The Unpardonable Sin
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They accuse Jesus of performing His works by the power of Satan. Now, beloved, that's blasphemy. It is blasphemy to accuse Jesus Christ of being satanic and of being in league with the devil. And it's on this occasion that Jesus, knowing their thoughts according to the gospel, takes this opportunity to give this very severe warning to the Pharisees.
Where are you right now in your Bible reading? Wherever you find yourself in Scripture will inevitably bump into a passage that's either hard to understand or hard to believe. And they're the kinds of passages, hard sayings, that R.C. Sproul will be examining all week on Renewing Your Mind. If you'd like to study all of the hard sayings taught by Dr. Sproul, you can request a hardcover copy of his book, Hard Sayings, Understanding Difficult Passages of Scripture, for a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. We'll also give you digital access to all of the messages in his Hard Sayings of Jesus series, Hard Sayings of the Apostles, the Prophets, and the Bible. Well, here's R.C. Sproul on a challenging text and an often controversial topic among Christians, the question of the unpardonable sin.
One of the most difficult passages in all of the New Testament, a passage that certainly qualifies for the category of a hard saying, are those passages recorded in the Gospels where Jesus speaks about an unforgivable sin. Which unforgivable sin is identified as being blasphemy against the Holy Ghost? Now, let's take a look at one of the versions of that record, looking at Matthew's account of it, where we read in Matthew chapter 12 this statement from Jesus, "'Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men.'" But the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come. Now it's obvious why this passage has become such a problem to so many people. It describes and discusses a sin that is unforgivable. And, of course, many people ask the question, have I committed that sin? And there are those who labor.
painfully under the fear that they have in fact committed such a sin which has excluded them from any possibility of forgiveness either here or at the judgment seat of Christ. And there are Christians who live in mortal fear that they might at some point commit that sin which would cause them to lose their salvation and to lose the hope of heaven. Obviously, our Lord is teaching something here that is hard, and it is equally obvious that He is saying unambiguously that there is a sin that is unforgivable. And he also is unambiguous by identifying that unforgivable sin with the term blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Now, so far, so good. That is, so far, we don't have to wrestle with ambiguities.
But as soon as we ask the next question, we plunge into a sea of ambiguity and of great difficulty, and that question is, what is this unforgivable sin that Jesus identifies as blasphemy against the Holy Ghost or blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? There have been many attempts in church history to answer this question specifically, identifying exactly what this unforgivable sin is, and some have identified it with murder because murderers are to be put to death. Others have identified it with adultery because the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and to commit adultery, Paul tells us, is to sin against the Holy Spirit, and so that's been advanced as a thesis. But we have an immediate problem with either one of those options, don't we? Obviously, David was guilty of murder, and he was able to receive forgiveness. He was also guilty of adultery and likewise was able to receive forgiveness. So we would rule those two out. But even more importantly, Jesus is talking about blasphemy.
And we have to understand that blasphemy is something that is done verbally, either in writing, but more often in the spoken word. Even someone as brilliant as Augustine argued that the unforgivable sin of which Jesus speaks is
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