The Unforgivable Sin
January 31, 2010 – Douglas Scalise
Mark 3:19b-30
The idea for this sermon about the unforgivable sin came from our high school students who were talking about questions they were interested in discussing in their class. This is not the easiest text to understand so let me provide a little background.
In Mark 3 Jesus is confronted yet again by opponents who are eager to find some basis to accuse Him of doing something wrong. Christ ignores their challenge and heals a man’s shriveled hand on the sabbath, showing that no law given by God prevents doing good to a person in need (3:1–6). After the fifth conflict between Jesus and those who oppose him in the first chapters of Mark, Jesus leaves the area where He has been teaching, but is followed by those eager for healing (vv. 7–12). After Jesus appoints the Twelve as His disciples (vv. 13–19), a delegation of experts in the biblical law appear and argue that Christ’s powers come from Satan (v. 22). Jesus ridicules their argument (vv. 23–27) and announces that what they said against the Holy Spirit reveals an attitude which condemns them (vv. 28–30).[1]
[powerpress] Listen to the Gospel: “Then he went home; 20 and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. 21 When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” 22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” 23 And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. 27 But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.
28 “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— 30 for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.” Mark 3:19b-30 (NRSV)
There is a lot going on in these verses but we can simplify it by looking at it this way: first, this episode encourages us to think about who Jesus is and what he is doing. There are at least three answers to that question in the passage and a fourth we can consider. This passage from the Gospel of Mark also teaches us something important about forgiveness.
The first response to Jesus is that of the crowd “20 and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat.” The crowd treats Jesus like he is a celebrity. They are crushing and crowding Jesus and the disciples so they can’t even eat. It is like paparazzi chasing a celebrity for what they can get out of him. We don’t know from the text if their response to Jesus is one of genuine belief and commitment, but we don’t know, it doesn’t feel like it to me.
The next response to Jesus is that of his family. Folks are saying, “He is out of his mind.” So his family comes to take charge of Jesus, kind of like taking him into protective custody. The Greek word (keatesai) means arrest when used elsewhere by Mark. There can be times we also want to restrain God when we don’t understand what the Lord is doing. Unlike the crowd his family’s intention was motivated by concern for Jesus Himself. They wanted him well and safe.
The crush of the crowd and the concern of Jesus’ family are nothing compared with the response of the scribes, the experts in the Jewish law who came from Jerusalem to scrutinize and reprimand Jesus. They use some words that require a little explanation.
The scribes say Jesus is full of Beelzebul, which according to Harper’s Bible Dictionary means, ‘lord of dung.’ So you can probably figure out that was not a compliment if they are saying Jesus is full of, well… you know. Some translations have “Beelzebub” which is “Lord of the flies,” which are attracted to dung. Anyway, not only do they say Jesus is full of it, they also say, “and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.”
Jesus says that is crazy – to say that he is healing people or casting out demons by the power of Beelzebul or Beelzebub or Satan or the ruler of the demons – whatever name you want to give to the adversary of God’s good and gracious will for humanity.
So as he often does, Jesus responds with a parable, a story, to try and help people understand what is taking place. “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.”
This is the passage of scripture that Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday we celebrate in less than two weeks, referred to in probably his fourth most famous speech (after the Second Inaugural, the Gettysburg address, and the First Inaugural). The most well-known passage of the speech he gave on June 16, 1958 when he accepted the Illinois Republican nomination to run for the US senate against Stephen Douglas is: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”
Jesus is at work bringing the kingdom of God into the place where Satan has captured people. Jesus equates Satan with a strong man. His house is the realm of sin, sickness, demon possession, and death. His possessions are people who are enslaved by one or more of these things, and demons are his agents who carry out his diabolical activity. No one can enter his realm to carry off (diarpasai, “plunder”) his possessions unless he first binds the strong man showing he is more powerful. Then he can plunder the realm, releasing the enslaved victims. At His temptation (see Mark1:12-13) and through His exorcisms Jesus demonstrated that He is the Stronger One, empowered by the Holy Spirit (cf. 3:29). Jesus’ mission throughout Mark’s gospel is to confront and overpower (not cooperate with) Satan and to deliver those enslaved by him.
The opponents of Jesus couldn’t deny the reality of the people he cured whether they were sick in body or mind. The scribes saw people who had been healed of various sicknesses and others who were restored to sanity, but instead of giving God the glory and acknowledging that God’s power was at work in Jesus, they chose instead to say Jesus was working for the adversary, Satan.
