The "Unpardonable" Sin: Part 1

A friend recently wrote me and asked me about the “sin unto death” and the “unpardonable sin.” It seems he had become involved in a discussion with another individual and wasn’t sure how to interpret the biblical passages on those matters. It seems that his friend thought that a believer could blaspheme the Holy Spirit, thus committing the “unpardonable sin” or “sin unto death,” and thereby lose his salvation.

So after some consideration, I have decided to share with you what I wrote back to my friend so that he could give sound biblical instruction to his friend. Because of the length of the subject, I will divide it into two posts with a few days in between each; so before you start disagreeing with me, wait until both posts are up and running because you might find that the second one answers the burning questions you might have from the first one.

There has been a great deal of misunderstanding about the “unpardonable” sin and the “sin unto death” among the evangelical Christian community. The two passages of Scripture which deal with these matters are Matthew 12:31-32 and 1 John 5:16-17. Let’s begin with the Matthew 12 passage, and save the 1 John passage for the second post.

Few passages of Scripture have been more misinterpreted and misunderstood than Matthew 12:31-32. Because the content of Jesus’ statement in these verses carries such an extreme result, it is critical that we interpret and understand them correctly. First of all, put these verses in their context. Jesus is addressing the Pharisees who had just accused Him of casting out demons by the power of Satan. They were, in effect, saying, “This man is not God; His power comes from Satan.”

Jesus first stated that “any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men.” Although blasphemy is a sin, in these verses, sin and blasphemy are treated separately, with blasphemy being portrayed as the most extreme form of sin. Sin is seen as the whole range of immoral and ungodly thoughts and actions, but blasphemy is seen as the conscious denouncing and rejection of God. Blasphemy is defiant irreverence, the uniquely terrible sin of intentionally and openly speaking evil against holy God or defaming and mocking Him.

But Jesus said that even blasphemy is a forgivable sin, just as any other sin is forgiven when it is confessed and repented of. An unbeliever who blasphemes God can be forgiven. The apostle Paul stated in 1 Timothy 1:13-14, that “even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor…I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief; and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant, with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus.” Even a believer can blaspheme, since any thought or word that disgraces or demeans the Lord’s name constitutes blasphemy. To question God’s goodness, wisdom, fairness, truthfulness, love, or faithfulness is a form of blasphemy. All of that is forgivable by grace (1 John 1:9).

But Jesus said that there is one exception: “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven.” Even the person who blasphemes Jesus, who dares to “speak a word against the Son of Man…shall be forgiven.” The title “Son of Man” refers to Jesus’ humanity, and if a person fails to see Jesus as anything more than just another man, such a word against Him can be forgiven. When a person rejects Christ with LESS than full exposure to the evidence of His deity, he may yet be forgiven of that sin, if after gaining fuller light, he then believes.

But blasphemy against the Spirit was something more serious and rendered the subject unredeemable. It reflected not only unbelief, but determined unbelief; that is, the refusal, after having seen all the evidence necessary to gain complete understanding, to the point that one should consider believing in Christ. This was blasphemy against Jesus in His deity. It was against the Spirit of God who uniquely indwelt and empowered Him. It reflected determined rejection of Jesus as the Messiah against every evidence and argument. They had seen the Truth incarnate, but knowingly chose to reject Him and condemn Him. Thus, it demonstrated an absolute and permanent refusal to believe, which resulted in the loss of all opportunity to ever be forgiven. Thus, those who blasphemed the Holy Spirit were those who saw His divine power working in and through Jesus but willfully refused to accept the implications of that revelation and, in some cases, attributed that power to Satan.

So then, blasphemy in Matthew 12 has NOTHING to do with losing one’s salvation. First of all, the Pharisees were never saved to begin with. Anyone who rejects Jesus Christ as God and attributes His power to Satan is not a believer. And no true believer would ever do that. Scripture is very clear that we cannot lose our salvation (cf. Rom. 8:38-39, John 10:28-30), primarily because our salvation does not depend on our ability, but on God’s ability. No human is capable of keeping themselves saved. Everyone would fail miserably. But our salvation is based wholly and entirely on God’s power and action to save us (cf. Ephesians 2:1-9), so those who are truly saved are kept by Him and Jesus said, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me” (John 6:37).

Therefore, because we are kept in the state of grace and redemption by Christ, we cannot lose our salvation for any reason. Even when we blaspheme God by doubting or questioning His grace, mercy, love, or faithfulness to us, He will forgive us. And a true believer will never accuse Jesus of being satanic in nature. If a person claims to be a believer, but seemingly turns away to a life of sin and degradation and completely rejects Jesus as being God, that is the evidence that that person was never a true believer in the first place.

