Hard Questions #4

Welcome! I would encourage you to continue to pray the secret prayer. Well, I have a lot of ground to cover today, so I will get right to the hard questions. There are three questions we are going to look at today. The first is this: Is there an unforgivable sin?

What is the context of this question? It comes from two passages, one in Matthew 12, and the other in Mark 3. Here is the Matthew 12 passage:

And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. – Matt. 12:31-32


And here is the Mark 3 passage:

I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.” He said this because they were saying, “He has an evil spirit.” – Mark 3:28-30

Now, to better understand these passages, let us look at the prior verses so as to get a sense of context. We could use either passage, as both are similar; I will choose Mark 3.

Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that He and His disciples were not even able to eat. When His family heard about this, they went to take charge of Him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.” – Mark 3:20-22

So Jesus called them and spoke to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can rob his house. – Mark 3:23-27

I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.” He said this because they were saying, “He has an evil spirit.” – Mark 3:28-30

The Matthew 12 passage has a similar context in that the “trigger” for Jesus’ words is again that He is being accused of being possessed by a demon.

Now, it is perfectly understandable that one should be concerned by this passage. As believers, we know that we cannot be reconciled to God except through the forgiveness of God, and so the idea that there are things that will not be forgiven is a scary thought. And blaspheming against the Holy Spirit seems kind of vague. What does this mean? Cursing God in the midst of a terrible trial? Simply using the Lord’s name in vain? Something else?

Well, let’s think about the passage carefully. First of all, never means “never.” That it says the person will be guilty of an eternal sin makes it clear that it is not just talking about, for example, our situation in this present life. In fact, the Matt. 12 passage is even clearer about this, because it says, “either in this age or in the age to come.” And when God says “never,” He really means it. It is not like when young children are playing together and one gets angry at the other and says “I’ll never forgive you!” We all know that that won’t last long; it might not even last an hour. But when the God who transcends even time says never, it is absolutely certain that never means forever.

So what exactly is this sin, this sin that is beyond the reach of forgiveness? Both passages say that the sin is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. But what exactly does this mean?

Now, this is an easy passage to misinterpret, and that is why this question is a hard question. But if you have your Bibles open, look carefully at Mark 3 from verse 20 to verse 30, and carefully consider this question: Does Jesus say that these particular people – the teachers of the law who say it is by demons Jesus is driving out demons – does Jesus say that these people have blasphemed against the Holy Spirit? The answer is no. The context here is not a condemnation of these scribes because they have already done it; it is instead a warning that committing such a sin, a sin beyond the reach of forgiveness, is possible. This is extremely important. We should not read into the passage the idea that saying things like “Jesus is demon possessed” is the unforgivable sin, because that is not what the passage is saying. This is simply not there in the text.

The reason we tend to want to do this, to interpret this passage this way, is because we aren’t clear about what this terrible sin is, and because of that, because the consequences are so important, we become desperate to latch onto any answer as quickly as possible. The context is that before this was said, these scribes were saying that it is by demons Jesus was driving out demons, so we latch onto that. But that simply isn’t what the passage is saying.

It is a fair question to ask why the fact that people were saying Jesus was demon-possessed produced this response from Jesus. The passage doesn’t answer this explicitly, but I think there was something about these people’s attitudes, a kind of hardness of heart, that Jesus saw, and out of love for them, He warned them that some things have eternal consequences.

Now, there is something else that happens as a result of our eagerness to know what this sin is that cannot be forgiven: we are quick to completely ignore what is really being said in the previous verse. All the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. Now what does this verse mean? Does “all” really mean “all”? And how is this reconciled with the next verse on the sin that is not forgiven?

A literal word-for-word translation of this passage is something like this: all things will be forgiven to the sons of men, the sins and the blasphemies, whatever it is they blaspheme. Well, as we talked about in our first hard questions message from this series a few weeks ago, we interpret Scripture with Scripture. We know from numerous passages that forgiveness is based on believing in faith that Jesus died and rose again to take away sins, to reconcile man with God, and not only believing, but in faith repenting, turning from our old ways of putting ourselves on the throne of our lives and instead putting Jesus on that throne and beginning to live a life by faith, living for Him. And so when it says that all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them, that means that if you are a Christian, there are no exceptions; there are no sins and blasphemies that will not be forgiven. The all here really means all.