The religious leaders said, “No, He is in league with Beelzebul! It is Satan’s power that is at work in Him, not God’s power.” Jesus exposed both their bad theology and their faulty logic. If it was by the power of Satan that He had cast out the demon, then Satan was actually fighting against himself! This meant that Satan’s house and kingdom were divided and therefore on the verge of collapse. The fact that Jesus delivered the man was proof that He was stronger than Satan and that Satan could not stop Him. Jesus did much more than answer their false accusation. He went on to explain the seriousness of what they had said. After all, our words reveal what is hidden in our hearts (Matt. 12:35), and what is in our hearts determines our character, conduct, and destiny. We sometimes say, “Talk is cheap!” But in reality, what we say can be very costly.
Jesus says (Mark 3:28-29), “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.”
Blasphemy is a term derived from a Greek word meaning to injure the reputation of another. In the Bible it means showing contempt or a lack of reverence for God (Lev. 24:16; Mark 2:7) or something sacred (Matt. 26:65), including claiming for oneself divine attributes by word or deed (Mark 14:64; John 10:33).
The specific act which generated this response was ascribing miracles that Jesus performed in the power of the Spirit to Satan. Jesus warned the Jewish religious leaders that they were in danger of committing an eternal and unforgivable sin. By attributing Jesus’ exorcisms to satanic power when they really were accomplished by the Holy Spirit, they were close to calling the Holy Spirit “Satan.” Jesus probably means that their hearts were becoming so hard they would never think to repent. People today cannot commit the “unpardonable sin” in the same way the religious leaders did when Jesus was ministering on earth. Anyone who worries if they have committed an unforgivable sin could not have, for their very concern shows that they are not hardened against the Lord.
Jesus gives a grave warning about the only unforgivable sin in the Bible, the sin against the Holy Spirit. This seems to mean the deliberate closing of the heart and mind to the witness of the Spirit to Jesus, something of which the teachers had just shown themselves to be guilty. They refused to admit that Jesus’ actions which were obviously good, and prompted by motives of mercy and compassion, were in fact good in themselves, because they disapproved of the person who was responsible for them. In any age such a willful and deliberate twisting of the truth makes repentance and salvation impossible, for it has shut the gate to salvation that God has opened. Also, no one who thinks that the Holy Spirit is Satan will permit himself to be guided by Him or filled with Him or given gifts by Him. So just as pulling the main breaker in your house means that you can never receive electricity, blaspheming against the Holy Spirit means that you can never receive forgiveness, because it turns off the tap through which forgiveness flows.
It is not that God is unwilling to forgive, but that the person concerned is unwilling to receive the Lord’s forgiveness. It is dangerous to get so set in one’s thinking or beliefs that all evidence to the contrary is either denied or twisted. When we are prepared to call good evil we are on the highway to hell which means ultimately separating ourselves from God.
The good news in today’s Gospel is that the only sin that won’t be forgiven is to call the good, gracious, healing, freeing acts of God, acts of the adversary or the evil one. Isolated sins or transgressions can be forgiven when we confess them and turn from them. The sin against the Holy Spirit is a state of mind.
We need to be careful in the judgments we make toward people so that we don’t attribute unworthy motives to a politician, for example, simply because he or she is from a party we don’t support. One lesson of Jesus’ words is that we are to keep a constant watch on ourselves, scrutinizing our judgments and analyzing our motives; otherwise our minds could become so distorted that we are no longer able to tell good from evil and become permanently the victims of our own fears and prejudices, just like the scribes in the Gospel.
If we still fear that we might be guilty of an unforgivable sin, it is a clear sign that we have not committed this ultimate sin and are not in danger of committing it. Indeed, as has often been said, the real emphasis is on the other side: the wonderful truth is that all other sins can be forgiven.
In any event, to people who are worried about committing this sin, I offer a few observations:
- Paul said that he was the worst of all sinners, yet he was not only saved but also made an apostle.
- If Paul is the worst of all sinners, it stands to reason that you can’t be worse than he was, and judging from his spiritual career, whatever limits are on your calling are higher than you think.
- If you feel remorse for your sins and a desire to change, you are obviously not disconnected from the Holy Spirit; and if you are not disconnected, you cannot possibly have committed the unforgivable sin.
So to those who are troubled: the surest sign that you have not committed the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the very fact that you are worried about it, because that shows that the Holy Spirit is very definitely on speaking terms with you.
In this passage some folks treat Jesus like a celebrity, his family responds with concern, the scribes treat him with contempt saying he is full of demons.
There is another possibility Mark wishes us to consider, that He is the strong Son of God who can heal, forgive, and bless us, if we give him the opportunity to do so.
[1] Richards, Larry: The Bible Reader’s Companion. Wheaton, Ill. : Victor Books, 1991, S. 635