The Unforgivable Sin

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints.

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I'm Andrew Hudson, and joining me today is Michael Durham and Kyle Smith.

We have received a question and it reads thus. I'm not sure I understand the unforgivable sin.

Believing that Jesus Christ is the son of God, accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and believing that God has raised him from the dead, it is my understanding that Jesus Christ has saved us from our sins.

And they cite Ephesians 2, and also say, and nearly the whole Bible. However, Matthew 12, verse 31 says, therefore

I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the

Spirit shall not be forgiven. How and why is this sin different from any other sin?

Okay, so good question. Matthew chapter 12. Matthew chapter 12, we read that, verse 31.

Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men.

Verse 32, anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him. But whoever speaks against the

Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.

So, first of all, we need to recognize that as believers in Christ, being born again of the

Holy Spirit, and dwelt by the Spirit of God, justified by the righteousness of Christ, our faith in Christ, having his righteousness to our account, and accepted to the

Father, that there is not a sin that we would commit or can commit that would wrest us away from the hand of Christ and the hand of the

Father. This blasphemy against the Spirit versus blasphemy against the

Son of Man, these are things that Jesus is talking about those who are in need of coming to faith in Christ, those who are in need of salvation, and that there are those who have done heinous and terrible things, but they can be forgiven by Christ, forgiven by God through the person and work of Christ and brought into a saving relationship with God.

But there is a sin, there is a sin that sinners can commit that Jesus says will not be forgiven, the meaning that they will remain forever in an unforgiven state.

So Jesus is not talking about a believer, one who was saved and born again, slipping with the tongue, saying something inappropriate, maybe getting the doctrine of the

Holy Spirit wrong or something, or maybe just having a bad day, okay, and then losing their salvation because they committed the unpardonable sin.

This is not, that's not what Jesus is talking about. That's not the scenario, and we know it's not the scenario because we can read the context.

So we need to back up in Matthew 12 a little while to see what's going on.

And so when you read the whole chapter of Matthew 12, you'll see the story about Jesus contending with the scribes and Pharisees about the

Sabbath, and the Pharisees lose this encounter very badly, and so now they go out and plot to kill him, and Jesus, of course, knows this, and he withdraws, we read in verse 15, and we see that his ministry, his way of handling the crowds, his way of doing things fulfills prophecy from the prophet

Isaiah. And so we see this fulfilled prophecy in verses 18 to 21. So these are the words of Isaiah the prophet.

Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom my soul is well -pleased,

I will put my spirit upon him. Now, that sounds a lot like the baptism of Jesus.

We remember when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, the heavens parted, the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove and alighted upon Christ, and the voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son with whom

I am well -pleased. Hey, look, the Messiah is the anointed one.

He's the chosen one. And so this passage here reminds us of that. And it says, he will declare justice to the

Gentiles. He will not quarrel nor cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and in smoking flax he will not quench, till he sends forth justice to victory, and in his name

Gentiles will trust, meaning all the nations will receive him, his good news, and so forth.

Now, the spirit anointed servant, that's who

Jesus is. He is the spirit anointed servant, and he goes forth and he has compassion, and he heals and restores.

Even a bruised reed, think of a plant that's been folded over rather than sharp and upright.

Well, Jesus will not simply snap off the bruised reed. He will restore it and make it whole again.

Good example, verse 22. Then one was brought to him who was demon -possessed, blind, and mute.

Well, if there ever was a bruised reed, there you go. And he healed him, so that the blind and mute man both spoke and saw, and all the multitudes were amazed and said, could this be the son of David?

Now, how do you think that goes over with the Pharisees? You're so jealous of Jesus, they're ready to kill him. I'm sure they're convinced now, right?

Yes, so they don't like that, and so they begin to respond in their own way.

Verse 24, now when the Pharisees heard it, they said, this fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.

So what do they say? They say that Jesus is casting out demons by according to the power of Beelzebub or Satan, the ruler of the demons.

Now Jesus responds to their idea, to their claim. So Jesus knew their thoughts, verse 25, and said to them, every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.

If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself, how then will his kingdom stand?

He's simply pointing out, he's simply pointing out that their logic is illogical, their claim makes no sense, they're being absurd, and he's letting everybody know it.