So how do we reconcile this with the very next verse, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin? What does this mean? And why just the Holy Spirit? Why not also blasphemy against the Father, or the Son? Well, I think asking this particular question provides insight into the answer. There must be something “special” about the Holy Spirit. What is it? It is that the Holy Spirit is the Person in the trinity that turns and softens our hearts towards Christ. For every unbeliever that turns to Christ, the Holy Spirit has an essential role in drawing him. Not the Father, not the Son, but the Holy Spirit. To blaspheme the Holy Spirit is to reject this calling, this drawing, this softening.

To understand this verse even better we can look at the verb tense of the verbs in Greek. Let us focus on the word blasphemes. This word is in something called the aorist tense. The aorist tense is one of the hardest for us English-speaking people to really understand, because there is nothing really like it in English. One Greek study aid says this:

The aorist is said to be "simple occurrence" or "summary occurrence", without regard for the amount of time taken to accomplish the action. This tense is also often referred to as the 'punctiliar' tense. 'Punctiliar' in this sense means 'viewed as a single, collective whole,' a "one-point-in-time" action, although it may actually take place over a period of time. In the indicative mood the aorist tense denotes action that occurred in the past time, often translated like the English simple past tense. (from http://www.ntgreek.org/)

I realize this may sound very confusing, but the key idea here is that the Holy Spirit’s calling on a believer has a definite beginning and a definite ending. It is the ending that is particularly important; this verse, because of the verb tense, stresses that there is such a thing as “too late.” We know that one’s death is certainly such an ending, but it is possible that even in life, such a “too late” point might be reached. Certainly having a sudden illness or accident could leave a person in a state in which they are alive but no longer able to think cognitively at a level that repentance and turning to Christ is even possible.

And so blaspheming the Holy Spirit in this way, rejecting His call, is not so much something that God refuses to forgive, but something that is beyond forgiveness. This is a scary truth, not for the believer, but for the unbeliever. An unbeliever having the mindset that they will come to Christ “later” after they have had their fun is not only playing with fire, but playing with eternity. This attitude certainly would fall into the category of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can withdraw His calling to an unbeliever, whether through death or some other calamity, at any time, and after that, the unbeliever will be beyond forgiveness.

Let’s now turn to the second question, which is certainly related to the first: Can you lose your salvation?

Well, let me start my answer to this by supposing that you could lose your salvation. Then it would be impossible for anyone to know for sure that they had eternal life, right? You could hope, but you would never be sure until you finally died. In other words, if people can lose their salvation, then they cannot ever truly know that they are saved. But listen to this verse in I John 5:

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. – I John 5:13

Verb tenses help here too. “Believe” is in present tense, but “know” is in the perfect tense. The perfect tense implies something done once for all. I write to you who are believing now so that, once for all, you will “get it” that you have eternal life. But I think an even stronger verse is the following from John 10:

My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand. – John 10:27-29

This is one of those verses with incredible truths that we tend to gloss over. When Jesus says “I know them,” how well does He know them? Completely! He knows their faults and weaknesses as well as their good points. He knows their entire history, and He even knows what they think at every moment. And then He says He gives them eternal life, and they shall not perish, or more literally, be utterly ruined. By way of analogy, think of a city that is captured. It can be utterly destroyed, its walls broken down, its people killed or carried off, its possessions likewise destroyed or taken, but the city is still there. It may be a smoking ruin, nearly uninhabitable, but it is still there. That is what this word means.

But back to the topic at hand, this verse says that no one can snatch the sheep (that’s us believers) out of Jesus’ hand; in the next verse it says that no one can snatch us out of the Father’s hand. This is pretty easy to understand, right? Who is strong enough to out-wrestle God? Who could possibly even begin to pry open His fingers? No one! This is an awesome truth and a reassuring truth.

So why do people ask this hard question? It is because of some passages that seem to say the opposite. One of these is in 2 Peter 2.

If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. – 2 Peter 2:20-21

A more literal translation would replace “knowing our Lord” with “knowledge of our Lord.” The Greek word refers to knowing something correctly as opposed to a personal relationship type of knowing; there is a different Greek word for the latter type of knowing. The context of this verse from 2 Peter is false teachers and their teachings. This passage is describing people who have heard about Christ and have even tried in their own strength to live righteously. But these are not people who are saved, people who have called out to the person of Christ to save them.
Another passage that troubles people is in Hebrews 6.

