Before we step into this topic together, I want to pause and offer a short prayer. If you’d be willing, I’d encourage you to slow down, take a few deep breaths, and pray these words out loud wherever you are.
“God, while I sit in this tension, help me to cling to the truth of Scripture while having a soft heart. Help me to recognize my emotions, but also submit them under your authority and Lordship. May my heart and my mind align with your truth and not my own, and comfort me as only you can. Amen.”
This article isn’t a fast read or a quick skim. It’s not something to rush through, and I certainly haven’t rushed through writing it. This is a sensitive topic, and it deserves to be addressed with tenderness and honesty. Grieving someone who didn’t know Jesus is a devastating experience, and it’s one that, unfortunately, we almost all will experience at one point or another in our lives.
If you or someone close to you has faced this circumstance directly, the only true initial response is to grieve. To emotionally mourn and lament. I would use the word “agonize.” There are few things more painful and more distressing than realizing that someone you knew, someone potentially even close to you, be it a family member, friend, or acquaintance, who has passed away, and their relationship with Jesus was seemingly non-existent.
There may be hundreds of questions or feelings that crash into your mind and heart. “How is this fair?” “Maybe this isn’t permanent?” “How do I know where I stand?” “Should I have done more?” Every wave may bring fresh feelings of anger, fear, sadness, or even guilt. The hope, when being confronted with this emotional turmoil, is that we would take those feelings honestly to God. Not dressed up or beautified like we think Christians should sound. But raw, angry, sorrowful. Through tears and through silence. God’s grace and His presence are both available and overflowing. If you’re willing, turn to Him and collapse into His arms. That is what so many of the Psalms are trying to teach us to do. Lament, honestly and completely, before God.
And, like the Psalms, there is a turning point in every lament, where things shift from “let me tell God about my feelings,” to a sense of “let me tell my feelings about God.” This is where worship comes into the equation. In the immediate aftermath of such a profound loss, you may not be ready to “sing a new song” to God. But eventually, you can sing some old songs. You can look back on the times God has been good. Or faithful. This circumstance, even as difficult and devastating as it is, doesn’t negate those former moments.
Since before time, all the way through today, God has always been loving. Kind. Compassionate. True. He has been fair and consistent, so much so that rather than demand we live so perfectly to reach Heaven, He chose to send Heaven down to us through His only Son, Jesus.
It feels strange that agony can exist so closely with adoration, but that is the paradox of faith. In case you haven’t heard it before, it is possible to not fully understand God and still love Him. In fact, that’s the only true way to follow Him. To choose to submit our need for complete understanding under His gracious and loving authority, recognizing that He is God and we are not.
So, if and when you find yourself in this position of grieving someone who you believe didn’t know Jesus, I would encourage you to agonize for as long as you need to (which will look different for us all). But right on the heels of that, I would also encourage you not to let agony be the only voice in the story. There is also room for adoration and worship, even if it’s just the smallest of cracks in the otherwise overwhelming darkness.
As you continue to embrace the duality of agony and adoration, I would then, and only then, encourage you to take action. It might seem a bit strange to think about taking action in an article about grief and people who have passed away, but one of the greatest ways we honor those we’ve lost and the depth of our emotions is by re-aligning our sense of urgency with that of heaven’s mission to spread the good news of Jesus.
There should be no guilt in the call to evangelism, only an invitation. You may hear that word and think, “Gross. Old-fashioned. Judgmental.” However, evangelism is less about street preaching and more about sharing your life and your faith with those around you (likely in that order). As you process losing someone who didn’t know Jesus, let the agony and the adoration lead to action. Perhaps this loss gives you more boldness to share with others who may not know Jesus. Perhaps it gives you more words around why you believe what you believe, or maybe someone else just needs to hear that following God can be confusing, hard, and holy all at the same time.
Regardless, you don’t need to jump straight to action. When we do that, we often end up working from our wounds and not our scars. We need to take some time to heal. However, you do not progress through the stages of grief without eventually coming to action. In the face of this hardship, what then will you do? May it be said that the despair led you to make more disciples, and to be even more urgent in your desire to see others come to recognize Jesus as Lord.
I mentioned earlier that we would conclude with a note of hope that re-centers our hearts and our faith. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I want you to consider this question: “How many people do you think knew that the thief on the cross put his faith in Jesus before he died?”
Obviously, Jesus knew; he said the famous, “Truly I tell you, today, you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Did the Roman centurions know? Or the people watching at Golgatha, where Jesus was crucified? Obviously, we don’t know the actual answer, but we can assume that the number was very low. Most people would have seen the thief on the cross and thought, “That man is destined for hell, paying the punishment for his amoral life.”
And yet, he was saved. The point is not that everyone who doesn’t outwardly seem to know Jesus secretly does. The Bible is very clear that some will enter eternal life and others will enter eternal judgment, completely based on the confessed Lordship of Jesus. However, the point is this: salvation is inherently personal. It is a decision between a person and the Lord, and we, being finite, limited beings, do not have the ability to know who is truly saved. Some people we think are saved may not actually be (see Matthew 25). And some people we thought weren’t saved will end up being saved, like the thief on the cross.
So, our final hope should not be in a particular confession or checklist of behaviors that qualify each of us as a “good” person. Our only hope can be in Jesus, who is both the sacrifice for our sins and the high priest, standing before the judge on our behalf. And only He truly knows those who are His and whose names are in the book of life.
It doesn’t make the agony any less. However, it does offer another glimpse of hope in a very difficult circumstance. As we started this article, I want to finish with a short prayer. If you’re willing, I encourage you to pause, take a few deep breaths, and repeat, “God, I do not know how to handle or process this tension, but in your kindness, would you stay near to me and would your compassion surround me? Would you continue to bring the salvation in my heart to bloom your fruit, and would you use me, even in my brokenness, to shine your light to those who need it? Amen.”
