Is suicide a sin?

What does the Bible have to say about suicide? Very little! The word ‘suicide’ was only coined in 1651 by Walter Charlton.

The act of suicide is mentioned five or perhaps six times in the Bible:

• Abimelech died at the hand of his armour bearer rather than suffer the indignity of dying at the hand of a woman. The woman had thrown a millstone down on his head and fractured his skull, so in his case suicide was hastening an inevitable death (Judges 9.54).
• Saul threw himself on his own sword after being defeated at the hands of the Philistines. He had been severely wounded and if he had not killed himself, then almost certainly the Philistines would have done so, and probably would not have been too nice about the killing either (1 Samuel 31.4).
• Ahithopel hanged himself after Absalom had rejected his advice, but the contexts suggests that, if he had not hanged himself, then David would have killed him (2 Samuel 17.23).
• King Zimri set his palace alight and died in the flames, but this was only after the city had fallen and with the forces of Omri after his blood (1 Kings 16.18).
• Sometimes Samson’s death is described as suicide (Judges 16.28-30) but it was a suicide which involved the killing of others. His death was not dissimilar to today’s suicide-bombers. It does not fall into the normal category of suicide.
• The suicide which has the most modern feel is the only suicide found in the New Testament, namely the death of Judas. Realising the enormity of what he had done in betraying Jesus, Judas hanged himself (Matthew 27.5).

Although the Bible has very little to say about suicide, it does have something to say about the sacredness of human life.

• The key text is found in Genesis 1.26: “Then God said, ‘And now we will make human beings, they will be like us and resemble us. They will have power over the fish, the birds, and all the animals.” There we discover that, although created on the same day as the animals, human beings are more than naked apes. Fish may be caught, birds may be trapped, animals may be hunted, but human beings, made “in the image of God” may not be killed willy-nilly.
• Just as God alone gives life, so God alone ends life. This understanding of life is found when all his children had died. “The Lord gave and now has taken away. May his name be praised” (Job 1.21). Even in his grief Job acknowledged the sovereignty of the Lord.
• The Psalmist wrote: “The earth is the Lord’s and al that is in it” (Psalm 24.1). The implication is that we have no rights over our lives. Our lives belong to God, and it is up to him when our lives come to an end.

A Christian view of suicide:

• Suicide is always wrong. Life comes to us as a gift from God. We are not free to return the gift. The ending of life is God’s prerogative. For a person to end his or her life is to take the place of God. Suicide, whatever the circumstances, can never be justified. True there may be ‘mitigating circumstances’ when, for instance, an abused wife kills her husband, but this still does not justify the taking of life.
• Suicide does not end suffering, rather it creates yet more suffering. As one relative put it: “He didn’t just take his own life; he took part of ours too”. Or as another said: “Suicide doesn’t end pain. It only lays it on the broken shoulders of the survivors”.
• Suicide is not an unforgivable sin. Few, if any, when they commit suicide, are seeking to defy God. Rather than shaking their fists in God’s face, many are looking into their own faces and hating what they see.
• Suicide cannot debar anyone from God’s heaven. Paul’s words in Romans 8.38,39 remind us that: “I am convinced that neither death nor life… nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord”. Christians whose loved ones have committed suicide should not worry about their eternal fate. Jesus surely will welcome home such a loved one with special warmth and tenderness.
• Suicide is not the answer to life’s problems – the grace of God is. Such is the vulnerability of our minds and our bodies that even the strongest of us can become victims of suicidal despair. God has not promised a trouble-free life, but he has promised that he will not test us further than we are able to bear it (1 Corinthians 10.13).

No situation, however, desperate it may appear to a personal contemplating suicide, is hopeless. For God is with us, and wherever God is, there is hope.