Don: Throughout history, well-meaning Christians have lived in fear of committing, or of having committed, the unpardonable sin. The notion that one must never be guilty of this sin was a common sermon topic when I was a boy. But given the ubiquity and all-encompassing nature of grace that we have deduced in our recent discussions, how can there be an unpardonable sin?
The concept is raised in Matthew 12:22-30. The context is somewhat similar to that of the parable of the prodigal son. Here, in the presence of the Pharisees, Jesus heals people possessed of demonic power. The Pharisees accuse him of doing it through Beelzebub.
Then a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute was brought to Jesus, and He healed him, so that the mute man spoke and saw. All the crowds were amazed, and were saying, “This man cannot be the Son of David, can he?” But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “This man casts out demons only by Beelzebub the ruler of the demons.”
And knowing their thoughts Jesus said to them, “Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? If I by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? For this reason they will be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can anyone enter the strong man’s house and carry off his property, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house.
The Unpardonable Sin
He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters.
“Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.”
What is blasphemy against the holy spirit? Fundamentally, it is contempt for the deity, a lack of reverence, a posture taken by a creature against its creator. It is a denial of the power of the holy spirit. This harks back to our discussions of the inner light, which we adduced to be the holy spirit, or some spark of it, inside us. We talked about hiding the light under a bushel, we’ve talked about depriving it of oxygen. Many Christians live in mortal fear of losing this inner light, this presence of god, this sliver of god, within them. What is the inner light?
John 1:1-5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
This begins the idea that in each of us is an inner light—what Jesus would probably call the holy spirit, what Acts describes as a “flame.” How does blaspheming, denying, extinguishing this flame come about? How is it possible? Can it be relit if it is extinguished?
In the passage from John, above, it is a penetrating light that overcomes darkness. That passage continues:
John 1:6-10
There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light. There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.
The inner light seems to be at the heart of unpardonable sin. If grace is as powerful as (in our recent discussions) we have made it out to be—as god has made it out to be—how is it then that this flame can be extinguished? And what is our personal responsibility for keeping the flame alight and in view, not smothered or extinguished or hidden under a bushel?
Harry: You commit the unpardonable sin when you disconnect yourself from humanity, when you fence yourself in (or out.) Jesus spent his ministry healing the broken hearts of people who had become disconnected in some way. The one thing we have in common is our humanity. The most disconnected I have ever been was when I shut out my fellow church members who, I thought, did not possess the light, the Truth. That is unpardonable sin. That is blasphemy.
Rimon: The unpardonable sin is when you blaspheme against the source of all life. In effect, you are cursing life. You are saying you don’t want it. You reject creation. You reject your own creation.
Harry: Why is there a wall between Israeli and Palestinian? What does it mean, and what does it matter, to have a nationality? Is there not a connection at a deeper level? Of course there is, but we set up barriers.
Don: What is the purpose of the inner light, assuming it has been put there by god? Why is it there? As long as it is there, we seem to be in a position of grace with god. But if the light goes out, the grace is gone. Where does it go? Who is responsible for keeping the flame alight? Can it be rekindled if it does go out? Who can rekindle it?
Michael: Is the unpardonable sin:
a. Any sin that extinguishes the light, or
b. The extinguishing of light itself?
Rimon: In Islam, a Moslem friend has told me, you can be forgiven for blaspheming against god, but if you blaspheme against the prophet Mohamed, you cannot be forgiven.
David: It seems to me it that the word “unpardonable” could be taken to convey either a judgment or a statement of fact (or perhaps both.) I think it is a statement, a description, of the fact of the matter: If you extinguish the light—if you cut god off, if you erect a barrier between you and god—he plainly and simply cannot reach you to pardon you, even if he wants to (and all the signs are that he does want to.) It’s just a matter of fact, not a matter of judgment. The sin is “unpardonable” not because it is judged to be as bad as bad can be, but because if you commit it, you make pardon impossible, in an almost physical sense.
Harry: Again, you cut yourself off from god when you cut yourself off from humanity.
Robin: in Matthew 12:33-37 Jesus continues:
“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil. But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”
It would seem that Jesus is judging the Pharisees for their ceremony and selfishness. They are not the good tree that they think they are, and it seems that Jesus is calling them out, by defining what is good and bad as something we know in our hearts.
Alice: To be unpardonable is to know the Truth but reject it. The Pharisees knew in their hearts that they were wrong in rejecting Jesus, yet they did so brazenly, publicly, and in their hearts.
Robin: Were they then rejecting the conviction of the holy spirit, that might be trying to tell them that their thinking was wrong and they should be humbling themselves, instead of lying about what they knew to be the truth?
Don: What is the purpose, what is the work, of the inner light? It seems central to our discussion. Why does it “lighteth every man”?
Alice: It’s not up to us to accept or reject it. We may or may not comprehend it, but to comprehend it and then deny it is unpardonable.
Robin: If we can equate ego with sin, as the book The Enoch Factor suggests we can, can we equate holy spirit with superego? Is holy spirit the inner light, the context for telling us whether something is good or bad?
Harry: I would take one additional step back and ask what is the purpose of Man? Our lives are about helping others, which leads to a better life for ourselves. Religion, and the Pharisees, care only for control, not about living the truly good life.
Rimon: Is it possible to cut yourself off from him, from the good life? How can god’s grace allow it?
David: The inner light is our connection with god. It is the interface between our earthly life and life in the kingdom of heaven. There is either:
A. Life followed by death followed by nothing; or
B. Life followed by death followed by an afterlife.
We can be reasonably sure that death follows life. But we cannot know what follows death. It is purely a matter of faith that there is something rather than nothing, and it necessitates faith in there being a god to bestow that something. But if you have no faith, you have as a matter of fact cut yourself off from god, and for you there can be no afterlife. It’s not a matter of god’s judgment, it’s just a matter of (meta)physics! It is supremely logical.
Don: Jesus’s statement that there is no consequence to blaspheming the son of god but enormous consequence to blaspheming the holy spirit perhaps supports the “judgment vs. matter of fact” argument.
Alice: The Pharisees were responding to the people, who were asking if this was the son of David. They were trying to undermine the genealogy and mislead the people. This wasn’t just an innocent mistake.
Don: We’ll pursue these questions further next week.
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