Technically speaking – NO! (there is no scripture that actually says “unpardonable”). And untechnically speaking – Yes! (there is a sin the bible says won’t be forgiven).
That probably doesn’t immediately help those who are fearful that they have committed this sin, but I begin this way so that we can learn to appreciate that the bible educates us as much through paradox as through other methods. In interpreting the scriptures we need to be able to hold two apparently contradictory thoughts together as one whole in order to get at a more accurate and proper understanding of God’s grace in the light of Jesus Christ!
I will try to simplify what can be discussed in a longer way, and if you want a longer answer simply Google “unpardonable sin”. There is lots of good stuff out there.
Here are the scriptures used to discuss this topic (and notice the special emphasis on dishonoring God the Holy Spirit – Who has been sent to educate us about the Truth – John 16!):
Mark 3:22-30 and Matt 12:31-32 .
I promised to follow up with this post based on Boyd’s comments from my last post, so here are godly and biblical thoughts in the Revelation of Jesus Christ:
1.) Is Jesus Fully God and Fully Man in One Person without mixture or confusion? We in Christianity say “Yes!!” Our creeds emphasize this, especially the Chalcedon Creed. The significance of this is that it was agreed upon by the church at large (including the Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, and many Protestant Christian churches).
PLEASE NOTICE THAT TO GET AT ANY TRUTH WE MUST BEGIN WITH ANSWERING THE QUESTION: WHO IS JESUS?
2.) This means that, technically speaking, when the Son of God became Man He took on the fullness of our actual fallen human nature, forgiving, saving and healing everything that was wrong with that broken human nature. As the old church father’s would say, whatever Jesus did not assume, he did not forgive, or save or heal. In reverse, whatever he did assume, was completely and utterly forgiven, saved and healed.
So, if you don’t believe that Jesus was fully human, you cannot hold as true that you or anyone can ever be fully forgiven, healed or saved! That would be the end of any hope for anyone or anything – period! It would also be a massive failure on God’s part to have sent his Son to save us, only to realize that he only almost saved us! Yikes! We need a very different and REAL God thank you very much!!
On the other hand, to believe God the Son became forever fully human, while remaining fully God, means that all of humanity is fully forgiven, saved and healed in the Person of Jesus Christ. This means hope for the good future of everyone and everything! It also means massive success on God’s part – having sent his Son to save the lost and realizing that he actually did! Hallelujah! Now THAT is the Good News!
3.) Did you see that word “forgiveness” in those statements above? Forgiveness is NOT just an “I forgive you” from the mouth of God, or pouring out Jesus’ blood externally on Jerusalem sand to fix your real 21st century relational problems! Forgiveness is the act of God making things RIGHT, LITERALLY, in the very Person of His Son Jesus! Of making things right in our real and fallen human nature, so that there is ACTUAL reconciliation and ACTUAL redemption in our humanity, not pretend reconciliation and fake redemption!
To take all of this seriously is to KNOW that every sin imaginable, including your sins against God the Father, Son AND Spirit (Who is ONE!) are forgiven, LITERALLY, in Jesus!!!
4.) So where does the unforgiven part come in? Good question!
If everyone and everything is completely forgiven and made right in Jesus Christ, this means that anything we have said or spoken, or thought in a wrong manner against God the Father, Son and Spirit, and other people and creatures is forgiven! That is what Jesus is trying to emphasize in his comments when he says that whatever we say against the Son of Man will be forgiven.
We do this in our lostness and our ignorance, and that is why Jesus forgave even that! Father please forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing! Luke 23:34!
HOWEVER, if God the Holy Spirit shares with you this truth of your complete and total forgiveness, salvation and healing in Jesus (and He does and forever will!), BUT you, in essence, keep calling Him a liar and refuse to embrace the truth – HE IS NEVER GOING TO FORGIVE THAT! In other, more clear words, for God the Holy Spirit not to forgive that sin means for Him not to AGREE WITH YOUR LIES ABOUT HIS TRUTH!!! How could He?! You, in your distinction can deny the truth, but He will NOT EVER DENY HIMSELF!! He IS the Truth!
