Unforgivable Sin
| "But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin." He said this because they were saying, "He has an evil spirit." (Mark3:29-30) |
To understand what this is all about, we need to remember that one of the main activities of the Holy Spirit is to bring us to the place where we can recognise Christ as Lord. The Spirit is always drawing us closer to Jesus. He wants us to recognise Jesus as Saviour and Lord.
Jesus talks about "blasphemy against the Spirit" in Matthew, Mark and Luke. In each case He is confronting the hard-hearted Pharisees and Saducees who persistently refuse to recognise who Jesus is:
- In Matthew they argue that Jesus does His miracles by demonic power
- In Mark they say that Jesus has an evil spirit
- In Luke the context is God's provision on the one hand and disowning Christ on the other and Luke puts it into the context of the final judgment.
So "blasphemy against the Spirit" is to reject His "core business" which is to help us recognise Jesus for who He is.
Theologians agree that this is a process and not an event. We don't commit blasphemy against the Spirit by accident or as a once-off. This is something that is a stubborn hard-heartedness and we don't care about it. To "blaspheme against the Spirit" is to stubbornly resist the "seed-planting" work of the Holy Spirit to the end of our lives or to the point that our hearts are so hard that we will never change.
The point: If we are resisting the working of the Spirit, then we won't care whether this is forgivable or not. And so I say to folk: "If you're worried that you have committed unforgivable blasphemy against the Spirit, then you haven't!"
