What If You Die Before Repenting?
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.
The question really is this: is our salvation conditional on our having conscientiously repented of every sin we have committed or even just the serious sins? Theologically, answering this question in the affirmative means we are now adding something to what Christ has done in his perfect life and death. 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. As Psalm 19:12 says, “Who can discern his errors?” And in Psalm 40:12, David confesses that his iniquities are more than the hairs of his head. We simply cannot remember every sin we commit and if we can’t do that, we can’t name the sin and repent of it properly.
No, praise God that our salvation is not conditional on repenting of every sin. The grace we have in our justification covers every sin. The forgiveness we have through the cross wipes away every sin, past, present and future. Christians can be confidently secure in their Father’s love from day to day. And when a believing loved one dies tragically in the midst of some sin, those left behind can rejoice that God’s grace is so expansive that the sin was already washed away with Christ’s blood at Golgotha.
To be clear, I’m not saying Christians shouldn’t repent daily of their sins. A true Christian feels the weight of sin and, led by Scripture, needs to bring it before their heavenly Father. We repent as children with their Father, within the context of a secure family relationship. However, we ought never to think that our salvation is conditional upon repentance, so that if you were to forget to confess a sin and ask your Father’s forgiveness, you would be eternally condemned.
Saying you would be lost in such a scenario is consistent with the theological system of Jacob Arminius, a system which undermined God’s grace. It would be along the lines of Roman Catholic theology too. In Roman Catholicism, suicide can be a mortal sin, which means that if you commit it, you could go straight to hell. The scenario of the man fighting with his wife would be a venial sin – dying without penance would mean more time in purgatory. Either way, where you end up is conditional. However, the Bible teaches, and Reformed theology affirms, that our salvation is always based on God’s abounding grace. Isn’t that comforting?
