Abraham's Bosom

by

Philip du Nard

  In the attempt to extract the true signficance of the Lord's parable concerning the rich man and Lazarus and Abraham's bosom given in Luke 16:19-31, some have discussed the scriptural truth that Abraham and others before Christ were justified by faith just as we are and also made this the occasion for discussing the spiritual pitfalls of being rich.


All of that is well and good but I have another perspective that I would like to share. "Abraham's bosom " is an intriguing subject. Pastor Robert Bruce Record wrote a tract on this subject entitled, "Are Rich Men Bad, And Beggars Good"? Of course, the answer is no. Spiritual pitfalls notwithstanding, riches in themselves do not condemn to hell, and poverty, in itself, does not bring salvation. Also, a rich man may be in a position to do much good while a beggar might also be a thief.


The general view is that because the rich man is in "hell," then Lazarus, the beggar, must be in heaven and Abraham's bosom is heaven and Christ is setting forth a view of what happens to those that are saved and those that are unsaved and this is, therefore, a parable of life after death. Because of this general assumption, one has to labor a little to reconcile the parable with the gospel of grace. But let us first remember the context in which this parable was given and then consider some other scriptures. Luke 16:14-15 shows that this parable was said in the presence of the Pharisees and was part of the Lord's response to their reaction to the first parable in this chapter and we might reasonably conclude that this parable was directed at them as a number of the Lord's parables were.


If someone were to embrace something, where would they hold it? They would hold it in their bosom. Did Abraham embrace something? The Scriptures say he did. Referring to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and also Sarah, Hebrews 11:13states, "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth."


This is what Abraham embraced in his bosom, the promises God made to him. So it has something to do with what God promised Abraham. While there certainly is a personal gospel element in the promises God made to Abraham, many err in restricting the promises to that. The covenant promises had to do with great national development and national and temporal blessings upon Abraham's descendants. So Abraham's bosom is not necessarily a reference to heaven. And the word used for hell simply means the place of the dead. Both Lazarus and the rich man "died" which is figurative for what happened to the entities they represent but only the rich man was buried signifying a little more finality in his case.
Who might the rich man represent? He had five brethren. Why did the Lord say that? Did He pick a number out of a hat or at random? Would it have worked just as well for the Lord's purposes if He had used the number seven or fifteen? Would we be at liberty to tamper with God's inspired Word and insert a number of our own choosing? Also, these brothers are said to have Moses and the prophets. Who had Moses and the prophets? Certainly not the heathen. Did the Chinese or the people of India have Moses and the prophets? No, they did not.


In Psalm 147;19-20, we read, "He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation; and as for his judgments, they have not known them." So, in contrast to other nations, Israel had Moses and the prophets. This is something that applied to the whole nation of Israel but according to our parable, only one of the brothers was in torment and only one was "rich" that we know of. Jacob had 12 sons by Leah, Bilhah,Zilpah, and Rachel. Leah had six of those sons. Therefore Judah, one of those six sons and the leading tribe of the remnant of three tribes that came back from the Babylonian captivity to build the nation of Judea into which Christ was to be born had five brethren. The term, Jew, is derived from this tribal name. And in what sense was this brother rich that the others may not have been?


In Romans 3:1-2, St. Paul asks this question," What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there in circumcision? Much every way; chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God." God showed His word to the whole nation but at the time of Christ, most of Israel was scattered and did not have the access to the oracles of God that the Jew did. Let me repeat here what I tried to say elsewhere that I do not view the term Jew and Israelite as automatically interchangeable. See the preceding article on this site on Romans chapters 9-11 and also my discussion entitled, Hebrew, Israelite,Jew which is the first article under "Studies in Genesis and Related Articles" on this site.


By contrast, what was the conditon of national Israel? In Isaiah 1:5ff God says through the prophet, "Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more; the whole head is sick,and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment." This was the condition of Israel that led to her scattering. It sounds rather like Lazarus in our parable who was full of sores but nothing meaningful was being done about it, does it not?

When Israel, or Lazarus, was divorced by God in 721 B.C. the beggar "died." Later, in 70 A.D. when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and scattered the Jews, the rich man "died."
Israel, represented by Lazarus, was carried by angels into Abraham's bosom. In other words, Israel went on to begin fulfilling the covenant promises God made to Abraham by developing into many nations of Christendom, mainly the Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, and Germanic nations as God said his seed would do and enjoy the many national blessings that Christ won for them by His death on the cross. By contrast, the Jews have been in torment for much of this same time period. The rich man asking for comfort from Lazarus is prophetic of the Jews seeking support from the U.S. and Britain for deliverance from all their troubles.


The great gulf that separates Lazarus and the rich man is the issue of Christ and Christianity. The Jews do not believe what Moses and the prophets say about the Christ and so no matter how people try to bridge this gulf between Jews and Christians by all sorts of means, it cannot be done. We would do well to ponder the significance of this.


There are other scriptures that set forth what Christians believe about judgment, punishment, and reward in the next life but it would seem that the parable of Abraham's bosom is to be more properly viewed as a prophetic riddle concerning events that were to transpire over the course of the church age and have, to a large extent already transpired, and not the Lord setting forth doctrine concerning life after death. Let us realize that "the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy" Rev. 19:10 and that we glorify Him when we show that what He said would come to pass has come to pass.