In brief#

If the wage of sin is death, an obvious question follows: why is anyone still here? Adam and Eve were warned that they would die on the day they ate, and they went on to have children. Unrighteous people live full lives. Scripture’s answer is not that they cannot be ended, but that God is holding the sentence back while there is still a plan of redemption running.

That answer cuts both ways. It explains why the unrighteous continue, and it limits how long they continue: until the day of judgment.

What Scripture says#

Peter states the delay as a deliberate divine act, and gives it a terminus.

the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment;
2 Peter 2:9WEB, World English Bible, which is in the public domain

He repeats it of the created order, using the same phrase about being kept until a named day.

But the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But don’t forget this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some count slowness; but is patient with us, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Therefore since all these things will be destroyed like this, what kind of people ought you to be in holy living and godliness, looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, which will cause the burning heavens to be dissolved, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.
2 Peter 3:7-13WEB, World English Bible, which is in the public domain

Hebrews supplies the other end of the sequence.

Inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once, and after this, judgment,
Hebrews 9:27WEB, World English Bible, which is in the public domain

Genesis 3:22-24 has the same shape at the beginning of the story: the man and woman are not destroyed on the spot but put outside the reach of the tree of life, treated in The Tree of Life and Conditional Life.

The point about continued existence#

Human beings do continue to exist between death and judgment. Conditionalism does not deny this; the passage about the rich man in Luke 16 describes it. What conditionalism denies is that continuing is evidence of an inherent, unloseable immortality. Peter does not say the unrighteous cannot be ended. He says they are being kept, and he names the point at which the keeping stops.

Being kept is the language of something granted and maintained, not of something possessed in one’s own right. A prisoner held until a trial date is not thereby shown to be indestructible. On this reading, continued existence before judgment is evidence of God sustaining, and the reason he sustains is that redemption is still possible. After the day when all sin is judged, that reason no longer applies.

Defenders of eternal conscious torment (ECT) explain the same facts differently, and it should be stated plainly: on the traditional view the human soul is immortal by the way God made it, so no special act of sustaining is needed to explain why anyone continues. The delay is then about God’s patience toward sinners rather than about the maintenance of their existence. Nothing here disproves that account. The point is narrower: these texts describe the unrighteous as being kept, which is language about something given rather than something owned. The Biblical Case for Conditional Immortality develops it.

What this argument establishes#

  • Scripture describes the unrighteous as kept under punishment until a named day, not as continuing indefinitely of their own accord.
  • Survival in the intermediate state is attributed in these texts to God keeping them, which is a reason for their continuance and also a limit on it.
  • The delay has a stated purpose, and the purpose expires at the judgment.

What it does not establish by itself#

  • The nature of conscious experience in the intermediate state. These texts do not describe it, and this page does not speculate about it.
  • That the intermediate state is uniform for everyone who is in it.
  • That the soul is not naturally immortal. The positive case is made elsewhere.

Sources and notes#

Irenaeus is cited from a public-domain translation.

[Irenaeus, Book II, chapter 34] [Dear]

Scripture passages are displayed in the World English Bible.