The unforgivable sin

Published 7:36 pm Thursday, November 2, 2023

I have met a few people who actually believed that suicide was the unforgivable sin and that it would automatically send anyone to hell. Their reasoning was that, in the case of suicide, the individual would not have time to pray for forgiveness. This is a very heretical notion and not in the least true.

If an unbeliever commits suicide, his soul certainly does proceed to hell. But it is because he has committed the one unforgivable sin of unbelief in God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. However, if any believer dies for any reason, including suicide, his soul proceeds immediately to heaven. Suicide is a sin, but every single sin any believer has ever committed has been washed away by the blood of Christ as He suffered and bled on the cross of Calvary. This washing happened the very moment anyone trusts his soul to Christ. That one act of faith in Christ guaranteed heaven for him. This is because all believers are children of God forever and cannot lose their salvation. That is why we say, “Once saved, always saved.”

I love what H. G. Spafford said in his wonderful hymn, It Is Well With My Soul. We sing, “My sin—oh the bliss of this glorious tho’t: my sin not in part, but the whole is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul.”

The fact that we bear no sin any longer is quite wonderful news because God’s just nature requires that every sin be paid for. But no believer in Christ pays for any of his sins; Christ has paid for them all for us by His blood on the cross of Calvary. What love that demonstrates! What a Savior we have! Praise Him forever.

As a minister of the Gospel of Christ, I grieve to think that most people, even in our own country, will die without Christ. They will die in their sins and pay for each one in hell forever. So I try to do my Christian duty and pray for unbelievers. I also inquire of them about the spiritual state of their souls. I witness for Christ to any who will listen.

Pastor Adrian Rogers once said in a sermon that unbelief was the sin of all sins, the ultimate sin, the one unforgivable sin. How could he make this claim? Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Our enemy, the devil, has been very successful at persuading most people that Christianity is a bunch of myths. In that, Satan has most people right where he wants them, on the broad road to hell. But the Bible informs us, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is (exists), and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).

Most people don’t like to think about dying, so they put it out of their minds. But the scary thing is that they have only this little time on earth to trust Christ and qualify for heaven. and more scary still is the fact that they have no idea when they will die and thus lose all opportunity forever to be saved.