The Only Sin God Cannot Forgive
Y’all.
I’ll be honest, I have no idea how I started writing what I was writing and ended up with “blasphemy of the Holy Spirit” but here we are, it’s been a wild ride. So I’ve deleted my entire introduction section because it had absolutely nothing to do with what you’re about to read.
Please Fasten Your Seatbelts
I believe that God is the creator of this universe, and that he orchestrates everything in it according to His will, while also allowing space for us humans to make freewill choices. Although these freewill decisions can be the opposite of God’s desires for us, they are ultimately used by God in his infinite creativity to bring about his master plan and to make his purposes come to pass, nothing fazes him. (1)
One classic example is Pharaoh in the book of Exodus. God’s foreknowledge that Pharaoh would choose to harden his heart against letting the Israelites go didn’t impact Pharaoh’s personal decision to do this. God knew that Pharaoh was a man who had no fear of the Lord in him, and would even double-cross the Israelites over and over again.
There’s this wild interplay of free will choice, and the judgement of the Lord on the evil rulers of this world in the Scriptures. When an evil man reaches the point past repentance, God uses his own methods to bring about that ruler’s judgement. As Tim Mackie puts it, “God sends his messengers to influence the minds of [the evil rulers] to bring about their downfall so that the evil they did to others will be brought back to them.”(2)
The reason I say this is because after Pharaoh’s first denial to let the people go (Ex. 5:4), the text clearly shows that Pharaoh hardened his heart another five times (Ex. 7:13, 23, 8:15, 19, 9:32). It’s only by the 5th chance of repentance offered to Pharaoh that the sentence then changes and we see the Lord hardening the heart of Pharaoh (Ex. 9:12). God had exceeding grace on Pharaoh and gave him multiple chances to repent, but there comes a certain point in time when God in his foreknowledge will know that people have hardened their hearts against Him to such a degree that there is no more turning back for them, and that’s the point where he uses their rebellion to bring about His purposes (in this case, judgement on Pharaoh and deliverance to the Israelites).
This leads us to another passage in Revelation 16 that caught my eye recently. In verse 9 it says that the fourth angel pours out the bowl of wrath and the people of the earth curse the name of God and “…did not repent and give him glory.” Then later in verse 10-11 it says again, “People gnawed their tongues in anguish and cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores. They did not repent of their deeds.” This passage is wild to me because even in the final days leading up to Armageddon, as the truth of who God is and the judgement he has for sin and lawlessness is made apparent to all…people still choose to not repent. They curse and blame God and fail to realize it is their own freewill wickedness, evil, and deceit that prohibits them from repenting and turning to the Lord for salvation.
Why do I bring these two passages up? Because it leads me to the revelation I had about the “blasphemy of the Holy Spirit” a few years ago, as I was reading through Hebrews.
Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is seeing a divine, irrefutable, undeniable work of the Holy Spirit and denying the Lord credit and instead calling it evil— cursing the work of God.
(The passages I would refer you to are Matthew 12:31-32, Mark 3:28-30).
But how does one get to this point? How easy is it to fall into the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit?
In Pharaoh’s case he saw how over and over again that Yahweh was making the miracles of the plagues happen, yet he turned his back to God’s message to let the Israelites go. In Revelation the people see the bowls of wrath poured out and yet they still curse God. Both instances were clear revelations and manifestations of God.
Hebrews 6:4-8 explains it in a new covenant way, wherein a person has accepted salvation, has seen the undeniable works of God in their own life and those of others, shared fellowship with the Holy Spirit and yet has still chosen to turn his back away from him and deny all of this.
And why would this hypothetical person never again be forgiven by Jesus? Because this person will never again ask for repentance (vs. 6). This is the key of my argument on the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.
The only sin that God cannot forgive is the sin of an unrepentant heart.
Re-read that sentence again please.
Why would a person who has seen the undeniable works of God, seen his might, his power, his glory not be convinced by this evidence into repentance?
Because they’ve hardened their hearts against God.
