The Unforgivable Sin?

The Unforgivable Sin?

“One can say something against the Son of Man and be forgiven; but whoever keeps on speaking against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, neither in this age or in the age to come.” (Matthew 12:32).

“Yes! I tell you that people will be forgiven all sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; however, someone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin.’ For they had been saying, ‘Jesus has an unclean spirit in Him.’” (Mark 3:28-30).

“Everyone who says something against the Son of Man will have it forgiven him; but whoever has blasphemed the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” (Luke 12:10).

To Blaspheme the Holy Spirit: to persistently insult and dishonor the Spirit of God; to intentionally speak with scorn against the Spirit; to defiantly speak evil of the Holy Spirit; to speak profanely and irreverently of the sacred Spirit of Jesus; to knowingly slander the testimony of the Holy Spirit and thus rejecting the Spirit’s message about Jesus; to give the Evil One credit for the Holy One’s works; to harden one’s heart to the point of heaping verbal abuse directly into the face of God’s Spirit; the deliberate, ongoing rejection of God’s Holy Spirit, which drives the Spirit away and is a conscious rejection of God Himself.  

My Thoughts. Another way to put this rather scary word from Jesus, is to say that when one is stubbornly in the habit of calling Jesus demon-possessed, in league with the devil, and attributing the works of His Spirit to that of Satan, that person has refused to open his hands and accept the gift of God’s forgiveness. Therefore, there will be no forgiveness received. Instead of opening one’s hands to receive the gift of forgiveness, the one who blasphemes the Spirit is closing the hands into a fist and using it to assault God Himself. The blasphemer has thus made himself unforgivable, has intentionally strayed away from God’s mercy, and is not in a position to be forgiven.

Here a variety of insights from various Study Bibles to help us unpack the meaning of this “unforgivable sin:”

“In the context of these passages about blaspheming the Holy Spirit, this sin can only occur when one is personally and directly observing the miracles of Jesus Himself and says that the source is the Evil One. That means that this sin could only have occurred while Jesus was actually present on earth.”  (CJB).

“When you reject the Holy Spirit, you’re sawing off the branch on which you are sitting, you are severing by your own perversity all connection with the One who forgives. When you persist in your slanders against God’s Holy Spirit, you’re repudiating the very One who forgives.” (MSG).

“In order to be convicted of sin and to then repent, it is necessary for a person to allow the Holy Spirit to work within. It is the Holy Spirit within that convicts a person of his sin. If a person blasphemes the Spirit and thus resists the activity of the Spirit in his life, he will remain unconvinced of sin. If a person is not convicted by the Holy Spirit, he will not see the need to repent. So a persistent blasphemer of the Spirit becomes an unrepentant person and so will not be forgiven.” (NASB).

“It is a positive perversity to witness the manifest good works of the Holy Spirit and declare them evil. By doing this, a person is openly refusing to respond to God. He has closed his heart, and so put himself outside the range of God’s forgiveness. To attribute to the Evil One what in fact is the work of the Holy Spirit amounts to shutting oneself off from divine grace and the forgiveness that flows from it. In its very nature, such an attitude makes salvation impossible.” (NJB).

“Since only the Holy Spirit can convince and convert the unsaved, a continuous and final rejection of the Spirit’s wooing and His witness shuts off the only possible avenue whereby the saving work of Christ is applied to the sinner in his need,” (RSV).

“The sinner who has committed this sin is far from God and totally unaware of any sin at all. Only those who have turned their backs to God and rejected all faith have any need to worry about the ‘unforgivable sin.’ Jesus said they can’t be forgiven – not because their sin is worse than any other, but because they will never ask for forgiveness.” (NLT).