My status before God partly depends how much I have repented.  However, the Bible teaches that my status before God depends entirely on what Christ has done in my place.  If I am in Christ by faith, “There is therefore now no condemnation…” (Rom.8:1). Practically, answering this question in the affirmative means no one can be saved.

Imagine a man who professes Christ with a genuine faith.  He isn’t a perfect man; like every Christian he struggles with sin.  One day he has a fight with his wife before leaving for work.  On his way out, he says some horrible sinful things to her.  The man drives away in his car still fuming angry.  As he drives through an intersection, he gets t-boned by someone running a red light.  The man dies instantly.  Can his wife and family have any assurance about his eternal destiny? 

Jacob Arminius didn’t think so.  Arminius is famous for questioning the doctrines of grace in the late 1500s and early 1600s.  His teaching – and that of his followers – led to the preparation of the Canons of Dort in 1618-19.  In one place, Arminius wrote this about the issue at hand:  “If David had died in the very moment in which he had sinned against Uriah by adultery and murder, he would have been condemned to death eternal.”  By way of analogy, Arminius would have not merely put a question mark behind our hypothetical situation above, he would have outrightly answered in the negative.  There is no assurance when someone dies without repentance from sin.

This has huge implications for the pastoral care of those who have lost a Christian loved one to suicide.  It has huge implications for mutual encouragement in those situations.  I speak as one with experience, having lost my mother to suicide in 2002.  My mother professed to be a Christian and yet she took her own life.  It was devastating.

My parents’ pastor was gentle and compassionate, reflecting Christ.  His words were few and wise.  I’ll always be thankful for his presence while we grieved.  But there were others not so kind.  I’ll never forget one person who expressed their sympathy because our family could have no comfort since my mother was in hell.  This person was a member of a solid confessionally Reformed church.

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