OPEN ISSUE: When People We Love Die Lost in Sin
While we desire that our friends, family, and loved ones will be saved, sadly, not everyone is willing to trust and obey. How do we deal with the compounded heartache of death in such situations?
Introduction
What can we say or do, and how should we feel when people we love are lost in sin? All of us have this experience because Satan is persistent, sin is rampant, and people we love are among the lost.
God Loves and Grieves for Them More than We
First, we must know that we cannot grieve over the loss more than God Himself grieves. Who among us can imagine the sorrow and pain suffered by God when He saw the whole human family turning their backs against Him in Noah’s time (Gen. 6:6)? He had no recourse but to wipe this brood of vipers from the face of the earth with the exception of Noah’s family, yet He loved every one of them as the very creation of His own heart and hands. We cannot love our relatives and friends more than God loves them and everyone else who has ever lived! Therefore, His grief over every lost soul is many times deeper than our grief over our small circle of close family and friends.
Later in the history of man, David reminds us of how greatly Israel wounded God’s heart as He patiently led them from Egypt to Canaan: “How oft did they provoke him in the wilderness, and grieve him in the desert!” (Ps. 78:40). In the centuries which followed, God often tried to touch the hearts of His wayward people by recounting how deeply grieved He had been with Israel’s sins in the wilderness. Recounting that history was a means of underscoring how deeply pained He is at all times by sin and its consequences in the lives of people—and thus He used this history in appealing to men to repent of their sins (Ps. 95:6-11; Isa. 63:10; Heb. 3:16-17).
Jeremiah is called “the weeping prophet” because he mirrors the broken heart of God in his grief over Israel’s hardness of heart and impending doom. “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!” (Jer. 9:1). After delivering God’s plea for Judah’s leaders to humble themselves, repent, and give glory to God, Jeremiah said, “But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride; and mine eye shall weep sore, and run down with tears, because the LORD’S flock is carried away captive” (Jer. 13:17).
When Ezekiel appealed on God’s behalf for Israel to repent of their sins, they added to the pain which pierced God’s heart by complaining that His standard was not fair—i.e., God was not fair for refusing to approve of their sinful ways! God poured out His heart to them again and again, pleading, “Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye” (Ezek. 18:31-32).
In the most scathing sermon Jesus preached, we hear His heartbroken appeal, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” (Matt. 23:37). As McGarvey said, the deep “tenderness and pathos which breathe through this lamentation” after “the burning denunciations” pronounced by Jesus prove that the severity of His words was “not instigated by malice. They were judicial utterances wrung from a heart full of longings in behalf of the people denounced” (202). Because of the enormity of His love for every soul, He could speak with such “tenderness and pathos” about people who were callous hypocrites, whereas we might think only people of more worthy character warrant such sympathetic concern—people such as our loved ones who die in sin.
We Can Be Confident that God Is the Perfect Judge
Secondly, we must learn to focus on God as the perfect judge rather than focusing on the people we love who died in sin. Paul extols “the righteous judgment of God” in Romans 2:5-11:
But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; Who will render to every man according to his deeds: To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; But glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: For there is no respect of persons with God.
Because we know God is a perfect judge, we have full assurance that no one will be lost who should have been saved and no one will be saved who should have been lost. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen. 18:25). Therefore, we glorify God for His perfections, knowing that God’s judgment of every person will be true and righteous altogether.
To ask God to make exceptions on behalf of our loved ones who died in sin would be to ask God to suspend, pervert, and upend His righteous judgment and substitute unrighteous judgment for our personal satisfaction. If God can render an unjust decision for one case to conform to our human sympathies, He can do the same for everyone else—in which case He is not God at all but is a mere muddled human writ large. Such a god is an idol: the figment of our imagination.
By God’s Plan Each Person Makes His Own Choice
The third thing we must learn confronting our grief is to accept that God made all men as free moral agents. Truly, every human being is made in the image of God with the power to make choices and decisions (Gen. 1:26-27). Every person can seek the true God or not seek Him. Therefore, it is not in our power to change anyone’s choice, just as we would not like someone to have the power to change our choice.
Paul explained to the idolaters of Athens, Greece that one true God created all nations of men and rules over them in such a way as to allow all who seek Him to find Him: “That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us” (Acts 17:27). Referring to the dawning of the Gospel Age in human history, Jesus said, “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him” (John 4:23). Obviously, if God seeks us to worship Him, and if we seek God to worship Him, He can easily be found—nothing can prevent it! What a wonderful God!
It is sad beyond words that people who exhibit many good qualities lack the determination to find and serve God in the deepest recesses of their hearts. When men are not driven by “the love of the truth, that they might be saved,” God permits them to believe some “strong delusion, that they should believe a lie” of their own choosing (2 Thess. 2:9-12). That is what causes them to be lost, no matter how near and dear they may be to any one of us. God ordained that all will be saved who receive “sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth” (v. 13).
The parable of the sower reveals that when people are lost, it is not the fault of the sower or the seed, but it is the fault of the soil, i.e., the hearts of those who hear the truth (Matt. 13:1-23). Each person determines the condition of his own heart, whether it be like hardened soil, rocky soil, thorny soil, or good soil. When Jesus first presented the parable, he gave no explanation or application of it, but his disciples approached him and asked why he taught in this manner, thus indicating their desire to learn (v. 10). Jesus responded, “For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath” (v. 12). He then elaborated, explained, and applied the parable, thus filling their hearts with more truth.
After Jesus taught several more parables, including the parable of the tares, “Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field” (v. 36). They just could not get enough, and they kept asking for more.
Why then do people die lost? They choose not to seek the truth and to keep asking questions until they find, understand and obey the truth. Each person controls his own heart and power to choose.
God Himself Is the Balm for Our Aching Hearts
Recognizing why people whom we love may die in a lost condition does not mean that we do not grieve for them. The Bible clearly shows that God’s heart is saddened when people refuse to seek, believe, and obey His Word (Ezek. 18:31-32; Eph. 4:30). Paul grieved for his nation (Rom. 9:1-3; 10:1). Yet, we also know that the only power to save them is the gospel of Christ, and they are responsible for opening their hearts to receive it. While grieving over those who have already died, we are filled with a greater determination to pray and to work diligently to convince those who still live, yet fully understanding the final decision is in their own hands. We must do our best to teach the truth to those we love, and they must do their part to open their hearts to the truth.
We can no longer reach those who have died in sin, and so we grieve for them. How can we find balm for our aching souls? We learn to turn to God, who loves them more than we do and who alone can bind up our painful wounds. “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God” (2 Cor. 1:3-4). He fills our souls with His constant love, care, consolation, and peace.
His Word is a constant source of comfort. His saints are a constant source of comfort. His promise (of a land fairer than day where the tree of life is blooming and the roses never fade) is a constant source of comfort: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Rev. 21:4). We do not need to know how God will wipe away every tear—we simply need to know He can and He will. He is the balm for our aching hearts. 
Sources
McGarvey, John William. New Testament Commentary. Vol. I. Matthew and Mark. Delight, AR: Gospel Light Publishing Co., 1875. Available Online at Restoration Library. Restoration Literary Project. April 19, 2016. https://www.restorationlibrary.org/000153/.
by Ron Halbrook