Next time, we’ll deal with the “sin unto death” in 1 John 5:16-17.

Maintaining Your Integrity at Work

I know of two men who worked for the government for most of their adult lives. Both achieved high positions of authority because of their honesty, integrity, and planning skills.

Both worked for bosses who were known for ruling with an iron fist; who often had subordinates terminated for virtually no reason. Yet both men continued to maintain their personal integrity, and even though the rest of the people they worked with played the political games and other things that go on in government, they did not.

Now, these men didn’t have what we might consider an easy time of it. One of them was working for another high government official as that man’s chief of staff, when he was falsely accused of rape and unjustly sent to prison. After spending a few years there, he was finally pardoned and received a special appointment to a high government position dealing with management and distribution of food supplies.

The other man became an important government official after performing a special service for the head of the national government. He later survived a major political change of power within his government in which his boss was terminated and a new boss installed. The new boss recognized this man’s skill and kept him in his high position of authority.

During the tenure of his second boss, this man was even bounced out of office and was supposed to be terminated because his political enemies got his boss to enact a law they knew he would violate. He was later vindicated, restored to his former position, and his foes and their supporters were terminated.

Who were these two men who give us an example of how we are to work at our places of employment, many of which are often filled with political gamesmanship and internal wheeling-and-dealing?

They are Joseph and Daniel, two of the foremost characters of the Old Testament. Both became the equivalent of the prime minister to the king in the nations of Egypt and Chaldea (later Medo-Persia), respectively.

So what does this have to say to us? That regardless of what may happen to us or around us at our places of employment, we are to be characterized by integrity, honesty, and forthrightness. We need not approve of the actions of our bosses or co-workers, but we must not behave in a manner that gives them any opportunity to justifiably accuse us of improper acts or omissions.

This does not mean that we have to be obnoxious, difficult, or hard to get along with in our dealings with our supervisors, coworkers, and the public. Rather, we should be known for being honorable, considerate, and generally easy to work with. However, we must never compromise on the standards of truthfulness and integrity. Even when we are false accused, those standards must never be neglected.

Remember, someone may take away your pay, they may even take away your job; but that will have no impact on your standing with God, and most of the time, it will have no lasting impact on your reputation with others. But if they succeed in getting you to give up your integrity, you will bring dishonor to the name of our Lord, and you will have lost your good name—and you can never gain that back.

Be like Joseph and Daniel. Work hard for your employer, but stay true to God’s standards of righteousness in everything you do, and trust Him to vindicate you when things go wrong. You will reap the benefits of a clean conscience, and an honorable reputation with God and men.

Presuppositional Epistemology

Over the past couple of days, I've been thinking about how necessary it is to examine the presuppositions upon which one's theology is based. The church today finds itself in a quandary over the importance of theology, with those in the charismatic movement finding it sufficient to have a warm, positive, affirming feeling toward Jesus, and those in the Emerging Church movement rejecting any systematization of doctrinal truth because of their rejection of certainty. Consequently, many who claim to be Christians have no grasp of authoritative biblical orthodoxy and how it should impact their lives.

A basic understanding of theology is necessarily crucial for every believer because truth and experience are related. While some would deny or question this connection, in the long run the truth will affect our experience. As Millard Erickson explains, the man who falls from the top of a ten story building may think as he passes each window on the way down, “Everything’s okay; I’m doing just fine,” and may mean it, but eventually the facts of the matter will catch up with his experience. Therefore, since the meaning and truth of the Christian faith will eventually have ultimate bearing on our experience, every believer must come to grips with them.

Foundational to the process of establishing what one believes about theology is epistemology; that is, the presuppositions and foundations of knowledge. In other words, it is the study of how one proposes to know what he knows and what his source of truth is going to be.

Throughout the history of theological study, two approaches have been taken. One begins by presupposing the object of knowledge—God; and the other begins by presupposing the means of knowledge—the Bible. However, to do such has often resulted in misunderstandings about the nature of each. For example, presupposing the existence of God without any sort of special revelation will end in a theology of deism; that is, an impersonal god whose existence and nature can be comprehended by human reason and personal experience. Man cannot know God apart from His special revelation of Himself, found in the Bible and in His Son, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:1-3).

On the other hand, presupposing that man can only know anything about God by means of the Bible can create some theological missteps. One problem is that there are many places in the world where they don't have a Bible. Yet God states in Romans 1:19-20 "that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse" (NASV). The psalmist states, “The heavens declare His righteousness…” (Psalm 50:6, 97:6). So in our foundational epistemology, there must be an acceptance of God's general or natural revelation of Himself. That is not to say that those who only have general revelation are believers or can know Christ apart from the truth of the Gospel, but only that they can know the truth about God which He has revealed about Himself in nature.

