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What Is the UNPARDONABLE SIN (Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit)?

Let’s read the two most informative accounts of when the Lord detailed the unpardonable sin:

And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”

23 So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. 26 And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. 27 In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. 28 Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”

30 He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.”

Mark 3:22–30

Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see. 23 All the people were astonished and said, “Could this be the Son of David?”

24 But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.”

25 Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. 26 If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? 27 And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. 28 But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

29 “Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can plunder his house.

30 “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. 31 And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32 Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

Matthew 12:22-32

Whether or not these two accounts are discussing the same episode or two different-yet-similar episodes is irrelevant. In both cases Christ was talking to religious leaders who weren’t actually in touch with God and were in reality children of the devil, as revealed elsewhere (John 8:44). They saw evidence of Jesus driving out demons from afflicted people and attributed it to the power of the prince of demons, Beelzebul.* He then explains the illogic of such reasoning—the absurdity that satan’s power could be overthrown by satan’s aid—but adds that anyone who speaks against the Holy Ghost will not be forgiven, whether in this age or the eternal age to come. “They are guilty of an eternal sin” (Mark 3:29).

* Beelzebul (or Beelzebub) had once been the name of a Canaanite idol, “the lord of the high place,” but by the time of Christ it was used by Hebrews in reference to the “lord of dung,” the ruler of the Underworld, satan, aka the devil.

We know that Christ was “full of the Spirit” (Luke 4:1) and this empowered him to exorcize demons and execute other miracles. So when the Teachers of the Law and Pharisees said he was driving out evil spirits by the prince of demons they were, in essence, calling the Holy Spirit an evil, unclean spirit, which is slander. This was speaking against the Holy Spirit, aka blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, a transgression that is unpardonable. It’s an eternal sin. Why? Because these people’s hearts were so hardened with unbelief that they attributed something clearly done by the power of God to satan! How spiritually blind and dull could they be? These are the same people who, a little earlier, objected to the Messiah’s amazing healing of a man with a shriveled hand on the Sabbath and thus plotted to murder him (Mark 3:1-6).

So the unpardonable sin is unbelief so gross that the person attributes an obvious work of the Holy Spirit—aka God—to the devil or demons. Their eyes have become so tightly closed to the light that it has become darkness and good has become evil. This is such imbedded unbelief that the person is incorrigible. In other words, someone who commits the unpardonable sin isn’t someone who is concerned that they committed such a transgression.

Anyone who’s concerned that they committed the unpardonable sin did not commit it. The very fact of their concern is proof that they didn’t. Any person who wants to make things right with his/her Creator did not commit the unpardonable sin. “The blood of Jesus… purifies us from all sin” for anyone who’s penitent (1 John 1:7-9). Those who commit the unpardonable sin, by contrast, want nothing to do with the truth—reality—which includes the LORD, the Almighty Creator (John 14:6).

Be Careful About Presuming Someone Has Committed the Unpardonable Sin

We need to be careful: Just because someone puts on the airs that they’re radically against God and truth, it doesn’t automatically mean they’ve committed the unpardonable sin and cannot be reached. For instance, Paul was formerly a Pharisee named Saul who fiendishly opposed Christians in the 1st Century to the point of apprehending believers to be imprisoned or executed (Acts 8:1-3) and even tried to get them to blaspheme (Acts 26:11). Despite being a “blasphemer and a persecutor,” Saul was shown mercy because “he acted in ignorance and unbelief” (1 Timothy 1:13) and thus the Lord was able to reach him on the Road to Damascus and he became the most strategic vessel for Christianity in the New Testament era (Acts 9:1-30).

The only way Paul would’ve committed the unpardonable sin is if, when he saw the (literal) light on the Road to Damascus (in other words, when he experienced clear evidence of the truth), he willfully closed his eyes & ears to it and continued on with his gross persecution of the Church. In such an event, he wouldn’t have even recognized his actions as sin and therefore wouldn’t seek forgiveness, but would’ve gone on stubbornly thinking he was doing the work of God with an undisturbed conscience. You see, people who commit the unpardonable sin no longer have a functioning conscience because it has been seared as with a hot iron and their hearts are thus hopelessly hardened (1 Timothy 4:2).

A good modern example would be Blackie Lawless of the shock rock/metal band W.A.S.P. Few other people would seem as far away from God as Blackie, but here’s what he said after reconciling with his Creator:

“I went to church in my teens and I went because I wanted to. I left in my late teens and came to California and studied the occult for three years. I went as far away as you could possibly go. I realized there was no truth and then I wandered around bumping into walls for the next 20 years, thinking I was mad at God. I realized that I wasn’t mad at God but I was mad at man for the indoctrination I received.

For me I had to settle this issue once and for all because I am not going to walk around with this anxiety of what’s going to happen to me and where I’m going, I got to know the truth. I got the Bible and I started reading and I thought I was going to disprove this thing once and for all.