Now verse 27, just notice that he's not saying, well, it's possible that you have a valid point.

No, he's just saying, no, this is ridiculous. And then verse 27, and if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out?

Therefore they shall be your judges. There was a healthy exorcist tradition amongst the

Jewish religious leaders. Verse 28, but, now notice how Jesus clarifies how he cast out demons, okay?

But if I cast out demons by the spirit of God, now what did they say?

He cast out demons by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons. Jesus says, I cast out demons by the spirit of God.

So the power by which he cast out demons was the spirit of God, and they called the spirit of God Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.

Now that is an excellent example of the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Blaspheming the

Holy Spirit, speaking a word against the Holy Spirit. Okay, so that's in the context.

That's verse 28, he says, but if I cast out demons by the spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you, or how can one enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house?

Jesus is saying, I am not working with Satan, I am stealing from his house,

I'm tying him up and defeating him. Verse 30, he who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters abroad.

Now we come to verses 31 and 32 where Jesus says, if you speak a word against the

Son of Man, it will be forgiven him. If you speak a word or blaspheme the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him.

We're wanting an example of what does it look like to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. All we gotta do is read the context.

So we're still left with a few questions, right? We're still left with a few questions of why can someone say something awful about Jesus and be forgiven, but someone can't say something terrible about the

Holy Spirit, right? What makes the difference? And what are the challenges that we have when we see those things laid side by side here in Jesus's teaching?

Are we saying the Holy Spirit's more important than Jesus? No, we're not really saying that.

What are we dealing with here? We're dealing with the fact that the

Holy Spirit has a particular ministry. The Holy Spirit has a particular role in the economy of salvation.

So Jesus Christ, God the Son, took upon human flesh and died upon the cross and rose from the dead, ascended to the right hand of the

Father to reign until all his enemies are placed as a footstool for his feet. So the

Holy Spirit doesn't do that. Holy Spirit didn't take upon human flesh. Holy Spirit didn't die on the cross and raise from the dead.

Holy Spirit isn't reigning from the right hand of God. So what role is the Holy Spirit?

What did Jesus say? What do we know from Scripture? You know, he's a helper. He's, yeah, he's a helper.

A spirit of truth who would testify or disclose of what is Christ, which the Father had given him.

Exactly, good. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would bring to mind all that he had said.

He would convince the world of sin and bring about repentance to the nations.

When we see at Pentecost, remember that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the church at Pentecost, preaching of the gospel, and then past that point and actually read time and again about how

God grants repentance to the Gentiles or he grants faith in order for the people to believe.

Well, who's doing that work? Who's doing that work? It's the Holy Spirit. So we have particularly the reason why blasphemy against the

Holy Spirit will not be forgiven is because blasphemy against the

Holy Spirit comes from somebody who has encountered the life -giving, gracious power of the

Holy Spirit, seen the light of the Holy Spirit in the lives of people being turned away from sin, turned away from darkness, freed from the bondage of slavery to Satan, encountering all these good and wonderful things, and then having had all of this understanding and contact with the

Holy Spirit, being blessed by his ministry, they turn against all of that with false accusations, slanderous words, trying to disprove it, discredit it, call it anything but what it is.

That's blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and rejecting the one who brings you the good news of Jesus Christ, the one who does the work of regeneration, the one who brings forward everything that we know about salvation to our lives to speak against him, this is the unpardonable sin.

It's beyond what just an individual who's heard the gospel over and over and over again and they reject and they reject and they said, well, that's not for me, or some other excuse, but at some point,

Christ reaches down and says, you're mine, and at that point, they had never committed the unpardonable sin, that's what we're talking about.

Right, so it's somebody who, you know. It's not just a rejection of the gospel. No, no, now you can, obviously, we have people who heard the gospel and heard the gospel and then later on respond by the grace of God to that word and are saved.

We're not talking about that. There's something more robust about this. I think if anything we see from the context, there's a very robust encounter with the goodness of the

Holy Spirit and then a very settled rejection and slanderous, profaning rejection of what was encountered.

So, I mean, and this, maybe we'll talk about like personal examples of people that we have encountered and had to deal with with regard to this, but Hebrews chapter six deals with this very same topic.

So, in Hebrews six and verse four, says, it is impossible for those who were once enlightened.