Another problem is the difficulty of deciding what revelation is like without some prior idea of what God is like. How one interprets Scripture will be affected by how one conceives of God. If one does not presuppose an infinite, sovereign, all-controlling, true God who has communicated to man, he has no grounds for treating the Bible as more than simply another religious book.

Ultimately, no one will believe either in the God who is revealed in nature and explained in Scripture unless the Holy Spirit enlightens Him to do so. The Spirit uses both general revelation and special revelation to open our eyes to presuppositional truth about God and His Word.

Thus, in my epistemology, rather than beginning with either God or the Bible, I presuppose both as part of my basic thesis. I believe it is impossible for a believer to presuppose the true God without presupposing the truth of the Scriptures, and vice versa. My premise may be stated as such: There exists one Triune God, who by nature is sovereign, holy, loving, all-powerful and all-knowing; and who has revealed Himself to man in nature, history, human personality, and in His acts and words which have been preserved in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament canons. From that basic premise, I then proceed to establish my entire theological and doctrinal understanding through the exegesis of the Scriptures.

The Problem of Evil

I am reading Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, a compilation of essays edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor. The second chapter is by Dr. Mark Talbot, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College. It is titled "All the Good that is Ours in Christ: Seeing God's Gracious Hand in the Hurts Others Do to Us."

This chapter is the clearest, best articulated argument that I have ever read for God's sovereign role in ordaining evil without being the author of it. Using multiple examples from Scripture, Dr. Talbot explains how God's sovereignty extends over everything in creation, including the evil which takes place. From the smallest, most insignificant events such as the sparrow's fall to the execution of Jesus Christ at the hands of evil men, God determines, purposes, and controls everything that exists and everything that occurs. Nothing--no evil person, thing, event, or deed--falls outside God's ordaining will. To say otherwise is to say that God isn't really in control, but rather He is a weak demigod who is incapable of preventing certain events.

I once gave a message on God's sovereignty to a group of Arminians shortly after the Virginia Tech massacre. One man looked at me with pain in his eyes and said, "I have to tell you that I'm struggling with this. What am I supposed to say to 32 sets of parents whose hearts are breaking right now? That God ordained that evil to take place?" My response was that I understood that it was a difficult concept, but to say that the circumstances of Virginia Tech were out of God's control is to diminish the glory of God to a level that renders Him unworthy of our worship. Because He then becomes nothing more than a "Superman" type of character; very powerful, but obviously incapable of preventing certain disasters. That is not the God presented in Scripture who knows all and can do all, including preventing evil if He so chooses. And since He is sovereign and could prevent all evil, but often does not choose to do so, the conclusion must be that He has ordained it and that it somehow fits into His ultimate and infinite purposes, which are incomprehensible to man's finite mind.

My answer wasn't well received that day, but I know I could have given a more complete and well-articulated answer if I had had Dr. Talbot's article as a resource to use in preparing my message. I highly recommend it to you.

Salvation and Man's Will

I am continually amazed by those who teach that man has a part in his salvation. It blows my mind that the same person who will say that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, will also say that even though they were dead in sin with a corrupt fallen nature, they somehow had the ability--on their own--to exercise faith toward Christ.

It doesn't even make good, garden-variety, common sense. If a person is dead, he is completely incapable of responding to anything. He cannot take action of any kind. He can do nothing that will bring new life to himself. And that is precisely the status of mankind as stated in Ephesians 2:1-3. Yet my dear Arminian friends (and I have many) will say, "But somehow man has a part in choosing to exercise faith in Christ. After all, man has a free will to choose or not to choose." But there are serious problems with that perspective.

No creature ever exercises any kind of willful choice that violates its nature. A pig will choose to eat slop and wallow in the mud because that is its nature. A dog returns to eat its vomit because that is the nature of a dog. And fallen, depraved sinful human beings will never will or choose on their own to follow Christ because that would violate their very nature. It is only when God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, regenerates a person and changes his nature that he is able to exercise a willful choice to follow Christ.

From the human perspective, it seems like it was man's choice, but the truth is that it was the Holy Spirit who changed the heart of the man and drew him to Christ so that he then exercised the willful choice of his new nature and chose to follow Christ. So, it is impossible for man to exercise any effort toward his salvation, including the faith to believe. Every aspect of salvation comes wholly and only from our sovereign God who draws those whom He has chosen to His Son. To believe anything else takes away some of the glory from God who deserves all praise for His incomprehensible and marvelous work and gives it to man.