THE UNFORGIVABLE SIN Mark 3:20-30 by Andy Manning

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1 THE UNFORGIVABLE SIN Mark 3:20-30 by Andy Manning The title of this article is The Unforgivable Sin. This is important for three reasons: All of us have sinned. Without God s forgiveness the punishment for sin is eternal hell. And there is one sin that is unforgivable. Let s take these one at a time. Reason number one: All of us have sinned. There are only two types of people: Sinners who think they are good, and sinners who know they are sinners. Either way, we are all sinners. The Bible says in Romans 3:23, For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God s glorious standard. 1 1 John 1:8 says, If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. I think it s funny because some people will admit to have sinned, but they won t admit to being a sinner; because if you call yourself a sinner, that makes you sound like a bad person. But anybody who refuses to admit to being a sinner is simply ignorant of the Bible, because the more your read the Bible, the clearer God s standard of goodness becomes, and the clearer it is that you are sinner. I used to have a pastor who got earned his D.Min. (Doctor of Ministry degree). When he gave a speech at a celebration party I remember him saying, The more I ve learned, the more I realize how little I know. It s the same with sin and the Bible. The more you study the Bible, the more you realize how sinful you really are. If you think you re a good person it s because you are measuring yourself against your own standard of goodness rather than the goodness of God which is impossible to meet. We tend to look at the outside, but God looks at the heart. Don t forget about sins like greed, jealousy, bitterness, anger, harsh words, lust, laziness, gossip and complaining are all sins as well. We re all sinners. What is sin? The Amplified Bible defines sin as the breaking, violating of God s law by transgression or neglect. To put it simply, sin is when you do something God said don t do. That s called a sin of commission. And sin is when you fail to do something that God told you to do. That s called a sin of omission. And we re all guilty of both. To better understand sin, it s helpful to study the Greek words for sin in the New Testament. The most popular Greek word in the New Testament for sin is hamartano (verb), and hamartia (noun). The verb hamartano (43x) means falling short or missing the mark. One time my family went bowling together, and one of my youngest kids was so small at the time that their ball didn t it reach the pins; it slowly made its way about halfway down the lane and then just 1 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois All rights reserved. 1

2 stopped. It fell short. That s what the Bible says about sin. Sin is falling short of God s moral standard. I like to use the Grand Canyon as an analogy. God s moral standard is being able to jump all the way across the Grand Canyon, something nobody can do. Some might be able to jump farther than others, but no matter how good you are, we all fall short. The verb hamartano also means to miss the mark. Think of a target, and God s moral standard for us is the bull s eye. To be perfect is to hit the bull s eye every time without fail. To sin is to miss the mark; it is to miss the bull s eye of God s moral standard. Some people might be closer to the bull s eye than others; some of us might hit the bull s eye more often than others, but we ve all missed the mark. A second word in the New Testament for sin is the noun hamartia (173x). It s the most common word for sin in the New Testament; it s the noun version of the word we just looked at, hamartano. Hamartia has a slightly different meaning, to break God s law. God s law is like a priceless gift that He s given us for our own wellbeing, like a brand new ipad or iphone, or better yet like a brand new car. Sin is taking that gift, that ipad or iphone, or that brand new car, and breaking it; totally destroying it. God says, Here s my gift to you; my law; do this and you ll be happy and flourish. Sin is taking it and throwing on the ground, crushing it with your foot, and then pounding on it with a sledgehammer. Ironically, when we sin, God s law isn t actually broken; it still stands. Instead, when we sin we re the ones who get broken. Breaking God s law breaks us. Sin leads to suffering; holiness leads to happiness. When we disobey God we think we re breaking free from God s control, but in reality we re breaking God s law and as a result we get broken. You can t break God s law without getting hurt. The third most common word for sin in the Bible is the noun paraptoma (19x). It comes from two words put together: Para, which means outside, and pipto, which means to fall. You put those together and it means to fall outside. That s what paraptoma means; to trespass; to transgress; to step outside the bounds of God s law. God s law is like a boundary, or a fence that He put up. And the fence of God s law is not to prevent us from having fun; it s for our protection. Sin is trespassing, or transgressing, or stepping outside the bounds of God s law. It s climbing over the fence. A good example of this is sex. God created sex to be a wonderful gift, but He placed protect boundaries around sex called marriage. God s will is that all sexual activity physical, visual and mental be reserved for marriage. Sin is taking our sexuality out of the bounds of marriage, God s will. And the result is always pain. It s like fire. Fire is good if you keep it in the fireplace. But when you take it out of the fireplace it destroys. So that s what sin is, and we ve all sinned. A second reason this article is important is that without God s forgiveness the punishment for sin is eternal hell. The Bible says in Romans 6:23, For the wages of sin is death, but the free 2

