Answering the internet: What about cremation?

The most popular Google search about the Bible is, “What does the Bible say about cremation?”

The short answer to that: Nothing.

When God decides not to give us a rule, this is because, either way, there is no harm done and we should not be in the business of making rules to govern non-issues.

The bottom line on cremation seems to be, what we do to deal with the remains of our lives is only a temporary solution.

The Bible teaches a future, general resurrection of the dead. It’s called general, because all the dead will be raised to life again. So, whatever we do with a dead body in the here-and-now, that’s a temporary thing.

Now, no one is ever honorably cremated in Scripture, and the burning of a dead body was often a public way of signaling the extreme displeasure of either God or the kings. For instance, a king tried to burn Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, quite unsuccessfully.

A character named Achan, along with his family, committed idolatry as soon as Israel entered Canaan. They were stoned to death and then their bodies were burned. The burning had the effect of scattering them to the wind, literally, so that they would have no place in the Promised Land. Burial had the opposite effect. It made sure you stayed in the land of your inheritance until Judgment Day.

In the millennia since then, millions of believers have had their bodies burned, after cruel tyrants murdered them in various, innovative ways. Or the burning was how they were slain. Either way, the Gospel hope in that situation is that God is fully capable of raising them from the dead on the last day, regardless of how their physical remains have been scattered or lost. Science suggests that a physical copy of your body could be produced from a single cell, by cloning. I bet God can do better than that.

Multitudes of Christians were devoured by lions in the Roman arenas. Their only burial was in the stomachs of the beasts. God’s intention to grant his people new life for eternity will not be foiled by any of this.

So, the issue of what happens to your body after you die is ultimately a non-issue. Again, God made no rule or law about it. What we see in the Bible about burial are human customs in action. They may be well-intentioned and even honorable customs, but they have no power to bind the conscience or make demands of you.

I, for one, will not counsel a grieving family that they must compound their loss of a loved one by now destroying their finances to pay for a burial because of “custom.” Cremation with a Christian service or memorial is just fine.

You came from dust. You will return there. The method or mode of your return, or the various intentions of those who dispose of your remains will not affect this outcome.

We ought to be far more concerned with this: “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

Gordan Runyan is pastor of Tucumcari’s Immanuel Baptist Church and author of “Radical Moses: The Amazing Civil Freedom Built into Ancient Israel.” Contact him at:

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