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Matthew 12:31 - The Unpardonable Sin.Matthew 12:31 (NLT) "Every sin and blasphemy can be forgiven - except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which will never be forgiven.Matthew 12:31 (ESV) Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Matthew 12:31 (MSG) "There's nothing done or said that can't be forgiven. But if you deliberately persist in your slanders against God's Spirit, you are repudiating the very One who forgives. INTRODUCTION Sometimes believers worry that they have accidentally committed this unforgivable sin. But only those who have turned their backs on God and rejected all faith have any need to worry. Jesus said they can't be forgiven - not because their sin is worse than any other but because they will never ask for forgiveness. Whoever rejects the prompting of the Holy Spirit removes himself or herself from the only force that can lead him or her to repentance and restoration to God. [Life Application SB] COMMENTARY PEARL Whatever the sin, if the soul repents and believes, the guilt is washed away in the blood of Christ; but he who rejects the work of the Holy Spirit is placing himself where repentance and faith cannot come to him. It is by the Spirit that God works upon the heart; when men willfully reject the Spirit, and declare It to be from Satan, they cut off the channel by which God can communicate with them. When the Spirit is finally rejected, there is no more that God can do for the soul. DA322 It is not God that blinds the eyes of men or hardens their hearts. He sends them light to correct their errors, and to lead them in safe paths; it is by the rejection of this light that the eyes are blinded and the heart hardened. Often the process is gradual, and almost imperceptible. Light comes to the soul through God's word, through His servants, or by the direct agency of His Spirit; but when one ray of light is disregarded, there is a partial benumbing of the spiritual perceptions, and the second revealing of light is less clearly discerned. So the darkness increases, until it is night in the soul. DA322 Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, or the unpardonable sin, consists of progressive resistance to truth that culminates in a final and irrevocable decision against it, deliberately made in the full knowledge that by so doing one is choosing to pursue his own course of action in opposition to the divine will. The conscience is seared by continued resistance to the impressions of the Holy Spirit, and one may hardly be aware that he has made the fateful decision. [SDA Bible Commentary] They do despite to the Spirit of grace, until its voice is no longer heard, and they are left to the delusions which they have chosen. PP635 COMMENTARY As Christians, we know and serve a God who is forgiving. The Old Testament abounds with teachings about His forgiveness. David declared in Psalm 86, "O Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing love for all who ask for your help" (verse 5 NLT). In another psalm, David reminds us, "He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases" (Psalm 103:3 NLT). Daniel 9:9 tells us, "But the Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him" (NLT). And God described Himself this way to Moses: "The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness. I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations. I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin" (Exodus 34:6-7 NLT). The prophet Micah, reflecting on God's forgiveness, said, "Where is another God like you, who pardons the guilt of the remnant, overlooking the sins of his special people? You will not stay angry with your people forever, because you delight in showing unfailing love" (Micah 7:18 NLT). Even when Jesus hung on the cross, He said, "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34 NLT). Again and again, we read in the Bible of the forgiveness of God. He will forgive all sin if it is confessed, no matter what it is. As Pastor John MacArthur pointed out, "There is no forgiveness of even the smallest sin unless it is confessed and repented of; but there is forgiveness of even the greatest sin if those divine conditions are met." But according to Jesus, there is one sin that even God will not forgive. And what is this unforgivable sin? It is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. It's the point when there is no turning back. When people deliberately choose not to believe in Jesus Christ because they don't want to change the way they live, ultimately it can lead them to the one sin that even God will not forgive. People don't reject Jesus Christ for any other reason except that it's a threat to their lifestyle. They hate the light and know their deeds will be exposed. The work of the Holy Spirit in the life of nonbelievers is to speak to them and lead them to Jesus Christ. Jesus said of the Holy Spirit, "And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God's righteousness, and of the coming judgment" (John 16:8 NLT). In other words, the Holy Spirit works to bring nonbelievers to their senses, to show them their need for Jesus Christ. The work of the Holy Spirit is to bring us to a saving knowledge of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is incredibly patient and persistent. But there comes a point when the Spirit will no longer be patient, because we continue to resist Him. This leads to the ultimate, unforgivable sin: the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. [Greg Laurie from Harvest Ministries; https://www.harvestdaily.com] A man can lose any faculty if he refuses to use it. This is true in any sphere of life. It is true physically; if a man ceases to use certain muscles, they will atrophy. It is true mentally; many a man at school or in his youth has acquired some slight knowledge of, for example, French or Latin or music; but that knowledge is long since gone because he did not exercise it. It is true of all kinds of perception. A man may lose all appreciation of good music, if he listens to nothing but cheap music; he may lose the ability to read a great book, if he reads nothing but ephemeral productions; he may lose the faculty of enjoying clean and healthy pleasure, if he for long enough finds his pleasure in things which are degraded and soiled. Therefore a man can lose the ability to recognize goodness and truth when he sees them. If he for long enough shuts his eyes and ears to God's way, if he for long enough turns his back upon the messages which God is sending him, if he for long enough prefers his own ideas to the ideas which God is seeking to put into his mind, in the end he comes to a stage when he cannot recognize God's truth and God's beauty and God's goodness when he sees them. He comes to a stage when his own evil seems to him good, and when God's good seems to him evil... The sin against the Holy Spirit is the sin of so often and so consistently refusing God's will that in the end it cannot be recognized when it comes even full-displayed. Why should that sin be unforgivable? What differentiates it so terribly from all other sins? The answer is simple. When a man reaches that stage, repentance is impossible. If a man cannot recognize the good when he sees it, he cannot desire it. If a man does not recognize evil as evil, he cannot be sorry for it, and wish to depart from it. And if he cannot, in spite of failures, love the good and hate the evil, then he cannot repent; and if he cannot repent, he cannot be forgiven, for repentance is the only condition of forgiveness. It would save much heartbreak if people would realize that the one man who cannot have committed the sin against the Holy Spirit is the man who fears he has, for the sin against the Holy Spirit can be truly described as the loss of all sense of sin.... It is the law of life that we hear what we have trained ourselves to hear; day by day we must listen to God, so that day by day God's voice may become, not fainter and fainter until we cannot hear it at all, but clearer and clearer until it becomes the one sound to which above an our ears are attuned. [Barclay Commentary] CLOSING PEARL The Greatest Danger In Putting Off The Decision To Live For Christ Is Not So Much The Soon Return Of Christ Or Even The End Of Probation Which Precedes It, But The Hardening Of The Heart That Results From Such A Decision And That Soon Makes One Unable To Make The Decision To Live For Christ. [Pastor Arthur Gibbs] ONE LINER It is not only by resistance but by neglect that the soul is destroyed. DA323 LINKS FOR FURTHER STUDY Matthew 12:31 - The Unpardonable Sin. https://www.abible.com/devotions/2000/20000425-2315.html Matthew 12:31 - The Sin God Cannot Forgive. https://www.abible.com/devotions/2001/20010129-0000.html LINKS WORTH CHECKING OUT https://abible.com/links/ |