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SUICIDE
There is great
misunderstanding about the subject of suicide. There are extreme
interpretations ranging from 1) Considering suicide as an unpardonable sin to
2) Considering suicide as an acceptable means of assisting a person to kill
themselves. The Scripture, however, does not teach either one of these
interpretations.
Two primary reasons suicide
is considered by some to be an unpardonable sin:
1)
The Ten Commandments states in Exodus 20:13: “Thou shalt not
kill (Heb=do no murder).”
2)
Judas’ account of hanging himself in Matthew 26:19-25 47-50,
27:3-5; Mark 14:16-21, 43-45; Luke 22:21-23, 47-48; John
18:2-9.
Concerning the Ten
Commandments: The Hebrew word for “kill” is “do no murder” and is a command by
God to man to protect men from doing harm to one another by murdering. It
does not in any way minimize the importance of this commandment to not believe
that it is an “unpardonable sin.” For it is in fact a sin to murder as the
Scripture states but not an unpardonable sin. Also, there is a significant
difference in “killing” and “doing no murder.” For example, someone could
accidentally kill someone, as an act of self-defense kill someone or as an act
of war kill someone without it being considered “doing murder.”
If killing someone were an
unpardonable sin then Moses who slew the Egyptian and David who killed Uriah
would have committed an “unpardonable sin” and we know from Scripture that
this is not the case.
Concerning Judas’ hanging
himself (committing suicide): It was not suicide that sent Judas to Hell but
rather his own choice of rejection and betrayal of Jesus without repentance,
which was prophesied as being known by the foreknowledge of God.
We often hear that a person
who commits suicide goes to hell because they don’t have time to repent after
they have killed themselves. If this were true then would not all of us who
die by whatever cause of death, go to hell because we would not have time to
repent of any sins we had committed just prior to dying whether it be suicide,
lying, adulterous thoughts, etc.?
When Jesus died for our sins
as believers, all of our sins were future sins for we had not yet been born at
the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. Thus when he forgave our sins on the cross,
His blood covered us and the Father now sees us through His sinless Son. In
I John 1:9, it says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” In the
Greek, the word confess means to “say the same thing that God says about sin:
1) It is a sin. 2) He died for the sin. 3) He wash us of the sin with His
blood. 4) He forgave the sin. 5) He removed and took away the sin 6) and He
remembers the sin no more.
Statistically, most if not
all suicide cases are the result of some form of mental depression caused by
some crisis event or experience in life that seems to be unsolvable or by some
prescribed or non-prescribed medications.
Since no one but God knows
the true heart condition of a person who commits suicide, they must be
entrusted to His grace, mercy and perfect judgment.
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