3 gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. What does death mean? It means physical death, but it also means spiritual death eternal hell. 1 Corinthians 6:9 says, Don t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? We ve all sinned, and, and the punishment for sin is eternal hell. But the good news is that God, through the person and work of Christ, forgives our sins. Jesus was punished on the cross for our sins and then rose again, and when we put our faith in Him as our Savior and Lord, God forgives our sins. However, the third reason why this topic is important is because there is one sin that is unforgiveable. Without God s forgiveness the punishment for sin is eternal hell, and there is one unforgivable sin. And so we need to know what this sin is, and how can we make sure that we don t commit it? The unforgivable sin comes up in Mark 3: Let s read it. 20 One time Jesus entered a house, and the crowds began to gather again. Soon he and his disciples couldn t even find time to eat. 21 When his family heard what was happening, they tried to take him away. He s out of his mind, they said. 22 But the teachers of religious law who had arrived from Jerusalem said, He s possessed by Satan, the prince of demons. That s where he gets the power to cast out demons. Jesus is probably in the city of Capernaum in a house teaching and doing miracles. He s probably healing sick people and casting out demons. His own family thought He was crazy. At first they didn t believe He was the Son of God. It wasn t until after His death and resurrection that many people truly understood and believed in Him. They didn t think Jesus was a liar; they thought He was a lunatic; they thought He was crazy. But even worse than that, the scribes, or the teachers of religious law accused Jesus of being empowered by Satan. The actual word in the Greek text is the word Beelzeboul, which is a hard word to define. The best interpretation is that it means the prince or lord of the demons, which is a reference to Satan. In other words, they were accusing Jesus of being in league with the devil; they were accusing Jesus of being on the same team with the devil. That of course didn t make sense, which is what Jesus next comments are about. 23 Jesus called them over and responded with an illustration. How can Satan cast out Satan? he asked. 24 A kingdom divided by civil war will collapse. 25 Similarly, a family splintered by feuding will fall apart. 26 And if Satan is divided and fights against himself, how can he stand? He would never survive. 3

