The Purpose of Suicide

For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.  John 18:37  NASB

This – An ordinary pronoun with an extraordinary meaning.  Touto is the Greek pronoun for this.  There is nothing spectacular about it.  Except here.  Here Yeshua says that His entire reason for being is this – to give testimony to the truth.  This evening most of Christendom will celebrate the birth of the Christ.  The real date is not likely to have been in December, but tradition rules on this particular evening.  Nevertheless, we should never forget that He was born to die.  His purpose for living was dying.  The celebration is not a celebration of the glory of a new life.  It is the celebration of the beginning of the death of the Son, of sin and of death itself.

Most of us have no idea why we are born.  We spend our lives in search of purpose.  And life does not give up its answers easily.  We often discover that what we thought was our purpose in life is suddenly replaced by something else.  We are unfocused creatures.

But not Yeshua.  He knew absolutely what His life was all about.  And nothing deterred Him for completing His purpose.  He came to die.  The next time you read the story of the last week of His life, take notice about who is in charge of the events.  Too often we think that the forces of evil pushed these circumstances onto the pages of history.  But that is not so.  Yeshua Himself was the active agent.  He chose the timing.  He chose the situation.  He initiated, pushed and propelled the actions that led to the cross.  He knew why He was born.

I wrote an article called, Dying Now.  That article confronts us with this fact:  no one of us can choose when we are born, but every one of us can choose when we will die.  We can choose to die now by identifying ourselves with the death of Christ and giving up our old lives, or we can try to postpone death by avoiding the demands of God.  That means we will die later at a time of His choosing.

Only the Christ could choose when to be born.  But we are like Him in this: we can choose when to die.  We can take part in the purpose of life by choosing to echo His words, “For this I have been born.”  We can die to ourselves in order to be born from above in Him.  Every believer must commit suicide; must choose to die and be buried with Him, if the believer is to be born to another purpose.

Topical Index:  this, touto, purpose, death, suicide, John 18:37