The Sin That Cannot Be Forgiven

The message given in the Sunday night worship service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church.  The Bible verses used are Mark 3:20-30.

            God is forgiving.  That’s one of our favorite things about God, right?  That there’s nothing God won’t forgive.  No matter what we’ve done, if we turn to God and confess our sins and repent of them and ask for forgiveness, God will forgive us.  You’ve even heard me refer to God as “the all-forgiving God”.

            But if we believe that, what do we do with our Bible reading for today?  Because Jesus makes it clear that there is at least one thing God will not forgive.  He says it right out in verse twenty-nine.  “[W]hoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”

            So, we need to look at this more closely.  What do we do with it?  If someone blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will they truly never, ever be forgiven?  Not for all eternity?  I mean, that seems kind of extreme, right?  No matter what someone did or said after that, no matter how much they repented and asked or even begged for forgiveness, God would not listen?  Someone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit is just out?  Forever?  Did Jesus really mean that literally?

            Well, let’s look at it.  First, is it that Jesus said would be condemned?  What does it mean to “blaspheme against the Holy Spirit?”

            From what I’ve read, in this context, blaspheming the Holy Spirit, in this context, is beyond just not believing in the Holy Spirit.  It goes beyond being disrespectful or even insulting.  In this context, to blaspheme the Holy Spirit means to actually declare that the Holy Spirit is evil.

            Now, remember what’s going on in this Bible passage.  People are saying that Jesus is out of His mind.  They’re saying he’s possessed by demons.  They’re saying he has an impure spirit.  In short, some of the teachers of the law, and in fact some of Jesus’ own family, are saying that Jesus is evil.  He’s doing the work of demons.

            Jesus denies it, of course.  He tries to show the utter impossibility of what they’re saying.  He says, I’m driving out demons.  Why, or even how, could a demon drive out demons?  What sense would that make?  But then Jesus says this:  “Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”

            It sounds to me like Jesus is saying, look, you can say anything you want about me.  If you want to say I’m evil, that I’m in league with the demons, go ahead.  There will be consequences, but if you eventually repent and ask for forgiveness for what you’ve said about me, you’ll get it.  But don’t say anything like that about the Holy Spirit.  If you do, you will never be forgiven.

            But that brings us back to where we were.  Why would Jesus say that?  Well, because it’s true, of course--Jesus would not say that if it was not true.  But why would it be true?  Why is blaspheming against the Holy Spirit an unforgivable sin?

            Well, let’s look at who the Holy Spirit is.  For one thing, the Holy Spirit is part of the trinity, right?  God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.  So, the Holy Spirit is God.  So, blaspheming the Holy Spirit is blaspheming God, and that’s obviously a seriously bad thing.  But still, we’re not told that blaspheming God the Father is an unforgivable sin.  And we’re not told that blaspheming God the Son is an unforgivable sin.  So why would someone who blasphemes God the Holy Spirit never be forgiven?

            Jesus does not say a lot about the Holy Spirit, but he does say a few things.  One of them is in the third chapter of John.  We talked about this one a few weeks ago in the Sunday night service.  In John Chapter Three, Jesus is talking with a Pharisee named Nicodemus.  And he tells Nicodemus, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again”  

Of course, Nicodemus has no idea what Jesus is talking about.  So Jesus explains it farther.  He says, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.  Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.  You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’  The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

            Jesus says that the only way we can go to heaven is if we’re born of the Holy Spirit.  Now, when we talk about being born again and being born of the Spirit, we’re not necessarily saying that this has to be some mountaintop experience, where the Holy Spirit comes to you all at once like Saul on the road to Damascus and you suddenly believe.  It does happen that way sometimes, to some people.  I’ve known some for whom it happened that way.  They describe it as an incredible, awesome experience, and I’m sure it must be.

            But as United Methodists we don’t believe being born of the Spirit has to happen that way.  We believe it can also be a process.  It can happen gradually, over a period of time.  Days, months, years, even decades.  And even for people for whom it does happen all at once, there’s still a process involved.  After all, when Saul was converted on the road to Damascus, he still had to go and study for three years before he started his ministry.  He believed, but he recognized that to be able to serve God, he needed to understand more about who it was he actually believed in.  

            But whether it happens suddenly or gradually, it does need to happen.  We do need to be born of the Spirit if we’re going to see the kingdom of God.  Jesus specifically said so.  Without the leading of God’s Holy Spirit, we are not going to be born of that Spirit and we are not going to get to heaven.

            So where does that leave us?  Well, we’ve said before that God will not force us to believe.  God will encourage us.  God will nudge us.  And sometimes God will do more than just give us a gentle nudge.  Sometimes God will do just about everything but slap us upside the head to get us to believe.  But still, God will not force us.  God leaves the choice of whether to believe up to us.

            But if we blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, if we declare the Holy Spirit to be evil, we’re not going to accept the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, are we?  We’re going to shut the Holy Spirit out.  More than that, we’re going to oppose the Holy Spirit at every turn.  After all, that’s what the Pharisees did to Jesus, right?  They thought he was evil, and they fought him, and eventually they killed him.  That’s what we do when we’re convinced someone or something is evil.  We don’t accept evil.  We don’t compromise with evil.  We fight evil, in every way we can. 

            So, if that’s how we react to the Holy Spirit, we’re not going to see the kingdom of heaven.  That’s why someone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.  Not because God refuses to forgive them, but because they will never ask for forgiveness.  They will never repent of their sins.  Because the only way we can turn to God and be born again is through God’s Holy Spirit.  When we shut God’s Holy Spirit out, it won’t happen.

            So, what’s the lesson here for us?  Well, for one thing, we can be assured that what we said at the beginning of this message is still true.  If we turn to God and confess our sins and repent of them and ask for forgiveness, God will give it to us.  God truly is the all-forgiving God.

            But what else can we get from this?  After all, you and I would never blaspheme against the Holy Spirit.  We’d never declare God’s Holy Spirit to be evil.  So this really has no application to us, right?

            Well, I hope not.  But let’s not be too sure.  After all, I’m pretty sure the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, all those people, would’ve said it had no application to them, either.  They’d have said, of course we’d never blaspheme against God’s Holy Spirit.  We’d never declare God’s Holy Spirit to be evil.  And yet, they saw Jesus healing people and casting out demons, using the power of the Holy Spirit, and they declared him to be evil and to be possessed by demons.  They were sure they’d never do something like that, but they still did it.

            So we need to be open to recognizing God’s Holy Spirit, even when the Spirit acts in ways we don’t expect.  In fact, especially when the Spirit acts in ways we don’t expect.  Remember, Jesus compared the Holy Spirit to the wind, and said, “The wind blows where it pleases...you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.”

            As we all know around here, the wind acts in unpredictable ways.  And so does God’s Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit does not take direction from us.  In fact, sometimes the Holy Spirit does things that make no sense whatsoever to us.  Just as what Jesus was doing, using the power of the Holy Spirit, made no sense to the Pharisees and the teachers of the law.

            There’s a lot happening in the world today that we don’t understand.  And some of it certainly is evil.  But let’s not be too quick to decide what’s evil and what’s not.  Let’s not decide that something must be evil just because it does not make sense to us.  Let’s exercise God’s love, and God’s grace.  And let’s use God’s love and God’s grace when we see these things.  There certainly is evil in the world.  But if we’re too quick to judge, and if we judge without using God’s grace and God’s love, we just might do what the Pharisees and the teachers of the law did.  And given how we all need God’s forgiveness, we most definitely do not want to do that.