The key to understanding Hebrews 6 actually comes two chapters earlier, in Hebrews 3. The writer builds his case for Christ to the Jewish church, and he explains to them how the Jews need to be on their guard lest they fall into the sins of their ancestors, who saw the works of God yet still hardened their hearts against the Lord and therefore were unable to enter into the Promised Land. (3)
Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,
“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ As I swore in my wrath, They shall not enter my rest.’ ”
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said,
“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. Heb 3:7–19, ESV
We Have Reached Cruising Altitude
It starts like this:
Sin enters into a person’s heart, it is not confessed of, it is not taken care of. This sin grows and grows and despite Holy Spirit’s repeated promptings, nudging, and even rebukes, this person refuses to take care of it. They refuse to confess it, to turn away from it.
And what does this do?
This sin calcifies the heart. As Hebrews 3:13 says, sin is deceitful and it hardens a person’s heart against God. This hardness then leads to unbelief, and this unbelief grows bigger and bigger, until one day that person has become so hardened and calcified that despite all the divine evidences to the contrary—they choose to no longer repent.
The only sin God cannot forgive is the sin of an unrepentant heart, because that heart has refused the atoning work of Jesus Christ.
“For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.” Matt. 13:15, ESV.
It is at this point that someone—even a former believer—can so completely turn his or her back against the Lord, that they curse the work of God and call it a work of Satan, as the Pharisees do in the Gospels. This right here is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, but the road that led to it was a long and dark one.
I made a flow chart to make the case easier to understand:
We have Begun our Descent
So what are the takeaways we can grab from this?
First and foremost, I really do have to emphasize that if you are walking around terrified that you have blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, I can MOST ASSUREDLY tell you that you have NOT. A person who has committed this sin has so desensitized his or her heart and mind over the years that they are at the point of stone-cold dead unrepentance. God has his judgement laid out for them, because they are children of wrath and in his foreknowledge, knows this person will never turn back again.
If you have even an ounce of conviction in your heart then it means it’s not over for you, that is the work of Holy Spirit on your mind in your heart—you are NOT too far gone beyond the saving grace of Jesus Christ. As long as there is a desire of repentance, a conviction of sin, JESUS CAN AND WILL FORGIVE YOU. His blood covers you. Don’t let Satan speak these awful lies to you that you are beyond redemption—I rebuke the devil’s awful lies off of you right now in the name of Jesus.
I keep encountering this fear in our community and I am calling a spade for a spade—if you have any sort of fear in you that you have blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, it means that you have not. End of story. A person who has committed this sin will be so entrenched in his or her delusion and deception that they will never turn to the Lord to ask the question in the first place.
That being said, one thing I will caution all of us believers in is the power of continual confession and repentance. Be on your guard against sin dear Christian, don’t tolerate it for even a moment. Run away from it, flee from it. Kill it the moment you fall into it and turn to Jesus. This will protect your from hardening your heart, and falling into the greater deception of sin in the long run. This will protect you from letting the devil come and build up demonic strongholds in your mind that dull you to the grace and freedom that Jesus Christ has for all of his people.
Jon Tyson has a great analogy to go with this — entertaining even small sin is like adopting a pet tiger. It seems innocent at first—even cuddly—until it grows up into adulthood and turns around and kills you.
But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.” Heb. 3:13
I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface, I’ll be honest. But I hope that in some way these words bring clarity to the argument. I also can’t end this without giving credit to the esteemed Tim Keller. God worked in such a way that while I was coming to these conclusions through my own Bible reading, Keller’s sermon popped up and 100% confirmed it. And like always, he says it better than I ever can. Take a to his sermon listen here.
All right everyone, we have arrived at our destination. We can safely unbuckle our seatbelts. Thank you for flying with us, we hope to see you again soon.
Until next time!
Commentary & Footnotes
(1) In many ways this is a reassurance, because in all the ways I can go about messing my life up, God always has a redemption planned out. In Christ, all of my mess ups and wrong turns always turn back to him. Glory to God.
(2) I want to note that I have taken Mackie’s quote out of its immediate context and applied it here because it fits. He is specifically referring to the instances in Judges 9 and 1 Samuel 16 where God sends an “evil” spirit to Abimelech and Saul, and I think it’s one of the best explanations of those passages. Applicable to a larger range of questions too. Listen here from the 48 to 52 minute mark.
(3) The Writer - I’m fairly convinced that Paul is the writer of Hebrews as well.