4 In other words, Jesus was saying, All this time I ve been healing people, and helping people, and teaching people to obey God, and I ve been casting out demons. This is the very opposite of what the devil wants to do. His mission is to kill, steal and destroy. Why would I be working against the devil if we were on the same team? And then Jesus says something really cool. 27 Let me illustrate this further. Who is powerful enough to enter the house of a strong man like Satan and plunder his goods? Only someone even stronger someone who could tie him up and then plunder his house. This is really important. Jesus is saying that not only He is not in league with the devil, but He is more powerful than Satan. He admits that the devil is powerful, referring to him as the strong man. Jesus said that He has entered Satan s house which is the world; the Bible calls the devil the god of this world in 2 Corinthians 4:4. And He has tied him up, or restricted his power, and plundered his house. The Greek word for plundered means to carry off. Jesus has carried off the devil s possessions the people that the devil had under His control. The Bible teaches that apart from Christ we are under the control of the devil, but when we put our faith in Jesus, we are rescued from the devil and placed in the kingdom of God. 2 Bottom line: Jesus is mightier than the devil. If you are a Christ-follower, you don t need to be afraid of the devil; just stay close to Jesus. Next, Jesus gets to the unforgivable sin. 28 I tell you the truth, all sin and blasphemy can be forgiven, 29 but anyone who blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. This is a sin with eternal consequences. 30 He told them this because they were saying, He s possessed by an evil spirit. What did Jesus mean? Jesus was speaking directly to the scribes, the teachers of religious law who had just accused Him of being in league with Satan. And He warned them that rejecting the Holy Spirit s revelation of Christ is the unforgivable sin. In other words, the one unforgivable sin is that of rejecting the Holy Spirit s revelation of Christ to you. Let s break this down into three points. 1. There is only one unforgivable sin. This is the good news. Jesus starts out in verse 28 by saying that all sin and blasphemy can be forgiven. All sin. All blasphemy. What is blasphemy? Blasphemy just means to tell lies or say disrespectful things, especially about God. Jesus says that all sin, all blasphemy can be forgiven. 2 See Colossians 1:13-14; 1 John 3:8. 4

5 This means that the unforgivable sin is not a sin mentioned elsewhere in the Bible. It s not murder, because Moses and David, two of God s greatest servants had committed murder. It s not adultery, because King David did that, too. Besides, Jesus said that lusting your mind is just as bad as adultery, so we re all adulterers in that sense. And the unforgivable sin is not suicide. Somewhere along the way somebody made that up that you can t be forgiven for killing yourself. While suicide is a horrible sin, there is nothing in the Bible that says it is an unforgivable sin. As well, some people in history have said that the unforgivable sin is denying Christ. That is, if being threatened with persecution, and they force your to deny Christ or suffer the consequences, and you do it, then you ll lose your soul. But that s not the case. Jesus said in Matthew 10:32-33, Everyone who acknowledges me publicly here on earth, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. 33 But everyone who denies me here on earth, I will also deny before my Father in heaven. What is Jesus talking about? He can t be talking about just denying Him one time in the face of persecution for fear or your life, because that s what the apostle Peter did right before Jesus was crucified. Do you remember? Peter denied that He knew Jesus three times on the same night, and he wasn t even being tempted. Yet afterward Jesus chose Peter to be the leader of the Christian church. Jesus is obviously referring to denying Him persistently throughout your life as Savior and Lord. The unforgivable sin is also not the same thing as grieving the Holy Spirit or quenching the Holy Spirit. Remember that as a Christian the Holy Spirit lives in you. The moment you get saved Jesus baptizes you with the Holy Spirit; He places the Holy Spirit to dwell within you. And the Bible says when you choose to sin, you actually grieve or bring sorrow to the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:30). The Greek word for grieve actually means to get one s feelings hurt. As a Christian, you can either please the Holy Spirit or make Him said. Not only that, but 1 Thessalonians 5:19 says that when you live in sin you quench or stifle the Holy Spirit. You can either be Spirit-filled, or Spirit-empowered, or you can choose to sin and thus quench, or put out the fire of the Holy Spirit. That s when you lose His strength until you repent. But none of that is unforgivable. So if there is only one unforgivable sin, what is it? That brings us to the second point. 2. The Holy Spirit s work is to reveal Christ. The unforgivable sin has to do with the Holy Spirit. One of the Holy Spirit s roles or functions is to reveal Christ to us; or to help us see Christ for who He truly is so that we can accept Him. The Bible teaches what theologians call total depravity. That our sin doesn t just mean that we will one day have to be punished if we don t accept Christ, but our sin is a terrible disease. Ephesians 2:1-3 says that we are dead in our sins, under the control of the devil. Ephesians 4:17-19 says that we are hopelessly confused; our minds are full of darkness; our minds are 5