It’s not that your sin and blashemy against the Holy Spirit has not been forgiven, it’s just that YOU keep thinking and acting like it has not been forgiven, even when He helps you clearly see in the Person of Jesus that it has been forgiven! You are not treating the Holy Spirit like God but are acting like God yourself and that can’t be forgiven = or BE RECEIVED AS FORGIVEN BY YOU as long as you keep calling that Truth a lie!!)
I am currently in a red jump suit as I write this. As long as I receive this jump suit for what it is, I am in a red jump suit. However, in an intentional moment of stupidity and rebellion I can refuse to see it as a red jump suit and call it a blue jump suit (even though I can plainly see it is a red one!) As long as I think it is blue, it is “not” red to me, as bright red as it may really be! No sane person embracing their sanity (instead of embracing my self-chosen insanity) could ever forgive me or agree with me that the suit is blue when it is plainly red unless they wanted to purposefully participate in ignorance!!
Do you get a sense of the intentional insanity that we can choose in our distinction – potentially forever?! Good Grief! That would be eternal Hell fire and brimstone for sure, ESPECIALLY in trying to relate with others!! What “burns” more than bad relationships in a life of relationships???! Nothing!!
So, in the Relational power of the Spirit Who is with you and all people – change your mind and believe the Good News! You are wholly adopted, included, forgiven, healed and saved in the Very Person and Humanity of Jesus Christ – even from your blasphemy against God! I John 2:1-2!
Don’t trample this truth underfoot and steal your own joy by participating in your completely forgiven, healed and saved humanity as a willfully, sinful, and distinct foolish person! Heb 10:26!
God Likes You 
Great post Tim on UPS. Un Pardonable Sin. I agree 100%. Remember the words “Unpardonable Sin” are not mentioned in scripture in the first place. All sin, even Blasphemy is already forgiven in Jesus Christ. Blasheming the Holy Spirit is continuing to reject through unbelief that one is forgiven of all his or her sins. And that can last over into the next life as Mt.12 shows.
If any of your readers would like to see the short article I wrote on this subject, they can request it at my email address and ask for the UNPARDONABLE SIN article.
Send to : Paul.Kurts@wcg.org and I will send it to you.
blessings.
Paul
I spent five years of my life thinking I had “blasphemed the Holy Spirit”. It was five years of terror. But then again, I wonder why God never responds to me. Christians tell me that if I seek Him he will respond. I try to believe, but nothing comes of it. I’m at the point where I even doubt God’s existence. How can I not be calloused, seeing that I’ve been at this for years with nothing to show?
Paul! Thanks for your agreement. It confirms the Gospel of His grace in the unity of the Spirit and in the unity of our humanity! I recommend your articles to others and your blog which is located under my blog roll! Let’s keep proclaiming His Good News in His Grace!
Robert – thank you so much for being so open and vulnerable! I am sorry for the great terror of false faith you were under for so long. In part, I can REALLY understand it because I had a similar, literal, situation in my own personal life that did not last as long. My human father was easy to speak to about it and he encouraged me in the fact that the Father, Son and Spirit do not think in our human and fallen ways and has unfailing love and nature of grace toward me (and everyone!)
First, I have prayed for and will continue praying for you because Christ has redeemed you and your broken, sinful human nature in His Very Person! He is praying for you and shares those prayers with me and others! Rom 8!
I encourage you to not take your personal faith in Jesus too serious! The best we can ever offer God, any of us, is a sinful broken faith. Rather, I encourage you to have faith that Jesus is having perfect faith for you and on your behalf in heaven as a man, just as the Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul to help us see. Read Gal 2:20 in the King James version (which I believe is more accurate to the Greek and original intent of this passage!) Don’t try so much to believe! Ask Jesus to share His belief with you – it is the only thing that will really suffice, last, and have certainty even in the middle of uncertainty!
Remember, having faith is NOT your problem in one sense! You absolutely have faith in something, even if it is your own doubt! You had faith that you had committed the unpardonable sin, and that faith was a living hell! Faith IS your problem in another sense because your faith can be misplaced, and be in something other than Jesus Himself! You have faith and it is in Jesus OR in something or someone else!
