“Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come” (Matthew 12:31-32).
Just what does it mean to blaspheme the Holy Spirit? The editors of the Lutheran Study Bible say that it is, “Extreme slander or curse of the deity.”[1] Under the Law of Moses, there was no forgiveness for blasphemy. The sentence was death: And whoever blasphemes the name of the LORD shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall surely stone him, the stranger as well as him who is born in the land. When he blasphemes the name of the LORD, he shall be put to death.[2] It seems that since blasphemy has to do with telling lies about God (slander), and with the use of profanely insolent language against God (curse), we should look at His commandments to see what this really means.
Commandments 1-3 deal with God, and man’s relationship to Him: Thou shalt have no other Gods; Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, Thy God, in vain; Thou shalt sanctify the Holy-day. In this, what we confessional Lutherans call the first table of the Law, we are called to fear, love, and trust God above all things; to use God’s name properly, by calling upon Him in every trouble, to pray, to praise, and to give thanks; not to despise preaching and God’s Holy Word, but to hold it sacred, and to gladly hear and learn it. To sin against God, and His name, and His Word by persistently, stubbornly remaining in unbelief, by arrogantly misusing God’s name, by despising His Word, is to blaspheme the Holy Ghost.
This is precisely what the Pharisees did, and Jesus says so. The Pharisees witness Jesus heal a demon-possessed man who is blind and mute. This miracle was enough to give the crowds pause: And all the multitudes were amazed and said, “Could this be the Son of David?”[3] The Pharisees, rather than recognizing this, claim that Jesus performed the miracle with the help of the devil. If the Pharisees had faith in God and believed what Scripture told them, they would have recognized that what Jesus did testified to who He was. But they didn’t. They were worried that Jesus would cause them to lose their privileged position in the Roman political system. Son of David notwithstanding; “If we let Him alone like this, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.”[4] The Pharisees will demand a sign from Jesus more than once, but it doesn’t matter. They are not demands made in faith, and Jesus knows this. He responds to their blasphemous test by calling them what they are: evil and adulterous. Evil, because they willfully persist in sin; adulterous because they have abandoned the One True God to go off whoring with idols, specifically the idol of self. Jesus will, in fact, give them one sign, the sign of Jonah: For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.[5] He’s talking about His death and resurrection! But, if they refuse to believe Moses and the prophets, “…neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.”[6]
So, how do we know whether or not we have committed the unpardonable sin? After all, we have transgressed God’s Law, all of it, not just the first three commandments. We daily sin much and deserve God’s wrath. We have sinned against God in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved God with our whole heart, and we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We confess that we justly deserve God’s temporal and eternal punishment. How do we know we haven’t crossed that event horizon from which it is impossible to turn back, and are doomed to fall into the black hole of eternal condemnation?
The answer I got when I asked this question as a kid was correct, but unsatisfying: If you are worried that you have committed the unpardonable sin, you didn’t. If you had, you wouldn’t care. It is true. If you had rejected God and His forgiveness in Christ, you certainly wouldn’t care if someone told you that you were guilty of blasphemy and condemned to Hell. But that answer still makes it sound like it’s something you might stumble into inadvertently if you’re not paying attention. This isn’t something that happens in an instant, but rather, over time. The Confessions describe it like this: [God] also will punish those who willfully turn away from the Holy Commandment and again entangle themselves in the world’s filth,[7] decorate their hearts for Satan,[8] and despise God’s Spirit.[9] They will be hardened, blinded, and eternally condemned if they persist in such things.[10]
We don’t know when such a hardening of the heart has happened to a person. But to even think of the matter in this way misses the point. Repent. Today is the day of salvation. While we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly, for you and me. After three days, like Jonah who was the shadow of His resurrection, Jesus was vomited out of the grave, the conqueror of death for all mankind. While we are alive we have the opportunity to hear God’s Word, to be remorseful for our manifold sins, and to receive the gift of God’s forgiveness in Christ Jesus by faith. Gods Word is powerful. It accomplishes the purpose which God intends. Nicodemus the Pharisee and Joseph of Arimathea, respected member of the Sanhedrin, heard it and were converted by it. Saul, Pharisee of Pharisees and persecutor of the Church, met the risen Jesus, the Word made flesh, on the road to Damascus and was made by Jesus into the Apostle Paul. This forgiveness is available to all men. It is delivered to us through His Word. God is not willing that any should perish; He also takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked would turn from their way and live.[11]
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