If a Christian commits suicide...

Joh 5:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, HATH everlasting life, and SHALL NOT come into condemnation; but IS passed from death unto life.

That word believeth is an action word. As I posted before , Faith without works is dead.

The devils also believe in the Lord, but are not saved.

 

Standy, are there any other unforgiveable sins besides jumping out of a burning building and taking a sip of Mogen-Davis?

 

First off my nickname is not Standy. It is standingfirminChrist. I would appreciate it if you did not call me Standy.

Second, there is only one unforgiveable sin, that is blasphemy of the Holy Ghost. It will not be forgiven in this world, neither in the world to come.

As far as suicide, if one truly is a christian, that one will not listen to the devil tempting him or her with suicide. Jesus said the sheep follow the shepherd, and a stranger they will not hear. A true christian will not intentionally take his or her own life. That person trusts the Lord to carry him or her through the hard trials.

 

Then if you jump out of a tall building and ask forgiveness on the way down, are you forgiven?

 

As a general rule most people that are truly are saved, will not commit suicide, but it still can happen. Not all Christians trust the Lord to carry him or her through the hard times, you must remember we still have a sin nature(the flesh) that causes us to sin, there is a lot of "babes in Christ" who do not have the spiritual maturity to "go and sin no more".

I think you mean well by pointing out somethings, like "go and sin no more", verses about murder, etc.
But you seem to be trying to tie up different doctrines on salvation, fellowship, discipline, spiritual maturity, all together. Some you can, but not all of them you can, which makes it look like salvation is plus somekind of work (in the form of fellowship, or a person's walk with the Lord).

 

We are saved by grace, through faith plus nothing!

 

Has anyone posting here ever personally known anyone who committed suicide?

I'm asking, because I don't feel like reading back through 12 pages on this thread.

 

Yes.

A young neighbor when I was growing up, whom I had helped study for her bas mitzvah, committed suicide at nineteen.

A man a few doors up, about ten years later, who had bouts of severe depression despite the fact that he was a Christian. It was evidently, from what we got of medical reports, due at least in part to an inherited condition which produced a chemical overload in his system somewhere. His father and an uncle had also committed suicide at the same age.

I know a couple of people here who will be more than gleeful about condemning them to hell. There is no way I could do that -- I knew them and knew their characters. I don't know why Janet committed suicide but that was during the sixties and someone may have given her some experimental drug for fun? That happened with another girlfriend of mine who got LSD slipped into a GLASS OF PUNCH at a birthday party because she was so shy they wanted to see what would happen to her. It destroyed her life and she spent the next ten or fifteen years in and out of mental institutions with hallucinations.


I also worked in a hospital as an aid to an occupational therapist in my early twenties while I was in school. I saw too much there to make any blithe judgments on my own foreverafter that.

During my years of teaching, most of them were in a strongly Mormon area of California. I dealt with a number of Morman teenagers. The suicide rate among the young men was high -- usually a couple a year -- simply because they could not be the perfect people their church and families were training them -- and expected them -- to be. These young men who were trying so desperately to be all they were expected to be...and failing. They were deceived. If Eve was deceived when she ate the fruit first and sin did not come into the human race through her, but through Adam, then what does that say about God's view of people who are deceived? He does not seem to hold it against them.

I do know this. Jesus died for all sins. They are ALL atoned for. There is no way we even KNOW all the sins we commit in order to repent and apologize for them! So suicide in and of itself is not going to send someone to hell. It may strip them of rewards and they may never hear 'Well done, good and faithful servant', but suicide is not what determines a person's eternal destiny.

 

Even you should know that this is a faulty interpretation, as is often the case with the KJV. The last phrase, "who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" is not in the original. Many false doctrines are presented by those who use only this antiquated version of the Bible.

BTW, what about :

Matt 12:31-32
31 And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.
32 Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
(NIV)

 

LadyEagle, I have had relatives and friends both to commit suicide.

I would dearly love to see them in heaven, but know that they will not be there. Some would say I take glee in saying that my relatives and friends who committed suicide are in hell. That is far from the truth. It saddens me to no end to know they could have chosen to fully trust the Lord Jesus, yes, even some who grew up in church, but did not trust Him to carry them through the dark valleys of life.

 

Suicide is a sin for sure. But it does NOT condemn one to hell. A believer who takes his/her life in a moment of despondence will not go to hell because of this.

I would like to think that a believer, no matter how bad things are, would be able to find enough strength in faith to make it through. But we are only human. And because we are human we still sin.

 

Funny, I look back through my many translations and it is the newer versions who leave parts out and say some ancient manuscripts omit this.

but going back further than these new watered down versions, I see translations even before the KJV1611 that add the 'who walk not after the flesh.

The Spirit bears witness with my spirit that the KJV is right, for if one is not walking after the flesh but after the Spirit, there is no condemnation.

One cannot walk in the fleshly lusts and desires and say they are a christian. Jesus said, 'Sell all that thou hast, take up thy cross, and follow me' We cannot hold onto the fleshly nature and expect to please God.

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man [be] in Christ, [he is] a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

 

If your relatives are in hell it is because they were not a child of God and had never been a child of God, not because they committed suicide. God does not allow His children to go to hell!

You are teaching a salvation by works not by Grace. The only nonsense that I have heard similar to yours is from "freewill baptists". Are you one?

 

My point is, one can make a profession of faith, stay in church all their life, sing the songs, walk the walk, talk the talk, and anything else associated with being a christian, and still not be saved.

Jesus wants committment, not just to the things that I mentioned in the paragraph above, but He also want full trust in Him. Those who commit suicide do not place their trust fully in Christ. If they had placed full trust in Christ, they would not kill themselves in despair.

