Unforgivable Sin: Is it real? Should you fear it?

In this serious episode, I tell you about the most heartbreaking messages I receive from young people when ask me if they have committed the unforgivable sin. They worry they are doomed to hell because of blasphemy. I always wonder if it was a pastor or a Sunday school teacher who filled them with this fear. In this episode, I tell you why you don’t need to fear it. Blasphemy is a very aggressive and special kind of sin that few of us, and no teenager, can commit. Also, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit was something very special that Jesus spoke about in Matthew 12:31-32 and Mark 3:28-30. If you are worried about this, it is really important to understand what it means and how people use this fear to scare and control you. This is important knowledge to have. The Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) is a story of unconditional love, repentance, and forgiveness. This is super useful for understanding the character of God. 



The unforgivable sin, or "unpardonable sin," in the Gospels is 
blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, specifically described in Matthew 12:31-32, Mark 3:28-30, and Luke 12:10. It involves willfully and persistently attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan, as the Pharisees did when accusing Jesus of using demonic power, indicating a hard-hearted, final rejection of Christ's salvific work.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hello and welcome to the Real Bible Rob teamcast. Today I'd like to talk about a serious topic. Most of the time I've been telling you about fun things in the Bible and how uh you can really enjoy it and everything. But this time I'm gonna tell you about one of the worst things that people get from the Bible and how it's used against people. Probably you have heard about it and has been used against you. Are you ever unforgivable? Have you committed the unforgivable sin? A lot of times I hear this from teens and it breaks my heart when I hear this because it's not about them. And whenever you hear that, it's it's it's a kind of abuse to hear this because they're creating a fear in you that is not in scripture. It's not about you. Uh, blasphemy is not something uh that is unforgivable. Number one. Number two, get blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is something very specific that Jesus is talking about in only one place in the Gospels. And if it's ever used against you, reject it. If you hear it from a pastor, you hear it from a youth leader, you hear it from a you know, Sunday school teacher, even if you hear it from a parent or another friend, you are never unforgivable. You just have to get that out of your mind. It's not the case. You can relax and just understand what the scripture really says. So that's what I'd like to do with you today is kind of talk about a couple of the verses there, why Jesus said what he said, and then um uh give you a little bit of an idea why people use this against people. Uh like I said, it it's abusive and bad, and we must not accept it. And then uh finally talk a little bit about the prodigal son, because this is an example of where God is not working against you, God is not trying to trip you up. But a lot of pastors, a lot of people try to portray God as watching over you and shaking his finger and you know being against you, and just you know, you better watch out if Jesus comes back while you're sinning and use that to hold that over you, and it's just not right. No, God it does wait and he's and waits for you to uh to ask to come to God, not be afraid. That is not what this is about. So let's go through this a little bit. This idea of unforgivable sin comes from uh Matthew 12, 31, 32. Um, also the same, it's the same story, but um it's uh said a little differently in Mark 3, 28 through 30. And in both cases, what Jesus is doing, he's he's arguing with the religious leaders who are uh trying to trap him. And you see this over and over in the Gospels is that once these uh religious leaders, sometimes you think of sometimes it's Pharisees, which is a kind of a religious leader, sometimes it's the temple people, they're the people who lead the synagogues that are trying to trap Jesus because they don't like his message of freedom and sacrifice and um and everything, and because it takes away their power. So they were trying very, very hard to say that Jesus is wrong, you people should not listen to him, they needed to follow them instead of Jesus. And one of the worst things they did that made uh Jesus really um angry and also uh what was just a terrible thing to do, is that they said that Jesus was filled with the spirit of the devil. Now they say Beelzebub, which is kind of an idea of what the devil is. Now remember, when when we'll we'll talk about this some other in another episode, is that the devil is not what you've been told. It's it's kind of like an evil spirit. It's it's the thing that causes you to want to uh do something bad, to believe in lies, to uh to sin and things like that. So they said, well, but Jesus was speaking from the devil, from Beelzebub, and was a um basically a disciple of Beelzebub, the son of Beelzebub, and used that to uh say that he was really awful and that you should not listen to him. Now, what Jesus comes back and says, Well, how can I be speaking the truth? How can I be giving a message of love and um and support and following basically what God has laid out in scripture and preaching that and be the son of the devil? I how how is that possible? And then he uses this thing: how can a house be divided against itself and not fall? How can he speak the words of God and God the Father and project that and everything in his life show that he is you know the son of true God, the true son of God, and then um, and then be but actually secretly being of the devil. So he in the strongest possible terms came out against these religious leaders. First of