DEATHBED CONVERSIONS

Then Jesus said to His disciples, If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life shall lose it, and whoever desires to lose his life for My sake shall find it. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He shall reward each one according to his works.
(Mat 16:24-27)

While it is impossible for you or I to know the true hearts of others, in fact, the Bible is clear that it is impossible to know even our own hearts, the issue of the deathbed conversion is problematic.

Obviously, the thief on the cross next to Jesus showed that people can truly turn to Christ in their dying hour, truly repent, truly believe, and truly be saved. However, the Bible as a whole is not a book of deathbed conversions. It is a book about laying down our lives for the gospel of Christ. It is about giving Christ complete lordship (control) over our lives.

The difficulty with the vast majority of deathbed conversions is that they are really a last minute attempt to save or salvage a person’s life. That motivation is particularly considered a brutal misuse of the gospel by Christ himself.

Christ is certainly not to be trifled with, and He will certainly not accept one who has presumed upon a deathbed conversion. If a person has intentionally reserved his whole life to himself and then tries to give the dying wreck to Christ right at the very end…if he has knowingly and intentionally done this…then I presume there is no hope of salvation.

What about the person who has heard the gospel multiple times throughout his life and has rejected it in favor of self determination and self rule each time. How can this person truly give up the rule of their life for the last few minutes to Christ and expect to be saved?

The thief on the cross had evidently never heard the gospel before that moment. Perhaps that is the key to this whole issue.

We may not know everything, but one thing is for certain:

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”