The Unforgivable Sin

The Unforgivable Sin

I don’t know about you but there is one piece of scripture that used to really concern me and perplex me and that is the verse found in Mathew (also found in Mark and Luke,) that speaks about this unforgivable sin. I used to worry about weather I had committed this sin, maybe inadvertently. If that was the case, how would I ever be able to draw close to God, to please our Father in heaven.  I would be forever distanced from God- how terrible that would be. I think it was David in the Psalms that wrote “Whom do I have in heaven and earth but You, and being with You I desire nothing on earth” If I don’t have God in my life- everything becomes so shallow, so meaningless. If you can identify with what I am saying then I have some good news for you today!

Matthew 12:22-24 Jesus and Beelzebul

22 Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see. 23 All the people were astonished and said, “Could this be the Son of David?”

24 But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.”

Carrying on  in Matthew 12:30-32 Jesus says to these Pharisees…

30 “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. 31 And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy  against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32 Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

 (Mirriam Webster definition of blasphemy: the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for God )

Mark 3:28-30 28 Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”

30 He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.”

Luke 12:8-10  8 “I tell you, whoever publicly acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God. 9 But whoever disowns me before others will be disowned before the angels of God. 10 And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

Many Christians have struggled with these verses fearing that they may have committed this unpardonable sin and also fearing that they may do so sometime in their future as a Christian. If this is you, the good news is you have nothing to fear!  You can rejoice with Isaiah when he says

Surely God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord the Lord is my strength and my song, for He has become my salvation and with joy I will draw water from the wells of salvation!

Do you know that these verses in Matthew Mark and Luke that speak about a specific unforgivable sin are not unique when speaking about sin that  will not be forgiven. In the Old Testament in Deuteronomy Moses presents a scenario where “The Lord will never be willing to forgive them”. So these verses are not the only place where the Bible says there will be no forgiveness.

Have a look at 

Deuteronomy 29:16-20

16 You yourselves know how we lived in Egypt and how we passed through the countries on the way here. 17 You saw among them their detestable images and idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold. 18 Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the Lord our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison.……….20 The Lord will never be willing to forgive them; his wrath and zeal will burn against them. All the curses written in this book will fall on them, and the Lord will blot out their names from under heaven.

So lets have a look at this issue of unforgivable sin more closely

Firstly though,  let’s remind ourselves of what the Holy Spirit does for us.

1.  He convicts us of sin and righteousness

John 16:7-8 (NASB)

7 But I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I am leaving; for if I do not leave, the  Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. 8 And He, when He comes, will convict the world regarding sin, and righteousness, and judgment:

This is very important because without the Holy Spirit we are not convicted of sin and judgment, and without conviction of sin there is no need to seek forgiveness, there is no need to repent, there is no seeking after God. So turning away from the Holy Spirit is a turning away from coming into God’s presence. In rejecting the Holy Spirit you reject God and rejecting  a gracious, compassionate God that that abounds in love and forgiveness. So you, by your own decision in turning away from the Holy Spirit, by showing contempt to the work of the Holy Spirit turn away from God and His redemption and in that state you can never be saved. Who will convict you of sin now that you have rejected the Holy Spirit? So how can you turn to God if there is no conviction?  Therein lies the danger.

2. The Holy Spirit is the person through which God exerts His power in our lives. Remember It’s not by might, not by strength but by my Spirit says the Lords. Even from Genesis 1 :1 the Holy Spirit was there ready to do the work of God in creation.  The Holy Spirit is power of God in our lives, the same power that raised Christ from the dead!

Luke 1:35 

35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.

3. The Holy Spirit is the one who marks us with a “seal” 

Ephesians 1:13-14

13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.

So if we reject and show contempt for the Holy Spirit who will seal us? What hope do we have then of  redemption?

There is much else that the Holy Spirit does. He is our Helper, gives wisdom and revelation,  He teaches us and guides us in truth. Clearly though when we reject the Holy Spirit, we reject any reconciliation to God.

Even if we show contempt  for (ie blaspheme)  Jesus and reject Him, we may be prompted and convicted by the Holy Spirit to turn, to repent and seek God’s forgiveness, but when we reject  and show contempt for the Holy Spirit who will lead us back to the Father, who will lead us back to believing and receiving His Son. So we face an eternal separation from God. 

