THE UNPARDONABLE SIN
LIBERTY AND LOVE #103
“Anyone who speaks against the Son of Man can be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, either in this world or in the world to come” (Matthew 12:32 NLT).
The King James and like-minded versions have caused people to ask about “the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit,” also known to many as the “unpardonable sin.” A modern translation like the New Living Translation above will shed a lot of light on this subject. To blaspheme means to “speak against.” The context will tell us what kind of “speaking against” is under consideration.
There was a man born blind and mute that Jesus healed and cast a demon out of. That is where the warning comes from. The Pharisees hated Jesus. They wanted to kill him and they wanted people to stop listening to him. They were willing to do anything in fact to stop him.
His teachings were rejected by them and they wanted everyone else to reject them. The problem they faced was the divine power to do miracles that he possessed, which they did not. So rather than humble themselves before him, they chose to attribute the supernatural work that he is doing, not to God but to the devil. In other words, they said the power of the devil was working in and through the Lord Jesus Christ (Matt. 12:24)
The response of Christ to this ludicrous and blasphemous accusation is simple and practical: why would Satan fight against himself (v. 25-26)? And since the Pharisees apparently had exorcists who could cast out demons, at least on certain occasions, that would mean that they, too, were doing the work of the devil (v. 27).
One of the reasons that demons were allowed to possess people was so that Jesus could cast them out and demonstrate that the kingdom of God had come (v. 28-29). To oppose Christ was to oppose God and the kingdom of God and everything connected with God. Jesus warns them, rebukes them and basically seals their fate because very few of them ever accepted him.
Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit was a willful sin where they saw before their very eyes the power of God and attributed it to Satan. The sin cannot be committed today for that reason. These were religious leaders who were looking at the Son of God in the flesh and calling him Satan. Anyone who is seeking God and wanting to be saved by God—that is evidence that the Holy Spirit is working in their life and in no sense have they committed any sin that cannot be forgiven.
Dewayne Dunaway