all, it didn't make any sense. Secondly, what he says is that that is a blasphemy. And I'll talk about what blasphemy is because it's something really important. And he, in fact, he even says, you can blaspheme against me, you can say blasphemies about me and who I am. You can even, you know, say terrible things about God the Father, but what you can't do is blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, that's unforgivable. You can forgive everything, but that's unforgivable. And um that that's a really important distinction. You can say terrible things, you can even say terrible things about the Holy Spirit, but what you can't do is blaspheme it. So let's talk about this word. This word is so misused. In Greek, blasphemo is the word in Greek, and we've taken it to mean uh basically slander, the abusing words, um, especially uh somebody's own words against them, but it's a very aggressive word. In uh in the Greek, it doesn't mean just saying something bad about somebody or somebody in leadership, even it's about a direct challenge. It's about it's like a duel. So you've have you ever heard of a duel, you know, where uh men used to say, Well, you've offended my honor, and I challenge you to a duel, something that even in the early part of the United States was still legal. We don't allow that anymore. Thank goodness. But the idea is that you know, uh, you've challenged my honor. I am, we are uh social equals. And the only way we can solve this, see if I was a dominant person, then I would, then I would have no reason to challenge you to a duel because I'm already dominant, right? Um, you only do it between social equals. If you're uh a much lower um person in society and you challenged a dominant person to a duel, they would just laugh. They go, You don't do this. That's very much what was they were thinking about when they used this word blasphemeo, blasphemy in Greek. They're talking about equals trying to challenge each other for dominance to take over, right? Making a fight to become the leader. So um always think of that. It's never accidentally, you can never blasph uh commit blasphemy against anyone, especially God, by accident. You can't, it's a very, very aggressive thing that you do, and you do it as an equal. It's very important. But even notice you can make yourself the equal to God in your mind or wherever, and commit a blasphemy against God, a challenge against God, the Father. You can do that against Jesus, um, even though it's kind of ridiculous, right? But you can do that, and it's still forgivable. It says that right in these verses. What it's saying, though, is and is that you can't really do it against the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth. So, in other words, you can't say a falsehood and um tell say it as a truth and have it become the truth. Do you understand that? So, whenever you, if you're a leader um who knows the law, who knows what's right, who knows the scriptures, and you're you're a priest or a pastor or a politician or a judge, and you have that status, and you know everything that you need to know to know the truth, and then you tell a falsehood, and you say that that truth is uh or that falsehood is the truth, and that the truth is false, or of the devil. Remember Beelzebub and the devil, Satan, all these. There's the the um the is the king of lies, you know, the about lying. So you can't do it accidentally, you can't lie accidentally, right? You can't you can't uh just challenge somebody thinking that you're right, you know, you can't blaspheme against God thinking that you're right, and have that be blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Super important. In fact, when some when a young person comes to me, oh, did I commit the you know bla blasphemy? I said, first of all, you probably didn't commit blasphemy. Um it's very unlikely because you're uh you know, you're a teenager, or you know, you're a you're not a priest or a pastor, you're you're not uh a person that has a lot of um power doing something against God. So that's not blasphemy. That's just saying a bad word that's insulting, right? Blasphemy is not insulting. You can say the most insulting, you can use the most vile, terrible language against God, against Jesus, even against the Holy Spirit, and that's not blasphemy. Blasphemy is always a challenge for dominance. It's always, and in the case of against the Holy Spirit, it's using falsehood to dominate the truth, right? And you can't do that accidentally, and you can't do that without authority. You need both of those things. So, do people commit blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? Yes, they do, but like I said, those are people who know better, those are people who do it very willfully, and they never repent from it. It's a really big, really big distinction. So don't ever take this on yourself. There God is always there. God, no matter what you do, no matter what you say say about God, no matter what, you are forgiven. A lot of times, maybe always, you're forgiven before you even ask for forgiveness. That's the way you should think about God. God is waiting for you to come to that realization and come there. So um I'll I'll talk a little bit more about the prodigal son. This I think this is really important. There's this great parable about that Jesus tells about the son who basically um does everything he possibly can against his father. And he says, uh, uh, you know, I've had enough of you, father. I'm going to claim my inheritance now. Usually um the inheritance only comes when the father dies, and then the son can take what is his portion. But he basically tells the father, I'm done with you. I wish you were dead. Just give me my money. And it just the worst possible thing you can think of. Just totally rejects the father, 100%. And then what does he do? Well, he goes out and he uses that money foolishly. Makes, you know, uh it says something about going out and you know, uh wasting his money. Uh