Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit: Then and Now

Ever wondered about the “unpardonable sin”? Many believe this particular sin is so heinous once committed a person is forever cut off from the possibility of redemption.

This is enough to strike fear into the heart of any Christian.

Is this sin that big of a deal? Yes. But the real question is whether the sin in question is a one-time action.  After all, sin isn’t merely an act, but also a condition.

The passage in which Christ mentions the sin is unique in one way, and not unique in another. The unique sense is found when we think through the historical circumstance which triggered Christ’s mention of this sin. Here’s the passage:

And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.” And he called them to him and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.

“Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—for they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.” (Mark 3:22-30, with parallels in Matt. 12:31-32, and Lk. 12:10)

The act in question that draws Christ’s strong language is unique. Jesus, the  Messianic King had appeared on the scene and was inaugurating the promised kingdom of God through the power of the promised end-time endowment of the Spirit. The Jewish leaders were watching the climactic moment of redemptive history and attributed it to the power of Satan. It was the equivalent of equating the work of the Holy Spirit, through the actions of God’s royal son, with witchcraft.  This specific sin is unique because the King isn’t on the earth any longer. We couldn’t commit it if we wanted to.

But the underlying condition that lead the Jewish leaders to make such a rash and damming judgment persists to our day as well. The problem wasn’t a single act, it was a spiritual condition that they (culpably) suffered from. They were witnessing the signs of the in-breaking of the “age to come” in front of their faces and suppressed it, choosing instead to blind themselves to the truth rather than “see.” This is a persistent hardness of heart that is hostile to the Holy Spirit’s convicting ministry to the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (Jn. 16:8). They loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. This kind of condition is irredeemable and unforgivable because it puts the person outside of the sphere in which forgiveness can he obtained. As N. T. Wright has put it,

To say such a thing ['This is the work of the devil.'] was to paint oneself into a corner from which there was no escape. Once define the battle for your liberation as the work of the enemy, and you will never be free. (N.T. Wright, Jesus And The Victory Of God, 454)

Where there is no repentance, and only hostility to God’s singular provision for redemption (“blasphemy”) there is no forgiveness. And there is no do-over, there is neither forgiveness now nor in the eternal statement, “they are guilty of an eternal sin.”

The Holy Spirit: The Divine Strategist for Holy War

Jesus was the perfect human being. But he was also the messianic King, fighting the battle against the Great Dragon on our behalf.  How did he do it? What was his secret? What was the Power that enabled the Messiah to take dominion over all his enemies? According to Sinclair Ferguson it was the Holy Spirit. I provide the following quote at length because it’s just that good:

It has been commonplace to interpret Jesus’s temptations as analogous to, almost a model for, attempting of the Christian: Christ was tempted as we are, but resisted; therefore we should resist in similar ways. But this leads to a partial and negative interpretation of his experiences. His temptations constitute an epochal event. They are not merely personal, but cosmic. They constitute the tempting of the last Adam. True, there is a common bond between his temptations and ours: he is really and personally confronted by dark powers. But the significance of the event does not lie in the ways in which our temptations are like his, but in the particularity and uniqueness of his experiences. He was driven into the wilderness has an assault force. His testing was set in the context of a holy war in which he entered the enemies domain, absorbed his attacks and sends him into retreat (Mt. 4:11, and especially Lk. 4:13). In the power of the Spirit, Jesus advanced as the divine the warrior, the god of battles who fights on behalf of his people and for their salvation (cf. Ex. 15:3; Ps. 98:1). His triumph demonstrated that ‘the kingdom of God is near’ and that the messianic conflict had begun.

The Lukan narrative bridges the gap between the baptism in Jordan and the temptations in the wilderness with a genealogical table tracing Jesus’ lineage back to Adam (Lk. 3:23-38). Hear the inclusio of the whole of human history between Adam and Jesus suggests that the temptation in victory of the latter are to be interpreted in the light of the testing and defeat of the former with all its baneful entail. The second man-Son thus undid what was done by the first man–son; he obeyed and overcame as the last Adam and now no further representative figure is needed.

The conflict in which Jesus engaged is, therefore, to be seen as a re-run of Eden. Like Adam before him, Jesus was incited to ‘be as God’ and to reject his word. But he chose the way of God glorifying obedience and suffering instead. His resistance and faithfulness contrast also with the 40 years of wandering and testing in which the people grieved the spirit rather than conformed to his guidance (cf. Is. 63:7-14). They rebelled against the Spirit who drove them out of Egypt and grieved him; on the contrary, Jesus, anointed with the Spirit was carried obediently and overcomingly through the test of the wilderness’s evil day.

Thus, in the power of the Spirit in the inhospitable desert which the world had become the first Adam’s sin, the second man, the eschatological man (ho eschatos Adam, 1 Cor. 15:45), we gained enemy – occupied territory. The immediate consequence is that Jesus was able sovereignly to dismiss the devil (‘Away from me, Satan!’ Mt. 4:10), who was forced to depart until he could find ‘an opportune time’ (Lk. 4:13). The longer-term consequence was that, having beaten back Satan on his ‘own territory’, Jesus is now in a position to strike fear into his legions and cast them out.

…The Spirit’s role in Jesus’ ministry is now evident. He serves as the heavenly cartographer and divine strategist who maps out the battle terrain and directs the Warrior–King to the strategic point of conflict. He is Christ’s adjutant-general in the holy war which is waged throughout the incarnation.

This Jesus, Roman–general-like, returns from his hidden conquest ‘to Galilee into power of the Spirit’ (Lk. 4:14). The immediate effect of the fact that ‘God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power’ was that ‘he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him’ (Acts 10:38; cf. 4:37). For Luke, the whole of Jesus’s ministry following his baptism is exercised in the power of the messianic spirit. He has been anointed to engage in a power conflict. But in him the final year of Jubilee as outcome; there is freedom (Lk. 4:18-19, cf. Lv. 25:8-55). The result is that his preaching has authority (Lk. 4:32), his word exorcising and liberating power (Lk. 4:33-37), and his touch heals ‘all’ (Lk. 4:40). Nothing is outside of his dominion. The wonders he performs are accomplished in the energy and by the presence of the Holy Spirit (cf. Matt. 12:28). That is why they serve as signs of the coming messianic age in which the Spirit’s power will be fully manifested and all nature will be healed. - Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit, 48-50

The Holy Spirit and the Age to Come

What does the Holy Spirit do for the Christian? The short answer is “a lot!” In his work The Bible and The Future (one of my personal favorites) Anthony Hoekema highlights one of the things the Spirit does in the life of the believer: He brings God’s future into the present their present life experience.

Another way of putting this is to say that, for Paul, the Spirit means that breaking in of the future into the present, so that the powers, privileges, and blessings of the future age are already available to us through the Spirit…”… In other words, on the basis of the work of Christ, the power of the redeemed the future has been released to act in the present in the person of the Holy Spirit.”

For Paul, therefore the reception of the Spirit means that one has become a participant in the new mode of existence associated with the future age, and now partakes of the “powers of the age to come.” Yet Paul would insist that what the Spirit gives is only a foretaste a far greater blessings to come. It is for this reason that he calls of the Spirit the “firstfruits” and the “guarantee” of future blessings which shall far surpass those of the present life. (Anthony Hoekema, The Bible and the Future, 58)

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