the grain of its context.
↑ 31. William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke, New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978), 785.
↑ 32. Talbott, Inescapable Love, ch. 4, makes this ironic observation: "even the account in Luke 16, if taken literally and not as a parable, implies that conversation, at least, can bridge this supposedly unbridgeable chasm." The point is parabolic, of course. But it is a useful reminder that pressing every detail of the parable into a literal eschatological map leads to contradictions.
↑ 33. Bauckham, Fate of the Dead, 104–5, argues that the parable says nothing about the piety or morality of either man. The criterion of judgment appears to be simply the injustice of one man living in luxury while another starves. Forbes, God of Old, 192, pushes back gently: Abraham was himself a rich man, so wealth alone cannot be the issue. The unstated inference is that the rich man had failed to use his wealth in obedience to God's law. See Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, pp. 83–84.