Does Suicide cause a person to go to hell?

One of the most commonly asked questions concerns the matter of a person taking his own life.  Will that person automatically go to hell?  Is it possible for a BORN-AGAIN Christian to commit suicide?  Will that Christian still go to heaven?   I believe a basic understanding of Salvation is necessary before one can answer this question.  First of all, suicide is a terrible thing and it is never the right thing to do no matter what the circumstances.  One of the 10 commandments is that we should not commit murder, and certainly suicide is taking a human life, our own!  The devil tries to get a person to believe that ending our life would be better than to remain living, but that is another one of the devil’s lies!  Remember, He is the ‘father of lies’ (John 8:44)  Taking our life also leaves others with the pain they don’t deserve to bear.  The devil wants us to think all hope is gone, but the truth is, Jesus Christ can give hope in even the darkest situation and He can turn things around in the darkest looking trial of our life!  Now, will such a person go to heaven or hell?  It depends upon whether that person ever trusted Christ as Savior during their lifetime!   Once a person trusts Christ as Savior, we receive ETERNAL LIFE at that moment, and it lasts forever.  All of our sins are paid for and forgiven at that moment…past-present-and future…even sins we haven’t committed yet!   One says, how can Jesus’ death pay for sins I haven’t even committed yet?  My Friend, do you realize that when Jesus Died at Calvary you weren’t even born yet and ALL of your sins were future and hadn’t been committed yet!  So you see, salvation is a FREE GIFT and we can do nothing to get salvation, and nothing we can do can cause us to lose it! Remember we received ETERNAL LIFE when we trusted Christ and that lasts forever and Jesus promises we will never perish in John 10:28 and He says in John 6:37 that He will never cast us out for any cause!  That would certainly include suicide, murder, or any other sin!  Now there will be consequences.  That believer will have to answer to the Lord at the Bema Judgment for such an act of sin and there will be loss of reward for sure. Someone asks how it is possible that a born-again Christian take his own life?  I believe that there are times when even the choicest saints of God can become so discouraged that we honestly think we would be better off to not live anymore.  The Bible is full of such examples of great men of God who really got discouraged to the point of despair and wished for their own death.  (See 1 Kings 19:4)  But these individuals did not take matters into their own hands and end their life.  We see that in most cases God came through and rescued them.  The lesson we can learn here is obvious.  When we despair, we must look to God for help and deliverance through the difficult time and trial.  Suicide is never the right answer.  It is the devil’s lie to believe this is the right thing to do!   The apostle Paul certainly went through rough times, as he spoke of his hardships in 2 Corinthians 1:8 and even declares that there were times of suffering and persecution so intense that he and his co-workers despaired even of life!  What did Paul do?  Take the ‘easy’ way out and kill himself?  NO!  He trusted the Lord to help him and see him through his difficult time.  (1 Corinthians 1:9,10).  I think we can see from this it is almost normal for each of us at some point in our life to get to the point where we are so low we feel that possibly ending our life would be better, especially when the devil is placing us through one of his fiery trials that 1 Peter 4:12 tells us about!  I believe also that in many, if not all cases, there could be mental problems as well.  The devil can really work on a person’s mind if we let him.  If you are feeling thoughts of extreme despair, discouragement, and depression, talk to someone right away.  Talk to your pastor or a trusted Christian friend.  See a medical doctor to see if you need medication to restore chemicals in the brain that are depleted in many clinically depressed people.  Suicide is never the answer, but it does NOT CAUSE SOMEONE TO GO TO HELL!!  It is not the ‘UNPARDONABLE SIN’.

The only sin God cannot forgive is for you and I to go through our life and reject Jesus Christ and never trust Him as Saviour!