The Bible and Suicide (Part 4): Important Foundations for a Conversation about Suicide

As we look at each of these foundations, you could say each foundation counters a lie that one contemplating suicide or has committed suicide believed. Lies must be confronted when we get into a pattern of sin. Patterns of sin mean we have believed a lie. So, again, each of these foundations counter a Satanic lie.

FOUNDATION #1 – Man is made in the image of God.  Listen to God’s description of man’s uniqueness. “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image,in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:26-27) We are like God in personhood. We are like God in the communicable attributes (attributes that belong to God alone – omnipotent, perfectly righteous, eternal, etc.). We are like God in reasoning ability and consciousness. We are like God in authority and dominion. While we aren’t sovereign like God, He does designate us to rule over the earth.

All humanity is God’s handiwork. Suicide is marring of that handiwork. It takes what God has made valuable and destroys that divine achievement. It is God who has the right and authority to give AND take life (Deut 32:39; Ezek 18:4).

FOUNDATION #2 – Our bodies are not our own. Paul echoes this in I Corinthians 6:19-20. The body is a temple for worship – not for self-murder. Jesus paid too much on the cross for someone to take what it not theirs and then remove it from this world by suicide. God is sovereign over our bodies; suicide is not meant to be granted that domain.

FOUNDATION #3 – God’s Word answers life’s difficult questions. Why wouldn’t God want to have a voice in the midst of pain and suffering? The psalmist says God’s word is “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps 119:105). God’s Word is supposed to lead us away from dark and despair and to hope (Ps 121:1-2).

FOUNDATION #4 – A relationship with God generates hope. Hope is a by-product of the Christian’s relationship with his Creator. Hope is a position or state of being, but it’s also an action. The psalmist says that we can mask our hope with (Ps 42:11). The only source of our hope is the protecting nature and saving work of God (Ps 62:5-8). Hope for deliverance and hope for refining from trials is what makes trials endurable (Rom 5:2-5). God will never leave us – no matter how dark it gets. Even as the Christian who is contemplating their own death is about to, God is still there.

FOUNDATION #5 – Murder issin. The 6^th Commandment forbids murder (Exod 20:13). And suicide is self-murder, which makes it sin. Suicide is the intentional murder of one’s physical body. It is self-murder.

The Center for Diseases Control and Prevention defines suicide this way: “death from injury, poisoning or suffocation where there is evidence (either explicit or implicit) that the injury WAS SELF-INFLICTED AND THAT THE DECEDENT INTENDED TO KILL HIMSELF OR HERSELF.” Even this secular organization says suicide is a choice. And since suicide is a choice and murder is a sin, suicide is a sinful choice.

FOUNDATION #6 – God has given us the strength and spiritual resources for every situation. There is not a situation on earth or a sinister temptation that Satan can bring that God has not enabled us to endure (I Cor 10:13). Consider this sweet promise from Jeremiah 32:17 – “‘Ah, Lord God! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.” The person who is contemplating suicide or has committed suicide has usually determined there is no other way out of their pain or suffering. And I am here to tell you that God and His Word say otherwise.

FOUNDATION #7 – Jesus paid the penalty for sin and can forgive all sins. The prophet Isaiah – tells us that “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins” (Isa 43:25). When God says He will not remember our sins anymore, He is not saying He will lay aside His omniscience, because God cannot act against His character. It means that when He forgives, He will not hold it against us (e.g., upcoming series on conflict resolution) Even the suicidal, who contemplate taking their life who can be forgiven of their denial of any reason to hope, any blaming of God for their sadness, etc. And if a Christian were to commit suicide, the cross of Christ has made provision for that sin. The sin which keeps us from eternal life is NOT suicide; it is rejection of Christ as Lord.

So, how do we help the suicidal or those who have survived suicide? Check back for answers to those questions on Thursday.