In which our regular writers toss around
subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Matthew, Mark and
Luke all make reference to a sin that will, in Matthew’s words “not be forgiven”. Mark calls it an “eternal sin”.
The reference has been a source of distress
down through the centuries to Christians who fear they may have committed it
and be irreversibly destined for perdition.
Tom: Personally, Immanuel Can, I’ve always thought the unpardonable sin
was lazy exegesis, but I haven’t got much scripture to back me up there.
Pardonable Sins
Tom: Quite. Before we get into exactly what this “eternal sin” might be, why don’t we talk a little bit about what it definitely isn’t. Paul gives
a long list of sins to the Corinthians and says, in effect, “You’ve been washed and sanctified and
justified. God is not holding your past against you.” These include sexual
immorality, idolatry (literal or metaphorical, I think), adultery,
homosexuality, stealing, greed, drunkenness, reviling and swindling. I don’t think he means to be exhaustive here, but he’s giving us an indication of
the extent and nature of God’s forgiveness.
IC: Yes. There are quite a lot of things there that in our human
assessment we might feel so guilty about that we might wonder if God wouldn’t
simply want to be done with us. Apparently not, though.
Tom: And a good thing. But it’s not about our subjective assessment of
our own guilt, is it? It’s about the outer limits of God’s grace, and I’m not
sure we’re qualified to mark those off too sharply. When we do so, we’re often
being legalists, excluding others for sins WE feel are in a category of their
own when we have no real biblical authority to make such distinctions. More
importantly we’re failing to grasp the value of the cross of Christ,
aren’t we?
Undoing the Work of the Cross
IC: Ah, yes … the key point. We need to begin with a strong understanding of the basis of
salvation. This is important because whatever “unforgivable” may mean, it not
only has to be worse than all the things identified as forgivable by
passages like the one you cited (we know that, say, prostitution, homosexuality, drunkenness,
being a violent aggressor and so on are clearly NOT in the “unforgivable” category, however badly we may
feel about them) — but whatever it is, it has to be bad enough to cancel out
the thing by which salvation is purchased. It has to undo the dynamic
that saves.
Tom: Right. And I’ll add abortion and suicide to that list. I’m sure there was the odd deliberately
induced miscarriage in Israelite history, and I find suicide a very selfish
evil, but for something to qualify as the “unpardonable” sin, it would have to
at least appear somewhere in the context of the three synoptic passages that deal with
the subject. We can’t just parachute our ideas in out of nowhere.
But sorry, back to what you were saying about “undoing” the thing that saves us.
What could that possible involve? What’s the basis of our salvation?
The Basis of Salvation
IC: It’s the standing that the Lord Jesus Christ has before the
Father. As Romans says, “He was delivered up for our transgressions but
raised because of our justification.” (That’s the right way to translate that
verse.) In other words, when the Father raised the Son, he was testifying
that the sacrificed One was sufficient payment to offset our sins. We are
“raised with him”, meaning that we are now accepted
not because of our own deeds, but because of the sufficiency of the
goodness of the price paid to buy us back.
To be brief: we are saved because of what the Father thinks of the
Son; NOT by what he would think of us if we approached him on our own.
Tom: So basically you’re saying we can’t lose what we didn’t earn in the
first place. And not only did we not earn
it, but we don’t maintain it. Peter
writes to those “who by God’s power are being guarded through faith”. Our faith may be the mechanism by which
we are guarded for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time, but that
mechanism is powered by God, not by
you or me. It’s critical to understand that. So the idea of a truly born again
believer in Jesus Christ committing the “unpardonable sin” is a total non sequitur. Can’t happen. We
can’t undo a deal that stands or falls on what the Father thinks of the Son.
What an insult to the Lord Jesus to even suggest it!
And yet at one point in history prior to the cross, there WAS a sin that would not be forgiven. How are we to understand that?
Context and Circumstances
IC: Right. We need to go and look at the precise context and
circumstances of this singular mention of the “unpardonable sin”.
Tom: Yes, or to be obsessively picky, a singular instance that is
mentioned once each in three different gospels. It seems all three passages arise from a single incident.
IC: Now, whatever fits the bill here must be very precise. We’ve already been told that what
we might call ordinary sins aren’t in view: they can all be forgiven.
Tom: When we go to Matthew or Mark, we find the statement arises in the
context of the Pharisees accusing Jesus of casting out demons by the power of
Beelzebub. (In Luke it’s much more proverbial; there’s no story to supply
context.) In Matthew’s account, Jesus begins his statement about the sin that
will not be forgiven with the word “Therefore”, tying it to what has just occurred. He goes on to say, “Every sin and blasphemy
will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.”
Does that help?