and uh, you know, a lot of people emphasize that. Well, it's because he goes out and sins. Well, you know, the sin's not so much what he does with the money, the sin is the fact that he's completely rejected his the father, taken his inheritance for no reason, just to defy. So that's a blasphemous thing, right? He's challenged his father and his father's authority. That is a blasphemous act. The fact that he goes out and wastes his money and is an idiot, uh, that's not blasphemy, but it's just foolishness. And uh, and you could say that he was sinning with that, right? He wasn't uh taking care of it and everything. So when he finally gets to the point where he's completely out of out of money and he's you know feeding pigs, and he's just at the bottom of the of what happens. He's he's bottomed out. Um, and he he goes, Well, I'm I guess I ought to go back and and ask for, you know, ask for forgiveness from my father. And you could say, well, maybe he wasn't even doing it with a right mind, with real repentance. He was just wanted to, he just had nowhere else to go. So he goes back to the father, and uh we're told that he had a repentant, repentant, but it wasn't really, I would call like an emotional repentance. It was probably more just like he just wanted to say sorry so he could, you know, get back into the his father's good graces. So he starts going back, and he's out in uh you know on the road, and the father sees him coming down the road. Did the father uh ask for repentance or anything? No, what the father does, it says that he ran out to the sun, and um this meant a lot in that Jewish culture that Jesus is talking to. For the father to run out to the son is um a way of being lowered, the father's honor is lowered even, but he loves the son still, and he embraces the son, he calls for a feast, he just welcomes him back, the son back, before the son even says a single word. The son has not asked for forgiveness yet. The son had not now people will say, Oh, well, because he had forgiveness on his heart. The father had no way of knowing that. He just goes out, runs out, embraces the son, and just so glad that he's back home. So this is uh the image that Jesus gives us of God the Father. That God the Father embraces us, forgives us even before we say anything. And that this is the image that we should have of the Father. Now, the older brother in this story um is very angry because he goes, wait a minute, I've done everything for you, you know, to the father. And I've you know, I have never I didn't do anything like this, younger son. So why are you giving him all the attention and support and you know throwing a party for him and why would you forgive him? Why why are you honoring him instead of me? And he goes, I you I already have you're already here, you've already gotten everything. But when he came back, I embraced him, bring him back in. And that's the way we should think too. We should think that about the way God forgives anyone, but especially you yourself. Never ever get into the idea of thinking that the God that the Father's gonna hold it over you, that God is uh just waiting for your repentance before you forgive He forgives you. That's nonsense. Jesus is sufficient, Jesus is enough. It doesn't depend on on you and your actions. You can even have bad intentions, but the Father's always there, God's always there to forgive you, no matter what. The only thing that God can't forgive, the only thing that Jesus can't forgive is when you call truth false and you call false truth and you don't give that up. That's blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. And that's what that means. So it's it it's really simple. If you are willing to see the truth and you are willing to just say, Wow, I got that wrong, immediately you've already not committed blasphemy. You immediately you've already you've already been forgiven. It's a big part of what I believe, it's a big part of what we see in scripture, is that God doesn't hold things over people like we've often been taught. So um the this is super important. Why do people do this? People do this because they want to push a um the idea of punishment and reward. They want to use God as like the ultimate parent. Now, if your vision of the ultimate parent is somebody who is withholding grace, withholding goodness from you, unless you do certain things, or is ready to punish you all the time, well that it that can be an image of a parent, but that's not an image of a good parent. We believe that God is it acts like a good parent, like the father of the prodigal son. That's what we're told, and that's what Jesus gives us. So whenever this is used to make you afraid, this is being used against you to control you, to make you um afraid so that you will do things that they want, even though it's against your spirit. Now, you know, you can say, you can say, well, this is wrong, this is right. And you know, correction, that's a big part of being a parent too, right? Is giving correction, giving uh, you know, um discipline sometimes, things like that. I mean, that's and that's not that's good, right? But to misuse information, to tell falsehoods, to threaten people with hell is never good. Never accept threats of hell, especially never say that never accept that say you're not forgivable. This is unforgivable. That is a total misuse of scripture, and it's a misuse and abuse of you. So don't accept it. Uh, and I really just can't say this any stronger than that. So if you are in those situations, just get out of them, just say, no, no, I don't, I don't accept that. No, God is like the prodigal, this father of the prodigal son, no matter what. God's Forgiving and loving, no matter what. And that's what I hope that you take from this. And with that, I say uh thank you so much for listening. Um subscribe, share, like, all of those things. I really appreciate uh you and that you um have engaged with this content and what I say. And with that, I say God bless you.