“Blasphemy against the Spirit
will not be forgiven.”
It’s one of Jesus’s most
enigmatic, controversial, and haunting statements. In the last two millennia,
many a tortured soul have wrestled over this warning. Have I committed “the
unforgivable sin”? When I addressed my angry profanity to God, when I spoke rebelliously
against him, did I commit unforgivable blasphemy? Or, perhaps more often,
especially in today’s epidemic of Internet porn, “Could I really be saved if I
keep returning to the same sin I have vowed so many times never to return to
again?”
Despite the enigma and
controversy, we do have a simple pathway to clarity. Jesus’s “blasphemy against
the Spirit” statement only appears in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and
Luke). If we get a concrete sense of what he did (and didn’t) mean there, then we’re
positioned to answer what such “unforgivable sin” might (and might not) mean
for us today.
What Jesus Actually Said
Jesus hadn’t been teaching in
public long when his hearers began comparing him to their teachers, called “the
scribes,” part of the conservative Jewish group known as the Pharisees. The
growing crowds “were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who
had authority, and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22). The scribes heard the
comparison and felt the tension, and soon escalated it (Mark 2:6, 16), as these
Bible teachers of the day, with their many added traditions, quickly grew in
their envy, and then hatred, for Jesus. The threat is so great these
conservatives even are willing to cross the aisle to conspire with their liberal
rivals, the Herodians (Mark 3:6).
The showdown comes in Mark
3:22–30 (Matthew 12:22–32). Scribes have descended from Jerusalem to set
straight the poor, deceived people of backwater Galilee. “He is possessed by
Beelzebul,” they say. “By the prince of demons he casts out the demons” (Mark
3:22).
Jesus calmly answers their lie
with basic logic (verses 23–26) and turns it to make a statement about his
lordship (verse 27). Then he warns these liars, who know better deep down, of
the spiritual danger they’re in.
“Truly, I say to you, all sins
will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but
whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty
of an eternal sin” — for they were saying, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’” (Mark
3:28–30)
It’s one thing to suppose that
Jesus is out of his mind (his family fears as much at this early stage, Mark
3:21), but it’s another thing to attribute the work of God’s Spirit to the
devil — to observe the power of God unfolding in and through this man Jesus, be
haunted by it in a callous heart, and turn to delude others by ascribing the
Spirit’s work to Satan. This evidences such a profound hardness of heart in
these scribes that they should fear they are on the brink of eternal ruin — if
it’s not already too late. Jesus does not necessarily declare that the scribes
are already condemned, but he warns them gravely of their precarious position.