The Original Audience
IC: Notice something here: the original audience was composed of unbelievers. The disciples may have
been around, but they were not the objects of the Lord’s conversation at that
moment. Not only that, but these were angry, insulting,
hypocritical and intransigent unbelievers — not reasonable,
tractable, persuadable persons.
The teaching about the “unpardonable sin” is never
repeated in other contexts. It’s neither directed to persuadable
unbelievers, nor to disciples, nor to the Church; and if we try to
make it apply to them, then we’re well outside of the Bible on
that. That’s point one ...
Tom: Don’t let me slow you down. Carry on!
IC: Secondly, notice that the rejection happened by the people of the Lord’s home town. These
were the same people who had seen the Lord grow up for three decades. And
lately, they’d seen him heal many and deliver demoniacs. (If there is anything
kinder to be doing, I don’t know what it is.) They had also heard the Spirit
with which he had been speaking, and yet their assessment of him was that he
was a lunatic, and they’d come to take custody of him. Nasty.
Worse still, the scribes came down from Jerusalem, and they multiplied the slander. They claimed the Spirit with which he was speaking, the Spirit by which he
was delivering bodies and souls was “unclean” and
“by the ruler of demons”. Yet
not one of his townspeople spoke on his behalf: all bowed to the scribes
because they were religious authorities.
In other words, they were implicated in the collective slander of both the Son of God and an absolute refusal of the Holy
Spirit that motivated him. And they knew full well what they were doing ...
A Once-in-Human-History Kind of Sin
Tom: What I think we’re saying here is that this is a
once-in-human-history kind of sin. I understand what people are saying when
they claim that the “unforgivable” sin is attributing the work of the Holy
Spirit or Christ to Satan, but the writer of Assured of Heaven, for instance, makes this much too broad. He says:
“That the unpardonable sin is attributing the work of the Holy Spirit or of Christ to Satan strikes a chord from our own lives. Sometimes we see something terrible happen and we may say, or at least believe, that it came from the hand of Satan. Who of us hasn’t ignorantly attributed to Satan something God did himself?”
As close as his definition is, I think it
misses the mark, and it sounds like you agree with me.
Conditions that Cannot Be Recreated
IC: Yes. Biblically, you’ve got some very specific conditions: first,
an unequivocal demonstration of the authenticity of Jesus Christ and the
holiness of the Spirit in which he came; and this is secondly coupled with a
completely aware and bloody-minded rejection of the obvious evidence in favor
of blasphemy. But none of us has been given that kind of proof or has that kind
of opportunity today. Nor do we have the Son of God standing in front of us, so
that we can pass corrupt judgment on his works and the Spirit by which he did
them. That’s a pretty narrow category, I think you’d agree.
To think this could be broadened to the present is simply to go beyond anything scripture says about it.
Tom: He’s also broadened it from verbal to non-verbal. When he says, “Sometimes
we see something terrible happen and … believe that it came from the hand
of Satan,” that too is not the sin in question. What the Lord calls
“unpardonable” is verbal. It’s a public, audible renouncing of the Son of God
also called by Mark “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” and by Matthew
“speaking against the Holy Spirit”. Having a blasphemous thought occur to you
is not a good thing, but it’s not blasphemy. Blasphemy is a verbal sin.
The Rejection of Christ?
One more question. Some people have called the unpardonable sin “the constant, complete, and final rejection of the Holy
Spirit drawing a person to Christ”. Again, that doesn’t work, does it? When the
Holy Spirit convicts the unsaved today, and they fail to respond and ultimately
they die in their sin, then yes, their sins are not forgiven. That does not
mean there was any particular sin they committed which at the time was
unpardonable. And it should be obvious that if the convicted person later comes to the Lord,
then his or her sin was not “unpardonable”.
IC: Quite. Remember that when Christ spoke of it, his death had not yet happened, Pentecost was far
in the future, and he was speaking to people under the Old Covenant.
The important question, then, is “Have we any reason to think it is even the
kind of thing that is possible under the New Covenant?”
Consider that if this sin still existed, and if it could result in saved persons being
lost, then it would have to be of such a magnitude and wickedness as to
overcome the value of the blood of Christ. But we are told that nothing can
separate us from the love of Christ. So either Paul in Romans is telling a lie,
or the “unpardonable sin” simply does not exist any longer, since it
never applied to Christians. I believe the latter is true.
Tom: That’s well put.
Questioning the Character of God
IC: You’d also have to worry about what that would make of the character of God. Do we really think
that he is the sort of deity who would make provision for all sorts of sins,
and then among them bury a single, particular sin, one cloaked in
mystery and dubious in application to the present, but one that would
nevertheless forever damn those who stumbled into it, no matter how oblivious
they were to its real nature? Is that how we think God operates?
If that were the case, what would we make of all his intentions toward us?
Could any of his intentions be good then?
Ironically, I’d say it’s almost blasphemous to accuse God of operating like that. Maybe
we’d just best take his word.
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