Most people have strong feelings about what happens to the body after death. Many choose to bury the body. But for many reasons, a growing number choose cremation—that is, to have one’s remains reduced to a handful of ashes (with or without a subsequent burial).
Many religious people despise cremation. People ask me about it very frequently. What does God’s word have to say about the disposal of dead bodies?
Burial is the most common practice found in the Bible. Sometimes the burials were very simple (Jer. 26:23; Matt. 27:7), and sometimes they were attended with great ceremony (2 Chron. 32:33). Burial places were often purchased ahead of time (Gen. 23:1-20; Matt. 27:60) and maintained for a whole family. Bodies were usually buried very soon after death, sometimes on the same day (Acts 5:6). Often the body was washed (Acts 9:37), anointed (Mark 16:1), and wrapped in cloth (John 11:44). When Moses died alone atop Mt. Nebo, God Himself buried him (Deut. 34:6).
The Bible often associates lack of burial with judgment or disgrace. God said of Jezebel, “the dogs shall eat Jezebel, and none shall bury her” (2 Kings 9:10). See also Prov. 30:17; Jer. 16:4; 22:19; Rev. 11:9.
Despite these passages mentioning burial, the Bible never commands a set method or ceremony for funerals. It seems that the Bible examples of burial have more to do with tradition than God’s will. Still, many people are horrified at the thought of cremation. Maybe some associate cremation with hellfire. Maybe some believe that cremation will prevent them from rising from the dead in resurrection to receive the inheritance of heaven, since the Bible so often speaks of graves and tombs being opened (John 5:28-29).
Cremation has been practiced in many cultures for thousands of years. It cannot prevent the resurrection. God decreed in Genesis 3:19, “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Abraham recognized in Genesis 18:27, “I am but dust and ashes.” The spirit is eternal, but the present body is fashioned from the physical elements of this world—mostly oxygen (60% by weight), carbon (18%), hydrogen (10%). When a person dies, the spirit leaves the body, and the flesh decays, decomposing into the chemical elements from which it was made. Cremation merely hastens the process of decomposition. Bodies that are buried in the earth do not last forever, not even the bones. Only in the best conditions—dry desert sands, constant freezing cold, purposeful artificial preservation—will human remains last for centuries.
The body that is given on resurrection day will be a spiritual body, a continuation of the person, but unaffected by the physical body that our souls inhabited on earth. “Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:49).
What about those whose earthly bodies were literally vaporized in the World Trade Center collapse, when jet fuel burning at 2,000 degrees reduced the flesh and bone to a gaseous state? What about those standing near ground zero in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose only remains are eerie shadowy outlines burned into walls? What about Christian martyrs burned at the stake by Nero? What about Navy men lost at sea, remains divided by fish and scattered and digested into nothingness? Will these miss out on the resurrection? Certainly not! We see in Revelation that an accurate headstone is not required for resurrection, for “the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged” (Revelation 20:13).
If cremation really prevented one from participating in the judgment scene before the great white throne of God, I would strongly suggest cremation to everyone outside the Lord’s church. Then, they can avoid receiving the sentence of condemnation. But of course, this will not work. Don’t you suppose that if burning could really prevent resurrection, God would have severely warned us about it?
It’s good to be respectful. But truthfully, we need not have too much concern for the fate of the physical body. It’s what was inside that matters.
—John Guzzetta