Some topics hurt to discuss, often because we have so many emotions involved in the mix. In the case of suicide we may have been suicidal at one point in our lives or we may know someone close who we loved to committed suicide. It can then be hard for us to look at suicide objectively and see the conclusions on it that I will be drawing today.
I would like to show you why I hold the contriversial stance that most suicide victims can not be saved, that suicide was their final act of rebellion against Elohim.
Ephesians 2:8-9 says, For you have been delivered by grace through trusting, and even this is not your accomplishment but God’s gift. 9 You were not delivered by your own actions; therefore no one should boast. Showing us that salvation is purely based upon our Faith in the Messiah, Yeshua. Likewise then, we can not loose that salvation based upon our action either. One could then easily conclude from this verse and those like it that suicide doesn't change a persons stance on salvation and they would be entirely correct! It doesn't. But that isn't the end of the story here, while suicide does not change the redeemed or unredeemed state of the person it does, however, reflect the state that they are in.
We can see the role that works do play in verses like James 2:14, What good is it, my brothers, if someone claims to have faith but has no actions to prove it? Is such “faith” able to save him? Showing us that the fruit we produce shows our state of having faith or not, our actions are a result of our faith or our lack of faith. Thus we are either trying to follow the Holy Spirit in righteousness, away from sin, or we are following the world in sin; both are direct reflections on our state of redemption.
We are told in 1 Timothy 6 to fight the good fight, in Matthew 24 and James 1 that perseverance is important in achieving eternal life. We must then see that not only must we claim to be following Yeshua we must be activly doing so out of our faith in the Messiah, and persevere in that faith to the end of our days.
Now, I do not mean to say that if a person dies sinning they must not be saved! There are any number of sins that believers commit every day knowingly and unknowling. We all make mistakes and must continue to repent for them and strive to do better. But we also must notce in scripture that there is a difference in the weight of some sins to others.
1 John 5:17 shows us this, saying, All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death. Revelations 21:8 shows us what these sins are, But as for the cowardly, the untrustworthy, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those involved with the occult and with drugs, idol-worshippers, and all liars — their destiny is the lake burning with fire and sulfur, the second death.”
Let's look at how hard hitting that is. If these are the sins that lead to death, then these are the sins in which believers can not be actively taking a part in, or they are showing that they are not believers at all! Now, again I do not mean that we aren't believer if we slip and tell a "small" lie off the cuff, or if we have a moment of weakness and look at someone in lust. I mean that we can not actively be seeking to be okay in these sins. The sexual addict can not justify acting out and must be in active recovery and fighting for sobriety. The drug addict must be fighting for sobriety, not seeking the next hit or it is indeed an action of someone who is not seeking to follow the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit, it is the action of someone following the world.
Thus we must conclude that to self-murder, to commit suicide, is itself also the action of someone following the world and not the Ruach. Suicide is not something that happens on a whim, it is some one who is facing a very strong struggle. It comes from someone who has repeatedly thought on the action. Like an addict this person is weakening to their problem, not strengthing against it with the power of the Ruach HaKodesh. They are giving in to what the world is saying of their problem, that depression happens to everyone, that the pain will stop if they kill themselves, that then maybe someone will care about them. Not what Adonai says to them and their problem, that he gives us Joy, that this world is full of pain but following him will give us eternal life in a Paradise where there is no pain or suffering, that the Ultimate Being of the Universe cares for you and loves you and wants you to repent that you may be with Him forever.
Suicide is not a momentary lapse in judgement; it is built up to, it is pre-meditated. There are many moments prior in which the person should have been taking their thoughts captive, seeking to follow Elohim over the voices in their mind. Many moments which show that they were not following Adonai at all, but the world. This making their action then a sign of their lack of fath, not a stop to their salvation, the evidence that they weren't saved to begin with.
Now there is the catch .22, see many people who attempt suicide and live then realize that they don't want to die, and go on to get past their depression and on to better lives. This shows that in the moment of the at many do see that what they are doing is wrong and final. Ihave no doubt that in mny cases in which the act is slow to its end the person has a moment of clarity and perhaps even repentance. I am sure that some who have committed suicide have repented in their last moments and will be in the Kingdom of Elohim.
Yet there are also many ways to commit suicide in which this final moment simply can not be had at all. Ways in which the death is so instant the person ma not have even realized they'd committed the act. In such a case there is no availability for that moment of repentance and clairity. There is no availability for them to turn to Elohim.
Thus we must then conclude from the scripture that to commit suicide is purely an act of defiance to Elohim. Whatever earthly reason the person may express as their reason for desiing to commit the act is it is evidence of following the world and not Elohim. It is thus evidencee of their lack of faith in Elohim, certainly their total lack of saving faith as James calls it.
So while a few who commit the act may indeed reepent in their final moments and be saved the conclusion then is that for the majority, they simply can not be saved as the act itself shows that they do not have faith.
It is then not act which keeps them from redemption, but the lack of faith that the act shows.