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace. – Hebr. 6:4-6

What is this passage talking about? Is this talking about someone who was saved, or about someone who came “to the brink” of salvation but then turned away? I believe it is talking about the latter. This is a person who has learned the gospel, or has at least learned much of it. That is someone who has been enlightened. This is a person who has felt their heart stir towards God.

That is the work of the Holy Spirit. This is a person who has read in the Bible and had their eyes opened by the Holy Spirit towards understanding it. That is someone who has tasted of the goodness of the word of God. What about the powers of the coming age, or age to come? This could refer to those who have experienced healing or other miracles. In the age to come there will be no more suffering or illness or death.

But none of these things equal salvation. And this passage says that people like this, who come to the edge of salvation but then turn back, can put themselves into a state of hardening where they will never come back this way again.

There is a scene in the Lord of the Rings movies that I think is a great picture of this. Thousands of years before the main events in these movies Sauron is defeated in battle by Isildur; that is, Sauron’s body but not his spirit is defeated. Isildur cuts off Sauron’s hand and gets the ring, and in the movies he is led by the elves to throw the ring into the fires of Mount Doom and thereby destroy Sauron completely. He walks right up to the precipice, but then, when it really comes to it, he does not want to give up the ring and turns back. He would rather keep the ring and its power, even though he knows of its evil. And the scene is repeated when, thousands of years later, Frodo is now the ringbearer. He too comes right up to the precipice, but he also turns back. Both Isildur and Frodo at the end love the ring too much to let it go.

I think this is a good analogy for some peoples’ spiritual journeys. For when we come to Christ, part of what must happen is that we, spiritually speaking, throw ourselves into the fire. And some people seem excited and ready to do this until they come to that precipice, and then they decide they don’t really want to do it and turn back. They decide that they love themselves too much to die to self so that they can live for Christ. This passage in Hebrews is saying that for people like this, this event is really the climax of their lives; they won’t go back to the precipice again.

How is this a re-crucifying of Christ? It is because those who put Christ to death knew what He could do. They had seen and heard credible reports of miracle after miracle, even to the restoring of the servant’s ear on the night Jesus was arrested, and so, in a very real sense, they too had been brought to the brink of the precipice. Yet they chose to crucify Christ. The people today who have come to the precipice and seen God’s love and salvation and yet refuse to partake of it are doing the same thing.

Turning back to our hard question, we see that the answer is no. Those who are saved cannot lose their salvation. These other verses that at first glance seem to say something else in fact do not contradict the wonderful truth of our eternal security in Christ. Nothing can snatch us out of God’s mighty hand.

There is one question remaining that I would like to address today. This question is as follows:
Why is the church universal split? That is, why are there so many denominations and divisions within Christianity?

One reason this qualifies as a hard question is that, on the one hand, we see Jesus in Matthew 16:18 say to Peter that He, Jesus, will build His church, and the gates of Hades, or hell, will not overcome, or overpower it, and yet on the other hand, we can look at the church universal and wonder, if Jesus is building it, why it doesn’t seem to be – forgive the bluntness – better built?
Well, let me first say that the Scriptures are filled with a call to unity. Here are just a few examples:

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another. – John 13:34-35

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. I have given them the glory that You gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and You in Me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that You sent me and have loved them even as You have loved Me. – John 17:20-23

These words are straight from Jesus’ mouth. The latter passage is one of the last prayers of Jesus before He left to the olive grove where Jesus was arrested and soon crucified. And this latter passage is clearly not just for the original disciples, but for us as well. And I think it is true that just as unity helps the world to know and come to faith in Jesus, disunity can become a stumbling block impeding the very same thing.

Paul also implores again and again for love and unity.

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. – Phil. 2:1-2

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. – Col. 3:12-14

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called— one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. – Eph. 4:1-6

I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. – I Cor. 1:10-13

Again and again, we see this emphasis on unity. Paul wrote this to the Philippians, the Colossians, the Ephesians, and the Corinthians. Four very different books; all stress unity.

