Is all sin forgivable?
In the context of what we’ve seen to this point, as I said, Jesus injects into the picture an astounding concept – which we often carry around as a question: is there a sin which cannot be forgiven? Is there an ‘unpardonable’ sin?
Here I will refer to Matthew 12 and Mark 3. Let’s consider the background to Jesus’ words.
Today, if one sees a genuine ‘miracle’ (not of the Scott Morrison election win kind), it is not uncommon for someone to ask by what power and authority it was performed. Was it ‘magic’? Was it ‘white magic’? Was it ‘black magic’? Was it a confidence trick or sleight-of-hand? Was it purely physical (some say there is actually nothing else)? Was it ‘spiritual’ (some say there is such a thing as spiritual life)? The debate rages; few are ever moved in their predispositions; and within a short time, it’s forgotten – a ‘storm in a teacup’.
In Jesus’ day, it wasn’t that different, despite daily life in Israel at that time being very spiritual or religious; Israel was not entirely a ‘secular state’ and a range of religious leaders dominated daily life. Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees – some of them lawyers’ – had a tight grip on the daily lives and morals of the people. Sounds familiar, I know.
Factions were formed based on the beliefs and priorities of strong traditions or large personalities – much like today. Some believed in the resurrection while others didn’t; some held that all Gentiles who converted to Judaism had to be circumcised according to the Law of Moses. There were differing views on miracles: on what constituted a miracle; on who could ‘perform’ one; on when they could be ‘performed’ and so on. There we differing views on things demonic – evil spirits and ‘spiritual powers’.
All that aside, the religious leaders combined held a lot of power and could make or break a person’s life. Saul (later apostle Paul) was one of them. He was a learned and powerful Pharisee – and his ‘big thing’ was wiping all memory and mention of Jesus and “The Way” from the history scrolls. He terrorised Jesus’ disciples for years and had little leniency towards any who argued that Jesus was indeed the Messiah and redeemer of Israel.
On one particular day, a blind, dumb, demon-possessed man was brought to Jesus and he healed him. The multitudes, Matthew says, were amazed and began to say, ‘This man (referring to Jesus) cannot be the son of David, can he?’ Being the ‘son of David’ [i.e. Israel’s revered King David] was a way of asking if Jesus might be the Messiah – Israel’s ‘chosen and anointed one’.
Matthew notes that when the Pharisees heard this, they spoke up and said, ‘This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons’. That was their ‘spin’. Jesus went on to explain the impossibility of that, but their point was clear: they attributed the miracle of this healing to “the ruler of the demons” Beelzebul.
Now, in Jesus’ mind that was blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. The miracle they had just witnessed was done by the Holy Spirit. In Romans 8, a redeemed, regenerated, rebooted Saul (now Paul) writes that, ‘the sons of God’ are those who are ‘being led by the Spirit of God’; Jesus was the prototypical son of God; what he did, he did as being led and empowered by the Spirit of God. So what the Pharisees just did was attribute a work of the Spirit of God to the Prince of demons: they ‘blasphemed’ the Holy Spirit.
Note Matthew’s words (parallel with Mark chapter 3):
Knowing
their thoughts, Jesus said to them, ‘Every
kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste, and every city or household
divided against itself will not stand.
If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand?
‘And if
I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of
God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
‘How
can anyone enter a strong man’s house and steal his possessions, unless he
first ties up the strong man? Then he
can plunder his house. He who is not
with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters.
‘Therefore
I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man
will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the
Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the one to come.’
By this argument, Jesus makes several points clear: 1) they are proving that Satan’s house/kingdom is divided and will not stand; 2) the demons will be their judges; 3) Jesus is demonstrating that the Spirit of God is present and working; 4) Satan is now bound and they need to choose whose side they’re really on; 5) they had just attributed a work of the Spirit of God to Satan; 6) thereby committing the absolutely unforgivable sin.
So there is an unforgivable sin!
In my lifetime, I have repeatedly heard preachers and teachers of ‘christian city’ attribute clear works of the Holy Spirit to the Prince of demons: “that’s ‘of the Devil’” they say. Maybe at the time they had forgotten Jesus’ words!
So they’ve got it wrong on two counts: homosexuality and the like are ‘unforgivable sins’, according to many in ‘christian city’; at the same time, they appear to be totally oblivious to their own repeated blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Perhaps it’s time to answer Jesus’ question: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” Perhaps that question prompts another: are you a 21st century pharisee? SELAH: pause and consider.
I find it interesting that Matthew’s record has Jesus reprising some earlier material – perhaps by way of reinforcements:
Make a tree good and its fruit will be good,
or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad; for a tree is known by its
fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you
who are evil say anything good? For out
of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.
The good man brings good things out of his good store of treasure, and
the evil man brings evil things out of his evil store of treasure. But I tell you that men will give an account
on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and
by your words you will be condemned.
There is a heavy price to pay for “careless words” that attribute works of the Spirit of God to Satan, AKA ‘The Devil’, AKA Beelzebul. “Brood of vipers” is a worthy description.
We all need to face up to the fact that “all have sinned and fall short” of God’s standards; and that admitting and acknowledging this, in humility not hubris, places us in the very spot where “He might have mercy on us all.” But if we insist (as ancient Israel repeatedly did, to the chagrin of God and His prophets) on claiming ‘we have not sinned; we are safe’, we place ourselves outside the gamut of His mercy and forgiveness.
The great irony of that is, those who insist that others are “going to hell” are far more likely to be the ones going there than the ones they accuse – for precisely the reasons Jesus gave the Pharisees on that day when the Spirit of God did a miracle for a broken man and the religious nutters hated it.
We’ll come back to this well-worn protest: “we have not sinned; we are innocent; we are safe”, but before we do, there is a further matter – quite similar to the one in this post – that has puzzled and divided Christians for many hundreds of years. That’s next.
Unable to find repentance – the Hebrews 6 dilemma.
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