What is the second death?

Question 10099.

The second death is Revelation’s name for the final state of everyone who dies without saving faith in Jesus. The phrase appears four times, all in that one book, and John defines it for us so that we are not left guessing. The lake of fire is the second death. That is the whole definition, and it is enough to be going on with.

I write about this carefully because it is a doctrine that has been used badly, shouted where it should have been wept over. But I write about it because Jesus spoke of it more than anyone else in Scripture, and He was neither cruel nor careless. If He thought it worth warning us, I am not free to leave it alone.

Where the phrase appears

John uses it four times. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death. Those in the first resurrection are told the second death has no power over them. Then twice in the closing chapters it is defined: this is the second death, the lake of fire, and the cowardly, faithless, detestable and the rest have their portion in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death.

The numbering is the key to the meaning. If there is a second death, there is a first, and the first is the death every one of us faces, the separation of the spirit from the body. The second death is separation of a different order, permanent and beyond reversal.

Notice that death in Scripture never means extinction. When Adam died spiritually in the garden he did not cease to exist; he was separated from God and hid in the bushes. The second death follows the same logic on a permanent footing.

It is worth noticing where the phrase first appears. It comes in the letter to Smyrna, a church facing imprisonment and execution, and it is offered as reassurance rather than as a threat (Revelation 2:10-11). Believers about to lose their lives are told that the death they are facing is the only one they will ever face. The doctrine enters Scripture as a comfort to the persecuted.

What the second death is

It is the lake of fire, and John tells us who is there. The Beast and the False Prophet are thrown in alive at the Second Coming. A thousand years later the devil joins them, and Scripture says they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. Then Death and Hades are thrown in, and finally all whose names are not in the book of life.

That sequence is significant for one reason above all. If the Beast and False Prophet are still there and still conscious a thousand years after being thrown in, the fire does not consume its occupants. The lake of fire is not an incinerator.

The essence of the second death is separation from God. Paul describes it as being shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might. Whatever the imagery of fire conveys, and I take it seriously, the deepest horror of the second death is the absence of the One who is the source of every good thing anyone has ever enjoyed.

Jesus described the same reality in the plainest terms anyone has used. He spoke of outer darkness, of weeping and gnashing of teeth, of a fire prepared for the devil and his angels, and of a worm that does not die. He used the word Gehenna, drawn from the rubbish valley outside Jerusalem where fires burned continually. These are His images, not the inventions of medieval preachers, and any attempt to soften the doctrine has to begin by explaining Him away.

The word Jesus used most often was Gehenna, and the picture behind it was concrete for His hearers. The Valley of Hinnom lay just outside Jerusalem, a place where children had once been sacrificed to Molech and which later served as a refuse tip. When He warned about being thrown there, nobody in the crowd needed the metaphor explained to them. He was pointing at a real valley they could see from the city wall and using it to describe something worse.

Does the second death mean annihilation?

A number of evangelicals now argue that it does, holding that the unsaved are raised, judged and then destroyed, ceasing to exist. I understand the discomfort that drives the position, and I do not doubt the sincerity of those who hold it. But I cannot square it with the text.

The decisive verse for me is Matthew 25:46, where Jesus says these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. The same adjective governs both nouns in the same sentence. If the punishment is temporary because the word can mean something less than unending, then the life is temporary too, and no one wants that conclusion.

Add the description of the Beast and False Prophet tormented day and night for ever, and the language of the smoke of their torment going up for ever, and the case for annihilation runs out of textual support. The second death is not the end of existence. It is existence without God, permanently.

Why God does not simply overlook sin

This is the honest question underneath the discomfort. Why not forgive everyone and be done with it? The answer is that God’s justice is not a mood He could set aside. Sin against an infinitely worthy God is not a parking offence, and a judge who dismissed every case would not be merciful. He would be corrupt.

Which is why the cross exists. God did not overlook sin; He absorbed its penalty in His Son. Everything that makes the second death terrible fell on Jesus at Calvary in concentrated form, and the cry of dereliction is the sound of it. Nobody who understands that will accuse God of being harsh.

So the second death is not God’s preferred outcome for anyone. Scripture says He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked and desires that all should reach repentance. It is the outcome for those who refuse the only escape He has provided at infinite cost to Himself.

There is a common assumption that God sends people there against their settled preference, and I think that misreads the situation. What Scripture describes is a God who pursued, warned, provided a substitute at unimaginable cost, and was refused. C. S. Lewis put it memorably when he said the door is locked on the inside. That does not make the outcome less terrible; it makes the responsibility clear.

It is worth adding what this doctrine says about human significance. Scripture never treats people as disposable, and the permanence of judgement is bound up with the permanence of the creature. We are not animals who simply stop. We are made in God’s image, made for eternity, and the fact that a human choice can matter for ever is a statement about our dignity as much as about our danger (Genesis 1:27).

Who has nothing to fear from it

John is careful to reassure the redeemed. Over those in the first resurrection, the second death has no power. To the church in Smyrna, facing prison and death, the risen Lord says the one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death. Those promises are absolute.

If you are in Jesus, the first death may still come, and it may frighten you as it approaches, which is no failure of faith. But the second death has no jurisdiction over you at all. The first resurrection settles the matter permanently.

It is also worth saying what this promise does not remove. Believers still face the first death, and it can be frightening as it approaches (Hebrews 2:14-15). What Jesus removes is not the shadow but the sting. Fear at a diagnosis is not a failure of faith; it is a body doing what bodies do, and the promise stands over it regardless of how you feel on the day.

Paul makes the same point in a slightly different register when he says there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). Notice the word now. It is not a hope that the verdict will go well on the day; it is a verdict already delivered, in advance, on the basis of a finished work. Whatever fears a believer may carry into the darkness of a hospital ward at three in the morning, this one is not among them, because the case has already been heard.

How to speak about this doctrine

With tears, and not with relish. Paul said he had great sorrow and unceasing anguish in his heart for his kinsmen. Jesus wept over a city that would not come to Him. Any presentation of the second death that leaves the speaker sounding satisfied has misrepresented the God who is speaking.

And with clarity. Softening the doctrine to make it palatable does no one a kindness, since the person you are protecting from the words is not thereby protected from the reality. Tell people the truth, tell them warmly, and tell them what Jesus has done about it.

Be careful, too, about using this doctrine as a weapon in argument. I have heard it deployed to win a point or to frighten a wayward teenager into compliance, and both uses cheapen it beyond recognition. It is not a debating tool. It is the reason the Son of God went to a cross, and it should be spoken of with the weight that fact gives it.

There is one more consideration for anyone who finds this doctrine hard to accept, and I say it as someone who has found it hard myself. The alternative is a universe where the tyrant and his victim end in exactly the same place, where nothing is ever finally put right, and where the cross was an extravagant gesture addressing no real danger. I would rather live with a doctrine that troubles me than with a God who is not just.

So, now what?

If you are not sure where you stand, settle it. The second death is avoidable, and the way is not complicated. Trust the Lord Jesus, who died in your place and rose again, and your name is written in the book that is opened last.

If you are His, let this doctrine break your heart for the people you see every day. They are not statistics and they are not opponents. They are people heading somewhere, and you know the way out. Who will you speak to first?

And do not let familiarity dull it. Most of us learned this doctrine early and filed it away, and it has not troubled us since. Read Revelation 20 and 21 slowly this week, then look at the people on your street with those chapters still in your mind. What changes?

But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

Revelation 21:8 (ESV)