Now, let's keep track of these terms because they're very important. You're once enlightened and have tasted the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the

Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.

If they fall away, to renew them again to repentance since they crucify again for themselves the

Son of God and put him to an open shame. And later on, the preacher to the Hebrews says, but beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you.

Yes, things that accompany salvation. In other words, what he just listed there, none of that were things that actually accompany salvation, meaning that they're not those which in and of themselves signify salvation, you see.

So, when we read this list, enlightened, tasting the heavenly gift, tasted the good word, partaking of the

Holy Spirit in some fashion, tasting the powers of the age to come and all of that.

Those are expressions of anybody who was within the community of the church.

Those who live as a part of a Christian community. You're going to taste these things. You're going to encounter these things.

You're going to be participating in the blessings of the Holy Spirit, even if you yourself are not born again.

How many young people grow up in a church blessed, blessed, blessed?

Because they are. They are part of this community. Are they born again yet? No, but how blessed are they all along the way until they are born again, right?

So, they've encountered all this wonderful, but later on, we read that these things are not which in and of themselves speak of salvation.

And those very same terms, for those interested in the grammar, you can take those very same terms and look through the rest of the book of Hebrews, and none of them are used to describe those who are saved.

Okay, these are just the expressions of those, how blessed somebody is just to be in a Christian community. So, that's who we're talking about.

We're talking about those who have a good handle on what it means to live in the light and the blessing of the

Holy Spirit. And then, and then, turn against all of that and call it something else.

Reject it. Modern equivalents would be different than what they were back then. A modern equivalent would not be somebody saying, oh, that's just Beelzebul.

Right, some other type of blasphemy would be in use. Today, there's a,

I don't know if you'd call it popular, but the idea of deconstructionism within Christianity.

Is that what we're talking about here of the people who, like you said, grew up in the church and now, oftentimes, in very public ways, come out and say, you know, after kind of deconstructing my faith,

I really think that I made a mistake, and here's why. Are they in danger of the unpardonable sin here?

Yeah, I would say that let's take somebody who begins to use some form of critical theory, pours the acid upon the

Christian church, and away we go. And they begin to deconstruct everything that there is about their experience and so on.

And they explain away people's conversion experiences, they explain away the answered prayers, they explain away worship, they explain away the scriptures.

Everything that the Holy Spirit does, okay, they rename as some kind of phenomenon that you can just not only dismiss, but despise as not worth your time.

And this wastes people's lives. Sure has mine. You know, that kind of thing.

That would be a great example of the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. So I'm gonna read a passage from 1

Timothy chapter four. It begins, now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times, some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron.

Is that exemplary of the blaspheming of the Holy Spirit? Well, it could end up being a particular manifestation of it.

I mean, for example, it's possible for someone to be identifying themselves as a follower of Christ, a

Christian, and then to be exposed later as a fake, okay, or as somebody, maybe as the one who falls away because of persecution or falls away because of the cares of the world, cares of this age.

Let's say Demas or somebody like that in examples. Did they particularly commit the blasphemy of the

Holy Spirit? Maybe they didn't. Maybe it was something else. I wanna be careful because of the way that Jesus puts it.

Blasphemy isn't any old kind of thing you say. Blasphemy isn't any kind of old approach of the heart.

Blaspheming the Holy Spirit is fairly specific, and we have a good example of it in the text.

So we need to be careful that we don't begin to assign every apostasy to that.

You see what I mean? I would wanna be careful to say, well, that was the unpardonable sin.

I think we'd be really very specific with it. So some people may bring up Acts chapter five, Ananias and Sapphira.

I can remember as a kid, my parents teaching me that cautionary tale through a song, and you think, and it persists maybe throughout adulthood, that they were guilty of the unpardonable sin, because if you look in Acts chapter five, talking about them selling a piece of property and their intention to keep part of it back and really give the impression to the apostles that they were giving them everything, and then

Peter calls them out on it in verse three. He says, Peter says,

Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land?

While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?

Why is it that you've contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but God.

When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last. He was killed.

