Suicide
"What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's" (1Corinthians 6:19-20).
by Tom Stewart
Preface
To those who are morally able to choose, a True Christian will not commit suicide, because suicide is the sin of self-murder. "If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are" (1Corinthians 3:17). Jesus is presently in Heaven preparing a "place for you" (John 14:2). And, if Heaven is to be your future Home, then you must "continue in the Grace of God" (Acts 13:43) and "hope to the end for the Grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1Peter 1:13). For, if we do not avail ourselves of God's "Grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16), then we will most assuredly not "follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the LORD" (12:14).
Look at it from God's point of view. He has already made ample provision for every conceivable circumstance of your spiritual and physical life. "His Divine Power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and Godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue" (2Peter 1:3). To ultimately run out of hope and commit suicide is unpardonable, because it is supreme defiance and "blasphemy against the Holy Ghost" (Matthew 12:31), and "hath never forgiveness" (Mark 3:29). The sin of suicide will never take you to the Heaven where Jesus is. "Then said Jesus again unto them, I go My way, and ye shall seek Me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come" (John 8:21).
What Is Suicide?
The term suicide -- which is generally defined as the "act or an instance of intentionally killing oneself"-- is not specifically used in the Scriptures; however, the injunction against killing embodied in the Ten Commandments, i.e., "Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13), dealing with the unlawful homicide of another human being, would also forbid the murder of self. The very fact that the Almighty is the Giver Of All Life and "formeth the spirit of man within him" (Zechariah 12:1), tells us that it is not within our right to arbitrarily terminate our own life, against His permission. "Because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets: Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the Earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God Who gave it" (Ecclesiastes 12:5-7).
To understand suicide to be sin against God and against self, is in keeping with the LORD Jesus Christ's statement concerning the Spirit of the Moral Law, where "love is the fulfilling of the Law" (Romans 13:10). "37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the First and Great Commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (Matthew 22:37-39). God requires, both in His Law and Gospel, that all moral agents choose the highest good of God, and of our being in general, for its own sake, as our ultimate purpose in life, i.e., a supreme love for God and an equal love of our neighbour as we would love ourselves. "For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the LORD the Church" (Ephesians 5:29).
Neither the modern legal nor medical definitions of suicide entail the Scriptural aspect of suicide being the transgression of the Moral Law, where both God and man are denied the love that are rightfully due them. "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother [much less, himself], he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother [or, himself] whom he hath seen, how can he love God Whom he hath not seen?" (1John 4:20). The supreme hatred of one's self and life, where a morally capable individual voluntarily terminates his own life, is also preeminent contempt of the "God [Who] Is Love" (4:16). Especially for True Christians, the very idea of disposing of our own lives as if we were the masters of them, is unthinkable. "For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself" (Romans 14:7).