Did Jesus Teach Reincarnation?

“I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “Unless you are reborn, you can’t experience God’s kingdom.” – Jesus Christ (John 3:3 FBV)

In Buddhism, people are reborn into five realms. There is the earthly realm, the animal realm, the ghost realm, the hell realm, or the heavenly realm. Each transition is a rebirth. When you die, you are reborn into another bodily manifestation.

So Jesus makes perfect sense to a Buddhist. In order to go to heaven, you have to be reborn into a heavenly body. Even the Apostle Paul realized that our body “is sown a physical body; it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:44). That is, in order to go to heaven you have to have the right kind of body. Physical bodies don’t go to heaven, only spiritual bodies do. As Paul Said, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 15:50).

The problem is that even a heavenly existence is temporary. It is still part of an existence that is impermanent, defective, and without an independent entity. After a long time in heaven, people die and are born again into other realms. Nothing lasts in the conditioned world. Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Even heavenly existence. This is why, at the end of time, “When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).

Jesus taught that John the Baptist was “Elijah” reincarnated (Matthew 11:13-14; 17:10-13). This means that Jesus believed in reincarnation. And since Elijah was a prophet of God that live centuries ago, it seems clear that Elijah must have been in heaven before being reborn as John the Baptist.

It appears that reincarnation was a common belief during Jesus’ time. For when Jesus asked his disciples who people said he was, they answered, “Some say John the Baptist but others Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets” (Matthew 16:14). All of these men were dead, some a very long time ago. So they must have meant that they thought Jesus was the reincarnation of John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.

Jesus seemed to believe in reincarnation, but not all the church followed him in this. The Gnostics were the branch of Christianity that kept this belief alive. The proto-orthodox branch ended up rejecting reincarnation. Origen, an early church father, is our most famous Christian proponent of the idea of reincarnation. Origen stated, “The soul has neither beginning nor end. [They] come into this world strengthened by the victories or weakened by the defeats of their previous lives.”