So is that the unpardonable sin? Well, this story certainly reminds us that the

Holy Spirit is a person to whom you may lie, but you better not. We don't have anything in the text where Ananias and Sapphira considered the blessings of the

Holy Spirit in the life of the early church and with vitriol or sinister doublespeak tried to claim that what the

Spirit was doing was something else or sourced from the devil or something like that. What they did was certainly wrong, certainly sinful, but it wasn't blasphemy of the

Holy Spirit. You see people dying because of their sin in the scripture, but it's not always because of the blasphemy of the

Holy Spirit. So it's one of those things, it's fairly, I would say that it needs to be fairly specific in that regard.

Now, what do you do if you think you see it? Right, what do you do when you think you see it?

How do you pray? I mean, don't you sometimes maybe feel at a loss to pray for certain kinds of folks who maybe the story goes, oh, they used to believe, and now, oh my goodness, they've turned their back on it all.

What do you do? Yeah, I know a mother whose son is this situation.

Hmm, yeah, and how heartbreaking is that? There was a person who was a part of a church that my dad pastored, heavy part of a school that my dad helped to start and to administrate,

Christian school. This person was involved with everything, and later on, totally turns against all of it, claims that they had never, ever believed it, mocked it all, turned to lesbianism, and denied it all, just raging in hate against it all.

Now, that's a good example of somebody who looks back on their past experiences where the blessings of the

Holy Spirit were there, where there was, they partook of these things, and then later on, now they're going to call it some kind of abuse.

That would be a prime example. I mean, that fits the definition. That fits the definition.

Does it show a lack of faith on our part to not believe that God can restore those people? Well, I think it's faith to believe what

Jesus said about it. Obviously, I know God can save, if he saved the chief of sinners,

Bible tells us he saved the chief of sinners, he saved Saul of Tarsus, so he can save anybody. So God can save, but it does,

I mean, there is a, do we believe what Jesus said? Right? That's the challenge.

Do we believe what Jesus said about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit? Certainly, first and foremost, a warning to everybody who hears it, to everybody who reads it.

It's a warning to them, primarily. It's not necessarily, primarily our diagnostic tool to always be looking around and thinking, okay, did this person commit the unpardonable sin?

I would say that that's something that you end up concluding after a while, perhaps, if it fits the biblical definition, but that we recognize lists of sins, like in 1

Corinthians 6, about all these horrific sins and sinners who identify themselves by their sins, but such were some of you, but you were washed, and you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of Christ.

I mean, you were saved now, and that's really where the balance of our hope is.

Hey, God can save you, God can forgive you, God can change your life. That should be where our emphasis is on the sovereignty of God, not the sinfulness of man.

Yeah, obviously, we're very sinful, but God is sovereign and gracious. Anything else you'd like to say?

I think Michael pretty well covered it. All right, well then, what are you thankful for?

Well, I'm thankful for, and I've said this before, but I need to say it again,

I'm thankful for the patience of others, thankful for the long -suffering that people have with me as I continue to fall short of many obligations and expectations, and it's easy to take for granted that people are patient with you and it can become something where when people are patient with you and long -suffering with you, and they're just bearing with you and not saying anything, because they're covering a multitude of sins with love, you can begin to think,

I'm nailing it. But God reminds us through the clarity of his word and in his work as a heavenly father chastising his children, that not only is he being patient with us, he's being patient with me, but that by his grace, others are doing so as well.

So that's what I'm thankful for. I think I can kind of dovetail with that a little bit. Sounds cliche, but I'm thankful for my family who is very patient with me.

My four kids, Hudson, Lincoln, Afton, and Luke, I do my best in the power of the

Holy Spirit and in reading his word, but I don't always live up to that in parenting them.

I lose my temper and I make bad decisions more often than not, and yet they still love me and are patient with me, and that especially goes for my wife.

I'm so thankful for her and all that she does for our family, the educating of our kids, the discipling of them while they're at home, the love for God's word that she helps to instill in them.

As it says in scripture, a good wife is to be treasured above everything.

So I was just talking with somebody the other day. I think it was Jacob Call. He's like, yeah,

I think we all married up. Well, I know that I can definitely say that's the truth.

So God is good when he gives us good families, so that's what

I'm thankful for. I'm thankful to God for his word. Recently, a lady was asked what the definition of woman was, and she didn't know, but the word says, and Adam said, this is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. I'm very thankful for the word of God and his light in this dark world.

Amen, amen. And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read.