I can understand your desire to see God the Father, Son and Spirit in more extravagant and miraculous ways, as it were, but the story of Jesus proves that that really doesn’t create true and lasting believers. After all of his miracles and mighty works, very few still believed Jesus, and most participated in his death, even if only through approving shouts of condemnation!
Rather, learn to see God in your mundane, everyday life!!! You obviously CARE about God and trying not to offend him! Where does this good desire come from other than God himself?? He is the only one who is good! It surely does not come from the evil one or evil human nature! I am sure that you do good, and appreciate good, and try to avoid bad, daily, right?! Why is this? You and all other human beings are sinful, so how is it that you participate in good if not through the daily grace of the Father in your mundane life and existence?
Jesus doesn’t have a fickle love that only helps Robert when Robert is sharing in good! Jesus is living proof that God walks and lives with us even in our darkness! He was tempted just like we are – how much more human can you get?! How can you know things aren’t good in your life right now UNLESS there is a Light of Good (Jesus in the Holy Spirit) shining in you to help you know what is bad and good? Please check out this link in that light – I think you will appreciate the read: http://www.christianbooksummaries.com/library/v3/cbs0340.pdf
If I can be of further help and encouragement to you, please write me at my e-mail address, or call me at 757.582.8003. If you do not get me, leave a message and I will return your call!
Peace, Love, Blessings and Happy New Year!
Great encouragement, Tim, for Robert. I too shall be praying with you for Robert to see God in His everyday life. Remember, Robert, that as Paul says in Acts 17:28, we ALL live, breathe, move, exist, and have our BEING in God. Do see that? Do you see your love for your loved ones actually as God sharing His love for them with you by allowing you to experience His love for them which you mistakenly call your own? We don’t take love pills to allow us to all of a sudden have “love” for another human. We enjoy sunsets because God living in us shares His appreciation fof the sunsets. We have fun with little puppies and kitties and think they are cute because God loves to play with them IN us. He just shares that joy with us. It all comes from Him. God is NEAR. He is present. He is INSIDE of us. See John 14:20 and John 17:20-26. So,
learn to see God as a personal friend. A personal companion. A Paraclete, one who goes along side and within us giving us LIFE. ABUNDANT LIFE NOW AND FOREVER.
God bless,
Paul Kurts
Thanks Tim and Paul and great to share in your (our) transparency Robert. I know that this unfolding of what is truth in you, which leads to brokenness and transparency comes only from one source, the one who loves you more than He loves Himself. I know for I used to believe that it was my faith in Jesus that cemented the relationship, He depended on me to birth me into His relationship. Think about this as long as I was in this mindset it also meant that when I stumbled in unbelief (and I still do) that it was me who had to get it back together by believing. No wonder I thought that I had stepped over the line, it was my own mythical perception. I became High Priest and god of my own life and used God to make it work.
It is good to be encouraged by Tim and Paul and find myself today learning to live loved in the true reality and life that is present in all humanity. jg
John,
You are speaking very inspiring and clear Gospel yet again! Thanks for your ongoing participation on this blog as we share in Christ’s encouragement!
Peace, Love and Blessings!
Timothy
You wrote “On the other hand, to believe God the Son became forever fully human, while remaining fully God, means that all of humanity is fully forgiven, saved and healed in the Person of Jesus Christ.”
So in Joshua 12, when God recounts the kings Joshua killed (and all of the inhabitants of those cities except Rahab and her family that were killed)… these people were forgiven? When God destroyed Sodom, Gomorrah, the earth (in Noah’s day) these men were forgiven? When God declares in 2nd Thessalonians 2:11 “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” — these who received this working of error were forgiven? Even though God purposely damned them?
Romans 9:22 makes it clear that God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to (literally perfected unto) destruction (or perdition) – but you say they were “forgiven.” If God forgives all, then all are saved (and there is no wrath to come or damnation). If all are forgiven, but some perish, then that forgiveness isn’t worth anything – it’s dung. True forgiveness is accompanies by true propitiation, atonement, redemption, satisfaction, and salvation. Everything else is just will-worship and works-mongering.
Curt,
Thanks for participating in this Gospel conversation! As I am sure you probably deeply believe as a Christian, since Jesus Christ has come, we have learned to interpret the events in the Old Testament in the light of the New Testament, and both testaments in the Light of the Person of Jesus Christ Himself – John 5:39.