I discover that it’s 66 books written by 40 different authors spread out over 2000 years in three continents. Most of these people didn’t know each other. I’m also aware that people think the Bible is written by man even if the Bible is inspired by God. I thought I would prove it isn’t true reading from an attitude of extreme prejudice. The more I read I realized that people weren’t just answering each other’s questions—they were finishing each other’s sentences. When I realized that, I recognized I was looking at the supernatural. I finally realized I was reading the Living Word of the Living God. And I was coming from a perspective of extreme prejudice, trying to disprove it. I’ll say this in short: it’s beyond impossible that men could have written this.”

Conversions of radically anti-Christian individuals like Saul and Blackie show that we have to be very careful about assuming that someone has committed the unpardonable sin. Christ obviously discerned by the Spirit that these religious Hebrews who said he was driving out demons by satan were so hardened by their unbelief that they were hopeless.

Insights From Luke’s Account

Now let’s consider what Christ said in Luke’s account about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit:

“I tell you, whoever publicly acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God. 9 But whoever disowns me before others will be disowned before the angels of God. 10 And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.”

Luke 12:8-10

The Lord says here that those who disown Him to people on Earth will be disowned by Christ in Heaven (cf. Matthew 10:33). In other words, these are individuals who deny the truth, which is Christ (John 1:1-4 & 14:6). He immediately follows this up with the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. These sins are technically different and yet they both result in the Lord holding the sin against the individual and not forgiving him/her. This reveals a connection: Both offenses have to do with gross unbelief that stubbornly rejects the truth despite glaring evidence to the contrary.

With that in mind, you could say that every soul rejected by God on Judgment Day and discarded in the lake of fire to suffer the second death will have committed the unpardonable sin (Revelation 20:11-15, Hebrews 10:26-27 & Matthew 10:28). Every such person had been exposed to the truth one way or another in their lives, but rejected it in preference to their pet sin or godless ideology. Thus they are thrown away in the lake of fire where they reap the wages of their sin (Romans 6:23).

“And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven”

How do we explain this statement by the Lord in verse 10? Answer: People in Israel were understandably uncertain about the carpenter’s son, Jesus, being the prophesied Messiah (Deuteronomy 18:15,18) and his identity would gradually dawn on many of them. You could say that the true nature of “the son of man” was veiled in his humanity & humility and thus people could’ve easily failed to grasp his identity. The same goes for other people up to this day. Thus a person’s statements against Christ based on false, fragmentary or conflicting information would be understandable and forgiven, assuming s/he is penitent.

It is true that Peter denied knowing Jesus out of fear for his life (Matthew 26:69-75) but—while his lips turned traitor for the nonce—his heart did not apostatize, not to mention he was repentant (Luke 22:31-32), which paved the way for the Spirit’s healing favor and thus Peter became a mighty apostle for the Lord. The saying “You’ve got to lose to know how to win” applies.

The Holy Spirit, however, is the invisible Divine Power on Earth strategic to human redemption seeing as how the Spirit:

Hence people with hardened hearts of unbelief who badmouth the glaring work of the Spirit of God have committed an eternal sin and are thus irredeemable.

Additional Insights

Let’s end with four further points relating to the unpardonable sin:

  • The difference between the unpardonable sin and the “sin that leads to death” (1 John 5:16 & Hebrews 6:4-6) is that the unpardonable sin applies to spiritually un-regenerated people (keeping in mind that the Judaic religious leaders weren’t spiritually reborn) whereas the “sin that leads to death” applies to seasoned born-again believers who willfully turn away from the LORD; that is, they commit apostasy. Of course, those who commit the “sin that leads to death” are also arguably committing blasphemy of the Holy Spirit since they foolishly chose to reject the Spirit who had been indwelling/guiding them.
  • In addition to gross unbelief, the unpardonable sin is slandering God since it slanders the Holy Spirit as the devil (or a devil). Keep in mind that ‘devil’ literally means “slanderer” and so one of the key marks of a person who follows the devil is slander.
  • The fact that there is an unforgiveable sin disproves the doctrine of Universalism, which argues that everyone will eventually be forgiven and redeemed. ’Nuff said.
  • People who are guilty of committing the unpardonable sin always do so due to their embracing the flesh and false beliefs. For instance, the religious leaders of Israel slandered Christ as being possessed by the prince of demons because they were envious of his great works and jealous of his increasing following (Matthew 27:18). Today a lot of people blaspheme the Holy Spirit because of their unrepentant commitment to satanic ideologies, e.g. the secular religion of LIEberalism.

 

To close, the unpardonable sin is deliberately closing one’s eye to the light and absurdly calling good evil despite glaring evidence to the contrary. It’s wantonly ascribing the activity of the Holy Spirit to a demonic agency. The person who does so is incorrigibly lost by his/her own stubborn volition. Any person concerned about committing the eternal sin did not commit it because their very concern is proof that they didn’t. Anyone open & willing to make things right with God can (Proverbs 28:13 & Isaiah 1:18).

Related Topics:

What is the “Sin that Leads to Death” in 1 John 5:16?

God Deals with People According to the Light they Have

Spirituality — How to be Spirit-Controlled Rather than Flesh-Ruled

How to Keep Yourself BLAMELESS (while Not Being SINLESS)

Spiritual Growth — The Four Stages

The Basics of Christianity


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