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 world or in the world to come.” (Matthew 12:32).

“Yes! I tell you that people will be forgiven for every sin they commit and every blasphemy they utter; however, someone who blasphemes against God’s Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, 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 and 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.

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

(1.) “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).

(2.) “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).

(3.) “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).

(4.) “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).

(5.) “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).

(6.) “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).

(7) “The Pharisees are said to attribute Jesus’ exorcisms to satanic power and thus to deny the unique presence of God in Jesus. They thereby assign His entire work and teaching to an evil principle, making it anti-God. This is the “blasphemy against the Spirit that will not be forgiven,” because it negates the evidence of God’s saving action in history. However, misunderstandings of Jesus’ teachings and misconceptions of His Person due to human error or prejudice will be forgiven.” (NAB).

(8.) “A sin against the Son of Man is more easily forgiven because the Jews did not know much about Christ. But blasphemy against the Spirit, whose divine activity they knew from the Hebrew Bible, will not be forgiven because it comes from a willful hardness of heart and a refusal to accept God’s mercy. Those who blaspheme the Spirit are calling pure, divine goodness “evil,” and are beyond repentance by their own choice.” (Orthodox Bible).

(9.) “If a person persistently attributes to Satan what is accomplished by the power of God – that is, if one makes a flagrant, willful, unrepentant and decisive judgment that the Spirit’s testimony about Jesus is satanic – then such a person never has forgiveness. Some Christians often worry that they have committed this sin, but such a concern is itself evidence of an openness to the work of the Spirit. This sin is committed today only by unbelievers who deliberately and unchangeably reject the ministry of the Holy Spirit in calling them to salvation.” (ESV).