That foundational and Christian way of interpreting scripture in place:
1.) We Christians understand Jesus to be the vicarious man standing in for, substituting as, and responding properly to His Father in the place of all men. This means that whatever happens to him IN FACT happens to and for every person even though we can’t explains the in and outs of how that really works.
This is why the scriptures say that all men died in Jesus WHEN JESUS DIED and were reconciled to God in Him, and that he is NOT counting any man’s sins against him – 2 Cor 5:14 – 21. This is why the scriptures say that Jesus is the Saviour of all, especially of those who believe and that we must insist on this and teach it – 1 Tim 4:10-11. This is why it says even though all men were condemned in Adam, all men are justified in Christ – Rom 5. This is why the scriptures say that Jesus is the propitiation and atonement not only for the sin of believers but also for the sins of the whole world – 1 John 2:1-2. This is why we can understand Jesus to be the righteousness, sanctification, and redemption of all people – 1 Cor 1:30-31.
2.) None of this excludes God’s wrath because God’s wrath is not different than Who God is revealed to be in the Person of Christ, as a God of Love! God’s wrath is not different from the Love of giving His Son to the world to save it and not condemn it – John 3:16-17! God’s wrath is a product of His Love and not mutually exclusive from it (demonstrated in Christ to be a redeeming and reconciling act because of his intent to adopt all men and forgive them of all trespasses in Christ – Eph 1, 2)
3.) Respectfully, the only real difference between what I am saying and you are saying is how we are interpreting the scriptures. I am allowing Who the Person of Jesus is in Himself to be my lens for interpreting everyone and everything in scripture, as scripture instructs us to do – Col 2:8, whereas you seem to be interpreting scripture primarily in the light of its historical events and men’s actions apart from Christ. Admittedly this difference is HUGE and causes us to see things differently.
Finally, I must disagree with your statement that “If all are forgiven, but some perish, then that forgiveness isn’t worth anything – it’s dung.”
Because this is exactly what the scriptures reveal can happen (that we can stand fully forgiven in Christ but may in fact still perish in Christ!), then, in the light of this revelation in Christ we can only stand puzzled and in awe but not in negative judgement of the Trinity Who has created and sustains us all! That would be heading into territory where the angels fear to tread! Plus, without that forgiveness, there would be no hope of any of us repenting since forgiveness logically PRECEDES repentance – Eph 4:32, Col 3:13.
Peace!
Timothy
The problem lies in a misunderstanding of the term “all.” Christ died for all men, not in the sense of every single person in the world, but in the sense of John 6:37 “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”
“All” is often used in the Bible in a way that doesn’t mean everyone. e.g. “Acts 2:17 “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh:” do you think this is all men (Hitler, Nero, etc.).
Christ is the Saviour of the World. A saviour is one who actually saves (not who makes it possible to be saved if you just accept Him). Given that the entire world isn’t saved, that word world, like all, has a limited meaning — it is the world of God’s elect.
The true Christ is not a failure. He actually seeks and actually saves his own. He isn’t foolish enough to die for those already in hell and those whom He knows will end up in Hell. His blood accomplishes real, actual, guaranteed salvation for all whom He died (all whom the Father has given Him).
His effectual atonement guarantees that the Father’s will will be accomplished “that of ALL which He hath given Christ, Christ shall lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. John 6:39″
It’s a battle of wills, the sovereign will of the Father versus the corrupt and fallen will of will-worshipers. Regarding the Father’s will, we read:
Ehpesians 1:3 Blessed [be] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly [places] in Christ: 4 According as HE HATH CHOSEN (ELECTED) US in him BEFORE the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: 5 Having PREDESTINATED us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of HIS WILL. To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein HE HATH MADE US ACCEPTED in the beloved (man doesn’t accept Christ,” Christ makes us acceptable before the Father in Him).
The Old Testament reprobate perished because they had no forgiveness because they were not CHOSEN (elected) in Christ and Christ was never the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world FOR THEM.
Scripture is clear, Christ is no failure, if He died for a person – that person is saved… He simply did not die for every single person. The Lord Jesus is no fool.
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