Grieving Well - for unbelievers

All of us have friends and family members who we know will die but who we also know are not trusting Jesus as their saviour. How should we face that?

The issue of how we should deal with the deal of a non-Christian we love and care for is not addressed by 1 Thess 4:13-18, which we've looked at at Christ Church this week. But it's an important and pressing question for many of us.

Here are just four observations that might help. I come from a family where almost everyone is not a Christian, so I personally find this pretty difficult. Most of the things I’m going to say are things I’ve found helpful for myself. It's important to say that none of them solve the problem; none of them  take away the pain of knowing that those we love may face a lost eternity.

The first thing I need to know is that all my grief, for Christians and non-Christians, is put into better perspective if I love God more than anyone else. The best cure for almost all my struggles is to remember that I am made first for relationship with God and then for relationship with other people.

The second things I need to know is that I know less than I think I do. When you stand by the grave of a dead unbeliever you very rarely know whether they have made their peace with God in their final hours, or even perhaps their final minutes. We cannot presume that they have. But many do. Faced with the final undeniable reality of death and the deep, deep knowledge that this is not how things are meant to be, many people have finally stopped running from God and, blessedly, embraced Christ just before they meet him. Which is a remarkable testimony to God's grace and patience! For that reason it is so, so, important that we tell all those we know and love how to be right with God through Jesus. We never know at what point they may want to throw themselves on his grace. When a person who has not professed Christ but who knows what the gospel is dies you may not have much hope, but you usually have some hope, and that is precious.

The third thing I need to know is that however hard it is to face the death of people who do not trust Christ in a world where God does not save everybody it is much better than all the alternatives. Would it be better to live in a world where everybody faced eternal judgment, as we deserve, and there was no saviour? Would it be better to live in a world where there was no God and, therefore, no hope and no ultimate purpose for anything at all? Would it be better to live in a world where God saved everybody regardless of justice so that those who have no desire for Christ to pay for their sin are forced to glorify God for doing that forever? Even with my very, very limited human insight it seems to me that none of those worlds are any better!

The final thing I have found helpful is to remember that God loves people, even those whom he will judge, more than I do. He is the one who cries to the sinner “why will you die?” and who gave the treasure of heaven for the sins of the world. My grief at the death of unbelievers is not greater than God’s but merely a pale reflection of it, and so in my grief for unbelievers the God I worship is not distant and disapproving but near and understanding.