2 Corinthians 11:23 Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I [am] more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft.
2 Corinthians 11:24 Of the Jews five times received I forty [stripes] save one.
2 Corinthians 11:25 Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep;
2 Corinthians 11:26 [In] journeyings often, [in] perils of waters, [in] perils of robbers, [in] perils by [mine own] countrymen, [in] perils by the heathen, [in] perils in the city, [in] perils in the wilderness, [in] perils in the sea, [in] perils among false brethren;
2 Corinthians 11:27 In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.
2 Corinthians 11:28 Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.
2 Corinthians 11:29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not?
2 Corinthians 11:30 If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities.
2 Corinthians 11:31 The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not.

2 Corinthians 4:8 [We are] troubled on every side, yet not distressed; [we are] perplexed, but not in despair;
2 Corinthians 4:9 Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;
2 Corinthians 4:10 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.

2 Corinthians 12:7 And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.
2 Corinthians 12:8 For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.
2 Corinthians 12:9 And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

 

Originally posted by standingfirminchrist:

"My point is, one can make a profession of faith, stay in church all their life, sing the songs, walk the walk, talk the talk, and anything else associated with being a christian, and still not be saved.

Jesus wants committment, not just to the things that I mentioned in the paragraph above, but He also want full trust in Him. Those who commit suicide do not place their trust fully in Christ. If they had placed full trust in Christ, they would not kill themselves in despair"

standingfirm -
I will agree with you that Jesus wants our commitment and our full trust in Him. But I am not following your logic on the suicide issue here. If I as a Christian sit in my house worrying about something, thereby sinning and not placing my full trust in Christ, and I walk outside and get hit by a car and killed, then where do I spend eternity? If I as a Christian find myself in a desperate situation and stumble and steal something, not placing full trust in God to provide for my needs, and die, then where do I spend eternity? I could give more examples of ways, even very small ones, where we daily sin by not placing our full trust in Christ, but the only difference I can see between them and suicide is that suicide does not allow time for repentance, and damning a Christian saved by grace to hell for this gets dangerously close to Roman Catholic theology, imo.

 

Roman Catholics do not teach damnation to hell for eternity for suicide. They teach one can be prayed out of purgatory, a false doctrine.

 

Standingfirm-
Without researching this, for the moment, I can not tell you where Catholics stand in their written Catechism today, or even in the past, for that matter, but I was a Catholic for 21 years, and I can tell you that what I and many others were taught in the Catholic church, be it by catechism or tradition, was that suicide was a mortal sin and would send the person committing that sin directly to hell since they had no chance to be absolved.
Aside from the Catholic issue, could you more fully explain your logic on the suicide issue in regards to my last post?

 

"...this gets dangerously close to Roman Catholic theology, imo."

That's what I have been thinking about 'standingfirmforchrist' and his promulgations. I think there is no question the Roman church invented their doctrine of suicide meaning automatic hell for eternity because too many miserable peasants might consider it and they wouldn't be there to serve the nobility and clergy. In much the same way protestant and evangelical ministers teach something all too similar, thinking "There goes collection money," and "There goes my reputation as one who can 'guide' these dumb sheep through the dark times."

 

Jesus wants committment, not just to the things that I mentioned in the paragraph above, but He also want full trust in Him. Those who commit suicide do not place their trust fully in Christ. If they had placed full trust in Christ, they would not kill themselves in despair.

2 Corinthians 11:23 Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I [am] more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft.
2 Corinthians 11:24 Of the Jews five times received I forty [stripes] save one.
2 Corinthians 11:25 Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep;
2 Corinthians 11:26 [In] journeyings often, [in] perils of waters, [in] perils of robbers, [in] perils by [mine own] countrymen, [in] perils by the heathen, [in] perils in the city, [in] perils in the wilderness, [in] perils in the sea, [in] perils among false brethren;
2 Corinthians 11:27 In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.
2 Corinthians 11:28 Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.
2 Corinthians 11:29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not?
2 Corinthians 11:30 If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities.
2 Corinthians 11:31 The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not.

2 Corinthians 4:8 [We are] troubled on every side, yet not distressed; [we are] perplexed, but not in despair;
2 Corinthians 4:9 Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;
2 Corinthians 4:10 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.

2 Corinthians 12:7 And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.
2 Corinthians 12:8 For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.
2 Corinthians 12:9 And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

I don't see Paul attempting suicide anywhere here. Surely all he went through would have justified suicide if it were true that christians can commit suicide and end up in heaven.

John wrote in Revelation that all murderers will find their place in the lake of fire.

God knows the heart. The psalmist said, If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.

Solomon wrote, He that turneth his ear from the law, even his prayer shall be an abomination.

Suicide is murder, and God's Word says Thou shalt not kill.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that God would not allow more put on us than we could bear. But would make a way of escape. Suicide is not a way of escape. Suicide is not of God.

 

Scripture says "one sin", you're guilty of all,

"conversely", if you're saved, you can't be guilty of "one sin".

How many times will Jesus have to die in order to "pay the wages" of "ALL" our sins to "save us" from being guilty of even "ONE SIN"??

The fact is that GOD NEVER FORGIVES SIN, the "LAW" requires a "DEATH", even for "one sin", no shed blood, no remission.

Folks say, "I repented and God forgave me", but where was the "shed blood" (death) to pay the wages of that sin???

OT saints made sacrifices and their sins were "forgiven", but the wages of those sins (death) wasn't paid until Jesus died.

Only when the requirements of the law is "Fulfilled", (death for sin) is the "SIN", TAKEN AWAY.

The "wages" of those sins we commit "AFTER" being saved have already "paid", else Jesus would have to come back and die each time we sin, even for "one sin".

Don't make the mistake of believing "Forgiveness" equals "taken away", only a death takes sin away, that's the "LAW".