Getting back to the verses in Matthew, Mark and Luke.  Jesus had revealed Himself as the Messiah the Son of God (and we will look at how He did this in a second), but by revealing Himself as the Messiah, the miracles He did could only have been done through the  Holy Spirit and power of God not Satan. By denigrating and calling the work of the Holy Spirit the work of Satan they had directly and knowingly rejected the work of the Holy Spirit, so there was no way back to the Father.

How did they know Jesus was the Messiah?  Because not only did Jesus fulfil all the requirements of the many prophesies, but there were by Jewish tradition three Messianic miracles that would be performed by the Messiah alone, ensuring that they would know who the Messiah was. These were healing a leper, healing a man born blind and casting out a demon from a mute man (if a person was mute, the demon could not be named and by the process the Jews followed could not be cast out, so only God could do it). In Matthew 12 we see Jesus doing this final miracle clearly revealing to the Pharisees that He was the Messiah . The people even knew and we read in Matthew 12:23 that “ All the people were astonished and said “Could this be the Son of David”- a Messianic term

When we look the writings of Calvin, Luther, Wesley, and  Jonathon Edwards particularly and you boil it down it seems clear that the sin of rejection and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is essentially one of unbelievers.

Unbelievers reject the gospel which is offered by God, from Christ through the Holy Spirit.

 So the rejection of the mercy of God makes forgiveness impossible

So, if I blaspheme the Holy Spirit once, does that mean there remains no hope for me for the rest of my life?” The answer to the question is: “No. God’s offer of forgiveness is always open to you.”

“The unforgivable sin is the only sin which you can commit as an act which endures for as long as you reject the Spirit and consider the work of Christ as the work of Satan.” When you reject Jesus the Holy Spirit may still “call you from the ends of the earth”, but when you reject the Holy Spirit who will call you from it’s fartherest corners?  But if and when you do stop rejecting and blaspheming the Holy Spirit and seek forgiveness and repent you too will receive the gift of God’s grace through faith. How do I know this is true? Let me give you two clear examples why this is true

1. Firstly let’s look at the case of the Saul who eventually became the Apostle Paul

Remember in Matthew 12 when Jesus spoke about the unforgivable sin, He was speaking to the Pharisees? Well Paul was one of these Pharisees

Acts 23:6

6 Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees. I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.”

He was fervently so . He was party to the killing of Stephen by stoning and we read in Acts

Acts 8:1-3

8 And Saul approved of their killing him. [Stephen]

On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. 2 Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. 3 But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.

 In fact its been said that  “There may be no Christian in the history of the church who, before they came to Christ, considered Jesus’s work and message intrinsically demonic more than the Apostle Paul.

And yet, God rescues this Pharisee despite the blasphemy of the Pharisees and fills him with His Holy Spirit.  And Paul goes on to write

Romans 5:9-11

9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11 Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

And so Paul is proof that no person can do anything so bad that it is beyond God’s ability to forgive when there is  a genuine repentance and seeking of forgiveness through the blood of the Lamb. 

This again is evidenced for me in the  second example in the scriptures we spoke about bout having an “unforgivable “sin- in Deuteronomy

2. Unforgivable sin in Deuteronomy? Deuteronomy 29:16-20

16 You yourselves know how we lived in Egypt and how we passed through the countries on the way here. 17 You saw among them their detestable images and idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold. 18 Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the Lord our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison.……….20 The Lord will never be willing to forgive them; his wrath and zeal will burn against them. All the curses written in this book will fall on them, and the Lord will blot out their names from under heaven.

 But Moses does not end his discourse to the Jews at this point. He goes on and in the second part of this discussion he says

Deuteronomy 30:1-5

30 When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come on you and you take them to heart wherever the Lord your God disperses you among the nations, 2 and when you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes] and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. 4 Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. 5 He will bring you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors.

Again we have this same principle where “The Lord will never be willing to forgive..”  until there is a change of heart and a turning to God where we then see His  boundless mercy and grace. In the same way the Pharisee Saul, who saw the same miracles that all the Pharisees had seen when Jesus showed Himself as the Messiah, who also showed contempt and showed no reverence for the Holy Spirit when Jesus cast out the demons, was forgiven and filled with the Holy Spirit and became a pillar of the church.

So there is no law in the bible that eternally condemns you if you as a believer break it, for you have died to the law

Romans 8:1-4

8 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. 2 And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. 3 

Paul goes on and says

38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.       AMEN