Unfortunately, Christians frequently give the impression that there are any number of unforgivable sins. In the past, suicide appeared to be unforgivable for Catholics, although that was never quite true. Also mostly in the past, divorce was regarded by both Catholics and evangelicals as a kind of unforgivable sin which barred one from full participation in the life of the church. Today, society perceives Christians with a biblical sexual morality as believing that homosexual behavior is unforgivable.
The truth is that neither Scripture nor the Church (for the most part) has ever taught that suicide, divorce or homosexual activity is unforgivable. Nor have other sins been legitimately and correctly regarded as beyond God’s grace and pardon. We have held pretty firmly to what Jesus said in our text today Mark 3:20-35, teaching in verse 28 that, “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven all their sins and all the blasphemies they utter.” It’s only by error and misunderstanding that some common sins or class of sins have either explicitly or implicitly been labeled “unforgivable.”
Nonetheless, in verse 29 of the text, Jesus states pretty clearly that there is an unforgivable sin which occurs when one “blasphemes the Holy Spirit.” Such blasphemy makes one guilty of an “eternal sin,” which can never be forgiven. Those are hard words and a hard concept to understand.
The context, however, takes us a long way toward understanding. Jesus spoke about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit being unforgivable when a group of scribes declared that Jesus was casting out demons by the power of “Beelzebul… the prince of demons.” So the specific blasphemy which sparked Jesus’ warning was the identification of the good work of the Holy Spirit as the evil work of Satan or perhaps one his lieutenants (the precise etymology and identification of “Beelzebul” is unclear). It’s a very specific sort of deliberate and intentional blasphemy which one would not perpetrate inadvertently or by negligence. As J.C. Ryle wrote and which is often repeated, “… those who are troubled about it are most unlikely to have committed it.”
It is not even clear that the scribes whom Jesus was warning here had committed that unforgivable sin. It may be that Jesus was simply pointing out to them that their foolish suggestion (which He soundly refutes in verses 23-27) that He was using the power of evil to defeat evil verged closely on a blasphemous identification of the Spirit of God with the evil spirit Satan.
The warning is to beware of calling good evil, especially the holy and good Spirit of God. Isaiah 5:20 says, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” It’s a spiritual condition which taken to its furthest point could put one beyond the possibility of repentance because one has become blind to the very need for repentance, failing to perceive the evil in one’s own sin. Yet anyone with any remnant of conscience (through which the Holy Spirit speaks) is not yet in this condition. Hence the truth that if you are worried about this sin you can’t have committed it, because you still have a functioning sense of good and evil.
Moreover, it is by the Holy Spirit that we are given grace to accept Jesus Christ as Savior and be saved. To reject the Spirit as something evil is to push away the very means by which God convicts us of our need for Jesus and by which He pours grace into our hearts and adopts us into His family (as our text from Romans 8:12-17 said last week). As long as we are ready to receive that “Spirit of adoption,” none of our sins will be unforgivable.
So it makes sense when the Gospel text for Sunday concludes with yet another hard saying from Jesus, His seeming rejection of His mother and siblings. Jesus was pointing to a deeper relationship than biological kinship, the family relation created when we receive the Spirit and do God’s will, thus becoming true adopted kin of the Son of God.
As ancient Christians were swift to point out, Jesus was not wholly rejecting His biological family, but simply inviting them and everyone else to enter into that deeper relationship with Him as children and family of God by the Holy Spirit. Mary His mother was already in that divine family by her acceptance of God’s will at Jesus’ conception. Later witness in the New Testament shows us that some at least of Jesus’ brothers also became His spiritual kin and leaders in the church.
Which all invites us, as the long season of Pentecost begins to unfold, into a deeper appreciation of the Holy Spirit and toward sensitivity to being guided by Him. That’s the lesson to learn here rather than some anxious worry about an unforgivable sin.