If you affirm the word of God, it means that you will affirm the justice of God. It means accepting, as painful as it is, that if your loved one rejected Christ as their Savior, there are eternal consequences for that rejection. As we just said above, all who face God having rejected Jesus face him without the hope of Jesus. The wages of sin is death – “eternal punishment,” as Jesus himself describes it. That is God’s justice.

A couple of months ago, I passed the three year anniversary of my brother Jake’s death. When his vehicle veered off the road into a ditch, he left behind a wife, three kids, two parents, and me. Jake was my little brother and only sibling. Every death has its own weight, but I think it’s fair to say there is something unique about the unexpected, tragic death of a loved one. There is no preparation for it. You don’t walk down a gradual slope, unsure of exactly when it will end but knowing it’s coming soon. It’s more like falling off a cliff. You simply get the phone call and all of the air gets sucked out of the room. You experience a kind of unraveling you didn’t know was possible.

Providentially, in January of 2023, a couple of months before Jake died, the Lord led me to get serious about reading. So in April, as my heart struggled to hang on amidst the 9.5 Richter scale earthquake that is those first months of loss, I decided to read a number of books on grieving. The one that served me the most was Tim Challies’ Seasons of Sorrow. In that book, Challies shares about the sudden, unexpected, and tragic death of his son, Nick. Tim’s wrestlings with the pain of grief and his learning to uphold God’s providence and goodness in the midst of something so hard was a balm to my soul. I am profoundly grateful for that book.

“Somehow it still wouldn’t shock me if my phone rang and I saw his name on the display and heard his voice. I’m hovering in this place between belief and disbelief, between certainty and doubt. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to feel.” 

Seasons of Sorrow – pg. 13

Yet as I read it, I experienced a dissonance between the grief Tim was processing and my own. In Seasons of Sorrow, Tim finds comfort in the reality that he will see his son again when they are both in the presence of Christ. He has no questions or doubts about this. That confidence is a gift I am glad the Lord gave to Tim and his family. If you have family members walking faithfully with the Lord and with the church – especially your immediate family of children, parents, or siblings – God has showered you with a grace I would beg you not to take for granted. When they die (and they will), you will grieve, but not as those who have no hope (1 Thess. 4:13).

In the days and weeks following Jake’s death, I wondered if I could rightly and responsibly hold onto that 1 Thessalonians 4:13 hope. Because my brother’s faith was tragically ambiguous.

The Valleys and Mountains, the Mountains and Valleys

In high school, my brother overdosed and I visited him in the ER for the first time. It would be the first of numerous times his addiction nearly claimed his life. The subsequent decade and a half were an emotional roller coaster for my family and those who loved him. If you’ve known a substance addict, you understand what this is like. You want to help your loved one slay that wicked, evil, demonic dragon of addiction, but you do not know how. Jake spent much of his adult life in and out of recovery programs, hospitals, and the church.

I describe our life with Jake as an emotional roller coaster because it was not merely a long march through the valley of the shadow of death. We ascended mountains with him, too. Shortly after high school, Jake became highly involved in a local church that loved him, served him, and did not see him as defined by his addiction. They supported him in ways that I, an hour away on a college campus, could not. Jake embraced the gospel and gave his life to Christ. When his church had a baptism, he asked me to baptize him along with one of his pastors. That was one of the most beautiful moments in my life. I have many other fond memories of this season: Jake directing a Christmas play with the children’s ministry of his church; getting his first good job; singing All Glory Be to Christ at his wedding; the announcement of him and his wife’s first baby on the way. The corner felt turned. We knew Jake still faced temptation, but it felt like something new was happening. The light at the end of the tunnel ceased to be a pinprick. Fullness of life in Jake’s story felt possible for the first time in a long time.

The mountaintop, however, descended back into the valley. For whatever reason, Jake re-opened the door to his addiction and let it back in. Over the course of several years it wreaked untold havoc on his life, his marriage, his children, and his relationship with the living God. He pulled away from the church and from Christ. The Bible he once claimed to be God’s word he claimed for a season to be a lie. When he and I would get together, he felt in many ways like a different person. Jake was gone and replaced by an imposter. Who was this man? What happened to my brother who loved Jesus and walked by faith?

Yet in the year before Jake died, there were once again signs of a shift in him. A good shift. While he was in a rehab facility in Milwaukee, he decided to attend a gospel-preaching church with a couple other guys in his program. I was in the process of moving down to Kenosha just south of him, so on one of my drives he and I got coffee. When I asked him about where he was at spiritually, he gave me an answer I didn’t know what to do with. He claimed to, again, believe in Jesus, but he questioned the authority of the Bible on some significant points. I left that conversation deeply confused about whether I should be encouraged or concerned.

Jake continued to struggle with substances, but he also seemed to be moving increasingly towards the Lord. He got reconnected with some good people at his old church. He expressed a desire for the two of us to spend more time together. He seemed gentler and more genuine. Yet it was hard for me to trust that any of the change I saw was real. During a visit for one of my kids’ birthdays, Jake told me that he felt a burden to lead his family spiritually but was unsure of how to do that amidst all of the turmoil he’d caused. He wanted my advice. I don’t remember what I told him, but I don’t think it was helpful. At that point, I was emotionally exhausted from years of riding the emotional rollercoaster with Jake. I was stuck in a heart posture of frustration towards my brother. So I gave him a couple sentences of half-hearted wisdom. I’m sure he could tell I wasn’t taking him seriously. We changed the subject and moved on to more safe, surface level conversation.

That was the last time I saw him.

Ambiguous Faith

I recount all of that history to say that when my sister-in-law called and told me that my brother was dead, I did not, amidst the sorrow, immediately hold in my heart the comforting thought of I know he’s with the Lord. Nor was I assaulted with the certainty that my brother was eternally separated from the Lord. I honestly did not know the state of my brother’s soul. I knew where I hoped he was. I knew Jake was aware of the gospel. I knew he had tasted of God’s goodness. I knew he had many believers in his life who had loved him and pointed him to Christ. And I knew something had been happening in his heart shortly before he died that had drawn him back into some of the Christian community he’d walked away from for a couple of years. But I could not help but have doubts.

If you’ve lost a loved one whose faith was unclear, no two stories are the same. Every thread in the tapestry is unique. The things I can point to in my brother’s life as reasons to hope or question will be different than yours. But even so, I want to share three affirmations that have helped me over the past three years in processing Jake’s death and thinking about his ambiguous faith:

Affirm the word of God, affirm the justice of God, affirm the hope of God.

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