6 closed to God; our hearts are hardened against God; we have no sense of shame; only a lust for more sin. And Romans 3 that nobody seeks God. But that s where the Holy Spirit comes in. God graciously sends the Holy Spirit to wake us up, to open our eyes, to clear our minds, and to try to convince us to follow Jesus. In John 16:8 Jesus said that the Holy Spirit s work would be to convict the world of its sin, and of God s righteousness, and of the coming judgment. Imagine that you are a prisoner in the deepest corner of a terrorist camp. You are in chains, you are gagged so you can t call out, your ears are plugged so you can t hear anything, and you are drugged so that you are weak and delusional and you can t think strait. In this state you are completely powerless to save yourself. In fact, you ve been in captivity for so long that you ve gotten comfortable with your surroundings and you ve begun to sympathize with the terrorists so that even someone tried a rescue you would only fight them off. But here comes the hero. A Navy Seal. He sneaks into the camp and finds his way to your prison cell. He removes the chains, the ear plugs, the blindfold, and he injects a serum that helps you to think straight and be calm. Then he shines a light to show you where you are, and begins to remind you of who you are and where you come from and what happened. And then he offers to secretly carry you out of the camp. 3 That s what the Holy Spirit does for us. We are so stained by sin, so sin-depraved, that we are helpless to save ourselves, or to even seek Christ on our own until He begins to work in our hearts, revealing Christ to us. And what I want you to see is that is exactly what the Holy Spirit was doing through Jesus miracles and exorcisms. Do you know why the Holy Spirit empowered Jesus to do miracles and exorcisms? It wasn t to help people. If that were the case, Jesus would have healed everyone. In fact, all God has to do is blink and all the diseases in the world will be instantly cured. But that s not God s plan right now. It will be in the end, but not now. The reason the Holy Spirit enabled Jesus to do miracles and exorcisms was to reveal the identity of Christ to prove to people that Jesus is the Son of God. So in this story in Mark 3 the Holy Spirit was using the miracles and exorcisms of Jesus to reveal Christ to all those present, including the scribes. By the grace of God, the Holy Spirit was using miracles and exorcisms to reveal the Son of God.But, even after all those miracles and exorcisms that they were able to witness first hand, they still rejected Christ. And that brings us to the third point. 3. The unforgivable sin is rejecting the Holy Spirit s revelation of Christ to you. 3 I came across this wonderful analogy of the Arminian understanding of prevenient grace in the book, Why I am not a Calvinist, by Jerry L. Walls and Joseph R. Dongell. 6

7 In reality, the only unforgivable sin is rejecting Christ as the Son of God, the Savior and Lord of all. But in this context Jesus calls that very rejection the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Because that s what is happening when a person rejects Christ. At some point God sends the Holy Spirit to each person to reveal Christ; to make it very clear that Jesus is the Son of God, the Savior of the world, the way, the truth and the life. This may only happen once in a person s life; in some cases it occurs multiple times. But the Holy Spirit gives that person all the information, and all the evidence they need to be rescued from sin. And if a person rejects Christ in spite of that clear revelation, that s blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, and it s the unforgivable sin. That s what the scribes were doing. The scribes had seen the sinlessness of Jesus. They had seen Him perform miracles. That had seen Him cast out demons. They had heard His amazing sermons with their own ears. Yet they rejected Christ. It would be same as that Navy Seal taking off the chains, removing the blindfold, the ear plugs, and injecting the serum so the person would be coherent and less hostile, and then saying, I want to rescue you from this horrible place. Will you let me carry you? And the prisoner responding, No. Get away from me. I d rather die in this prison than go with you. It s unthinkable, but that s what people do with Christ every day. Author Geoff Ashley wrote, Blasphemy of the Spirit involves knowledgeable, willful and continued rebellion against the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Pharisees had seen the Spirit working through Christ and yet rejected His utterly obvious work. Their denial was a decided response to the overt testimony of the Spirit. It was not out of ignorance or indecision. To blaspheme the Spirit is to reject the very One Who illuminates our hearts to faith and repentance. Sam Storms wrote, This was not a one-time, momentary slip or inadvertent mistake in judgment, but a persistent, life-long rebellion in the face of inescapable truth. Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is not a careless act but a calloused attitude Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, therefore, is not just unbelief but unashamed unbelief that arises not from ignorance of what is true but in defiance of what one knows beyond doubt to be true. It is not mere denial, but determined denial; not mere rejection, but wanton, willful, wicked, wide-eyed rebellion. This brings up an important point. People don t reject Christ for lack of evidence, but for love of sin. There is this idea out there that faith is the result of proof; we believe because we ve seen enough evidence. And that the people who don t believe haven t seen enough evidence. Not true. The Holy Spirit can use evidence. Lee Strobel was journalist for big newspaper in Chicago, and he was an atheist when his wife became a Christian. So he decided to use his journalistic skills to prove to his wife that Christianity was a bunch of baloney, and he specifically sought out to disprove the resurrection because all of Christianity hinges on it. After months of research and interviews the evidence was so overwhelming that he became a 7