Now, the first thing I should point out is that the church has always had problems with unity. The reason Paul wrote about unity to these four churches is because they were all struggling in this area. Corinth is perhaps the best example. There, you had subgroups forming that were following specific leaders, tearing the church apart. Even in Acts, you see disunity as some people tried to force the Gentile Christians to observe the Law of Moses. This resulted in a big conference described in the first part of Acts 15 to resolve the matter. The matter seemed to be settled, but then we have an incident described by Paul in Galatians 2:

When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. – Gal. 2:11-13

When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? – Gal. 2:14

But this leads to my second point: Some temporary disunity is healthy in that it helps the church avoid veering off track. Here is another early example of disunity:

Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us go back and visit the brothers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.” Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord. He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. – Acts 15:36-41

So we see examples of disunity in the church from the very beginning. And now we have almost countless denominations, groups, movements within Christianity. But this leads to my third point: Some disunity leads to a greater spread of the gospel. My fourth point is this: Not all separation is due to disunity. In fact, a good part of it is simply due to groups coming together to start evangelistic efforts together and plant churches. In fact, I would argue that as such groups come together and form they are actually examples of unity rather than the opposite.

You see this, for example, in the history of the Great Commission church movement, of which we are a part. This movement began in 1970 with a focus of planting and building churches (not buildings, but bodies of Christ) that were devoted to Jesus Christ and to fulfilling the command to “Go and make disciples of all nations.” This movement was borne not out of a split from another organization, but rather started as a new work. Through the 1970s, the individual churches or fellowships were quite loosely affiliated, based upon a common love for Christ and the scriptures, a desire to fulfill the Great Commission, a devotion to love and unity to one another, and a commitment to meet together nationally and regionally.

In the 1980s, as the movement continued to grow, leaders met to seek the Lord as to see how He might want the movement as a whole to organize nationally. The reason for this was not to separate from other churches but so as to have a structure that would make them even more effective in fulfilling the Great Commission. The resulting structure, and the structure we have to this day, is that each local church has final authority over their affairs, but that each church is united with other churches in the association for fellowship, accountability, and church planting. And this story is not unique to us, but is in reality the way many church denominations and associations have formed and grown.

Now, this is not to say that there is no disunity; indeed disunity has caused many separations and divisions to form. But even these can be used by God. Sometimes separation is for good reasons, for example, where a core group is no longer holding to essential doctrines of faith. The various protestant splits away from Roman Catholicism would be in this category. Sometimes the causes of separation are less noble, but even then God can work through the separation for good. We see this even back in Acts 15, where from what we can see, Barnabas and Mark’s journey as well as Paul and Silas’ were used by God to build up believers and strengthen local churches.

And in fact this leads to my final point. Suppose that what is happening is what God has always intended? What if Christ is in fact building His church through the divisions and separations that have occurred through history? Could this be true? I think it is. I strongly believe that it is no accident that although the requirements for salvation and other essentials are clearly spelled out in Scripture, the Scriptures are vague in many other nonessential areas. That is, I believe Scripture is purposefully vague in these things.

What does this vagueness do? It forces people to seek God for wisdom and discernment. It forces people to humble themselves before God. It forces people to grow up in Christ, not remaining spoon-fed babies, but learning how to rightly handle the Word of God. In short, it produces real disciples of Christ, people who have the maturity to, themselves, go and make disciples. God today uses controversies and disagreements, just as He did in the days of the early church, to refine us and make us more like Christ. Now, none of this is meant to excuse bad behavior.

I do not disagree that when Christians ignore these verses on unity, the result can hurt the spread of the message of Christianity. But this is true of all sin that Christians commit. And yet, in spite of it, true Christian love and unity can be found, and where it is found, one will also find the Spirit at work building Jesus’ church.

In closing, I see a powerful uniting theme in the answers to these three questions about the unforgivable sin, the possibility of losing your salvation, and unity/disunity in the church. What is that theme? The sure power of God to accomplish His will in the lives of believers, both individually and collectively. For the believer, forgiveness is secure, salvation is secure, and His building us into His living church is also secure. Let us this week continue to take steps of faith, living for Him, letting Him use us as He wills. He loves us as dearly beloved children. As believers we can rest securely in that love. And out of that love we will find an unquenchable desire to love Him back, serving Him and obeying Him in all things.