Who Really Has Authority Over Life and Death

If you’ve ever had to walk through a hard diagnosis with a friend or loved one, where suffering is a factor, the topic of MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) may have come up. In that moment, you may have asked the question underneath that medical decision: who actually has authority over life and death? This question is becoming an important one as Canada’s assisted dying laws loosen year after year.

If you’d rather listen or watch, you can find the full message on the Lead Biblically Podcast or on YouTube.

What Scripture Says About Authority Over Life and Death

Scripture only gives us three accounts of someone asking for help to end their life, and all three point the same direction.

• Abimelech, a violent king mortally wounded by a woman’s millstone, asks his armour bearer to finish the job so history won’t remember a woman killed him. Judges 9:50-54
• Saul, wounded in battle, asks the same thing of his armour bearer. The man refuses, calling him the Lord’s anointed, so Saul falls on his own sword. 1 Samuel 31:1-4
• Samson, blind and humiliated, asks God alone for one last surge of strength, then pulls the temple down on himself and his captors. Judges 16:28-30

In each case, God keeps that authority for Himself.

The New Testament Never Grants Authority Over Life and Death

The pattern holds past the Old Testament. There’s no account anywhere in the New Testament or the first few centuries of church history of one believer helping another person die. Even through seasons of disease and brutal persecution.

Suffering and the threat of death show up constantly in early Christian history, and yet, nobody steps in to end someone else’s life for them.

Comfort Costs Something, and We Pay It Anyway

The question remains: what are we called to do for people who are suffering? Paul answers it in one word to the church in Corinth: comfort.

He calls God “the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

He says it again to the Galatians, simpler still:

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2

It should be noted that this kind of comfort takes way more time and resources, which is part of the problem, and why, here in Canada, we’re falling short on both.

Saskatchewan & Palliative Care

In Saskatchewan, 15.5 percent of people who received assisted dying and needed palliative care never got it, compared to 2.5 percent nationally. (Policy Options, citing Health Canada’s Sixth Annual Report on MAiD)

When the resources to ease suffering don’t reach people, ending a life starts to look like the only path left.

Suicide Research

There’s important information to consider related to people who want to end their own lives. Nine out of ten people who attempt suicide and survive don’t go on to die by suicide later. (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Means Matter Project)

Suicidal desire is rarely the final word. Comfort, presence, and time spent with those who are suffering, either physically or mentally, can make all the difference and potentially can change the outcome.

Consider the Deepest Wound of Spiritual Life and Death

Jesus reaches the deepest wound underneath all of this, the one sin left behind when it pulled our souls away from the relationship we were made for. He repairs it through his death and resurrection. (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)

He comforts us, so we comfort them. That’s the calling, even when it costs us more time and energy than we feel like we have. In the end, their lives are more than worth it.

Join the Conversation; Answer This Question

• Who in your life needs comfort this week?
• What’s one concrete way you could reach out to them?