The clear implication is that some sins can be forgiven after death.
You have to really reach to come up with that conclusion...
The verse is not speaking of one man alive in one age and dead in another...That doesn't even make sense...
The verse is speaking of two men, or a million men in two different ages...The church age vs. the Tribulation for example...The rule applies to (live) people in this age and it also applies to the (live) people in the next age...
The clear implication is that some sins can be forgiven after death.
+ + +
You have to really reach to come up with that conclusion...
The verse is not speaking of one man alive in one age and dead in another...That doesn't even make sense...
+ + +
There are other converging passages:
For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble each mans work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any mans work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire (1 Cor. 3:11-15).Early Christians:32 Then the master called the servant in. You wicked servant, he said, I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you? 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. (Matthew 18:32-34)
I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny. (Luke 12:59)
Tertullian (Second century)We make yearly offerings (or sacrifices) for the dead, and for the feasts of the martyrs Describing the duty of a faithful widow to her deceased...
She prays for us soul, and begs repose for him and his company in the first resurrection, and offers (sacrifice) on the anniversary days of his death. For if she does not these things, she has, as much as lies in her, divorced him.
St. Clement of Alexandria: lived from 150 A.D. to about 215 A.D.
Mini-bio: Greek; theologian, head of the Catechetical School at Alexandria, Egypt
By punishment after death, men must expiate the least sin before they can enter Heaven.
St. Cyprian of Carthage who lived from 200 A.D. to 258 A.D.
Mini-bio: North African; bishop; biblical scholar, martyr
"It is one thing to hope for forgiveness, and another to enter into eternal glory; one thing to be cast into prison and not to go out from thence until the last farthing is paid, and another immediately to receive the reward of faith and virtue; one thing to be tortured for sins by long-lasting pains and purged by fire, and another to have already expiated sin [here below] by martyrdom."
"It is one thing to be cast into prison not to be released until the last farthing is paid, and another thing through the ardor of faith immediately to attain to the reward."