Mark 3.19-35
What is the unforgivable sin?
I was reading online someone who wrote: murder, torture, and the abuse of any human being especially children or animals is unforgivable.
I hope not. I am not saying that those things are not dreadful, and I am not saying that there is no justice in the universe, but Jesus said that if we hate someone, we are guilty of murdering them in our heart. And who of us can claim that we have never used someone for our own purposes, against their wishes.
If those sins are unforgivable, then I am unforgivable.
But the one sin that Jesus says is unforgivable is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
‘Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’. And the passage continues, he said that because the Pharisees are saying that ‘He has an unclean spirit’.
We can never have forgiveness when we call the work of the Holy Spirit evil.
There is a huge difference between those who do not understand Jesus, and those who do understand Jesus – who have seen the Spirit at work - and have still rejected him.
We see that with Jesus’ family
They think that Jesus has gone mad. They look at him, at how exhausted he is, at the crowds coming to him, at his missing a number of family get togethers, that he hasn’t slept properly in the last month, and they think that he has gone mad.
They think that they need to take him home and look after him.
But at this point they are on the outside. Their family expectations have prevented them from really listening to Jesus, from understanding what he is really all about. And they are not part of that inner group who are around Jesus.
Look at the way that Mark uses the word ‘outside’.
In verse 31 we are told that Jesus mother and brothers are standing outside.
So, the messengers comes to Jesus and say, ‘Your mother and brothers and sisters are outside asking for you’. And Jesus says, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’. And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother’.
In the next chapter, Jesus says to those who have again gathered around him, ‘To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything comes in parables’.
The point is that his family are still outside.
But that is because they have not yet understood Jesus, they have not yet got what it is that he has come to do. They love him, care for him, but don’t yet understand him.
Ignorance is not unforgiveable. If you don’t get what Jesus is all about, it is OK, although I would suggest that you spend time trying to find out what he is all about.
But ignorance is not the unforgiveable sin.
What is unforgiveable is when we do understand it, when we do get it, and still reject Jesus.
Because then we are taking the precious gift of God and choosing to rip it up, we are calling good evil. The Holy Spirit has brought us to Jesus, and we are choosing to walk away from him.
And that is what we see with the Pharisees
They have heard his teaching about the Kingdom of God. They have seen him, through the power of the Holy Spirit, heal people.
He has, earlier in Mark, healed many. And we are told specifically of how he healed someone with leprosy, a man who was paralyzed, and a man with a withered hand.
And they have seen him cast out evil spirits.
They have seen him make people who were unclean – clean. Clean in the eyes of God, clean in the eyes of society and clean in their own eyes.
They have misunderstood nothing: the Holy Spirit has spoken clearly to them, in their hearts and in their minds.
They have seen him welcome sinners, they have heard him forgive sins, reinterpret the law – claiming both to be more important than the law, and that the law was given for the wellbeing of people.
And they have rejected those words and works, the works and the words of the Spirit, and they have rejected him.
And that is unforgiveable.
Not unforgiveable in the sense that God says to them, ‘Well you have rejected my Spirit, you have now crossed the line, and I am going to get my revenge on you and send you to hell’, but unforgiveable in the same way that a drowning man who is thrown a life saving rope, who understands what it is, but who chooses to swim away from it, is unsaveable.
If we deliberately reject the one who can make us clean, who offers us forgiveness, who can set us free from the burden of legalism, who offers to change us so that we begin to love as God would have us love, who offers us a relationship with God, who can give us eternal life, then there can be no forgiveness.
This is why I am not a universalist.
A universalist is someone who believes that everyone in the end will be saved, everyone will be forgiven.
I am not a universalist because there is an unforgiveable sin: the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. It is when the Holy Spirit has spoken to you – in your experience, in your heart, in your guts, in your mind and thinking – it doesn’t matter – but it is when the Holy Spirit has made it clear to you what Jesus is all about, and – for whatever reason, a mind twisted by sin or pride – you call what he is doing evil and you reject him.
Often, when people read this passage about the unforgiveable sin, we begin to worry whether we have committed it.
I would say two things
1. If you worry that you have committed the unforgiveable sin, then you almost certainly have not committed it. If you have committed it, then you would not be worried. You would be now so closed to God that you would be completely unconcerned
2. Augustine says of this: Jesus says that the sin is unforgiveable. But he does not say that we cannot repent of the sin. If you are fearful that you have rejected Jesus, then clearly you can still repent, you can still turn back to him.
Ignorance, misunderstanding, is forgivable. God will continue to speak to us in different ways through his Holy Spirit, to bring us to the point when we will see and receive his love.
Willful deliberate rejection of the Holy Spirit’s witness to Jesus, the calling of what is good evil, is unforgiveable.