8 Christian and is now a widely popular Christian author and preacher. The Holy Spirit can use the evidence to reveal Christ. But people don t reject Christ for lack of evidence, but for love of sin. The scribes in Mark 3 had as much evidence as anyone will ever have, yet they rejected Christ. Why? Because they were the lords of Judaism, and they didn t want to follow Christ as Lord. I have a coworker who is calls himself an atheist. Why doesn t he believe in Christ? Is it for lack of evidence? Nope. It s for love of sin. Recently I heard some guys talking to him about God and he said, I wouldn t believe in Jesus even if He personally revealed Himself to me because I won t be a slave to anybody. When I was in high school I was riding in the car with a friend of mine. I really loved him and wanted him to be saved, so I asked him. There are two reasons people don t follow Jesus. One, they just don t believe. Two, they just don t want to give up their sin. Which is it for you? You know what he said? He honestly said, I just love my sin too much. That was about 15 years ago, and the past fifteen years have been hell for him. His life has been a total wreck. I pray that He follows Jesus before it s too late. The one unforgivable sin is that of rejecting the Holy Spirit s revelation of Christ to you. At some point in your life, and in mine, it may be only once, or if we re fortunate it may be on multiple occasions, the Holy Spirit will lovingly reveal Christ to us. He will make it plain as day that Jesus is the Son of God. He will give us all the evidence we need. And we have a choice. Will we trust in Christ and let Him rescue us? Or will we reject Christ? What do we do with this information? First, how do you know if you ve committed the unforgivable sin? If you are a follower of Jesus, then you don t need to worry about the unforgivable sin. If you trust in Jesus as God s payment for your sin, you have nothing to worry about. As Sam Storms wrote, the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is not a one-time action, but an on-going attitude, a lifestyle, a consistent pattern of rejecting the Holy Spirit s revelation to you that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Remember Romans 8:1, So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. If you trust in Christ as your Savior and King, then you have the promise that God has adopted you as His child, and when you die and stand before Christ to be judged, you won t be condemned, only rewarded. Second, if you are not a Christ-follower, why not? I want to challenge you to truly think about it. Why won t you trust in Jesus? Is it because you don t believe, or because you don t want to believe? Is it for lack of evidence, or for love of sin. For many, if not most, if not all, if you are truly honest, the real reason is that you don t want to give up control of your life. You want to be captain of your ship. You don t want to hand over the wheel. But let me tell you what the Bible says in Philippians 2:10-11, That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the 8

9 glory of God the Father. One day, you will bow to Jesus and declare that He is Lord. You can bow now and go to heaven, or you can bow later in hell. I plead with you to believe in Jesus and hand over the steering wheel of your life to Him today. This may be the last time that the Holy Spirit knocks on the door of your heart and offers to rescue. 9