“THE UNPARDONABLE SIN”
Text:
January 2008
When I served the Presbyterian Church in Carrollton, I was fortunate that the regular weekly
worshiping congregation was small enough in number that if someone was not in attendance for
a few weeks, it would be easy for me to notice. Such was the case when a middle-aged woman
whom I’ll call “Sandra” – a woman who missed church less in a year than I could count on the
fingers of one hand – suddenly disappeared. A quiet and private soul, she was not particularly
well-connected to anyone in that church family. So when she missed a fourth consecutive week
in worship, and no one had any idea why, I began to telephone her. But I was never able to catch
her at home. Over the course of the next few months, I left several unreturned messages until on
one occasion, the phone just continued to ring. About the time I was ready to go knocking on her
door (which I don’t like to do without invitation), I ran into her at the local Ben Franklin store.
And there’s no getting away when you run into your pastor in an aisle which is less than two
shopping carts wide. At any rate, she grudgingly agreed to a visit.
The following Tuesday morning, I was greeted at the door by her farmer husband who was,
shall we say, every bit the farmer – tall and lanky, a flannel shirt with overalls, mud-encrusted
boots, a John Deere cap, not a lot of smiles, not a lot of words. In fact, I believe the only time he
spoke is when he pointed over his
shoulder with his thumb and gruffly stated, “The little
woman’s in the other room. And she needs all the help she can get.” I found Sandra at her
dining room table with her head down. To make the story of a long visit short, I’ll just say that
she felt the need to make confession. Yet even at that, she was sure that she had committed the
unpardonable sin, and no longer had the right to even step into God’s house. And her
unpardonable sin? In a rare fit of anger, she had shouted at her daughter and taken the Lord’s
name in vain. “Isn’t that what it means to blaspheme the Holy Spirit pastor? she sobbed.
Although I was as certain as I could have been that she had not committed an unpardonable sin,
to be honest, I struggled mightily to answer her question. What does it mean to blaspheme
against the Holy Spirit, the only sin Jesus is ever recorded as calling unforgivable? Let’s read
this passage in its context and try to answer Sandra’s question, and maybe ours as well.
(Read
Mark 3:19b-30)
Even before meeting Sandra, I had become aware of how many are afflicted with the sense of
having committed the irrevocable sin. In the absence of a full-time pastor at a church I served as
a student intern while in seminary, I was called upon to do a lot of hospital visitation. As I
struggled to minister to those who were dealing with life-threatening illnesses, I heard over and
over again the same concern. So many applied the unpardonable sin to themselves, and
perceived their or their loved
one’s suffering as the consequences of having somehow crossed the
line beyond which God would not forgive.
If we take Jesus’ words at face value, then merely speaking a blasphemy, that is an insulting,
or irreverent, or contemptible word against God seems to be the unforgivable sin Jesus is talking
about; violation of the third commandment which prohibits taking the name of the Lord in vain.
This was obviously behind the spiritual angst which kept Sandra away from church. But if we
consider the context in which these words of Jesus were spoken, we uncover a broader and
deeper meaning. In the verses preceding His statement, we read of Jesus’ healing the masses
of many illnesses and afflictions. Among the people healed were some thought to be possessed
by demons. The people who witnessed these miraculous acts were, for the most part, amazed
and overjoyed. The religious leaders however viewed these healings through an entirely different
lense. Their take was that “He has Beelzebul (which is a Greek form of the Hebrew word Baal-
Zebub translated
“lord of flies,” later translated “Satan”) and by the ruler of
demons he casts
out demons.” In other words, they were charging that Jesus’ healing was the work of the devil
because they saw Jesus as undermining the true religion and beguiling people with these supposedly
good works.
Jesus proceeded to dismantle their argument with simple logic and a simple parable, saying that if
He was of Satan, then he would be destroying his own kingdom of evil by healing the people of their
afflictions
and restoring them to wholeness. It was
then that Jesus concluded by saying, “...people
will
be forgiven of their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever
blasphemes
against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” The context
of the passage brings clarity to what Jesus means. It was the Holy Spirit of God who had been the
agent of healing the demon possessed. So when the religious leaders looked upon the work of the
Spirit of God and called it the work of the devil, they were blaspheming. But more than that, in the
words
of Isaiah we read a little earlier, they were calling “evil good and good
evil,” “darkness for
light
and light for darkness.” It is when
they lost - and when people lose - their capacity to discern
God’s work and abandon the
power, and even the desire, to distinguish between good and evil that they
“can
never have forgiveness.”
I’ve read about a phenomenon observed in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. It is said that in
the farthest recesses of that cave is a pool of water in which there are fish living in complete and
utter darkness. These creatures are totally blind. Yet when a specimen is caught and examined, it
is found that the structure of its eye is perfectly sound, indicating that the fish was once able to see.
When they were caught in an environment without light, the law of atrophy set in. The optic nerve
began to shrivel and eventually lost all sensitivity. Likewise, if the faculties of sensitivity, empathy,
mercy, trust are left unexercised, and one begins to live in a chronic state of fear, anger, envy, pride and
hatred, the eventual outcome is that good will be viewed as evil, and evil will be viewed as good. The
religious leaders of Christ’s day, for all their religiosity, had become so insensitive to the goodness
and will of God that they criticized and eventually crucified the very incarnation of God, and they
did it in the name of God! This revealed in the most tragic possible way how hard and calloused the
human heart can become, leading to a posture of spirit which can neither find, nor recognize, nor accept
forgiveness – God’s, or anyone else’s. Once having gained this perspective on Jesus’ teaching, neither
Sandra nor we have to worry about unpardonable sin. Being sensitive to our own wrongdoing is
sufficient, and moreover necessary, in realizing and receiving God’s forgiveness.
A second and no less compelling implication of this passage is that any sin which proves
unforgivable is not unforgivable because God is unable or unwilling to forgive. If we believe in the
absolute sovereignty of God, we must also assent that no one can fall so far from God’s reach. I’ll
admit that’s radical theology. The noted Swiss psychiatrist Paul Tournier noted in his book Guilt and
Grace how he came to understand the difference between
God’s love and ours. “It is not
enough to say
God’s love is a very, very, very great love – as if there
were only a quantitative difference between the
human and the divine,” Tournier writes. “Rather,
there is a qualitative difference.
Only that
difference makes it possible for God to forgive the unforgivable.” Faith then, on one level, becomes a
matter of accessing this eternal mercy. When we recognize God’s acceptance of us as the good news of
the gospel, we are thereby freed to make more regular and meaningful use of our prayers of confession
to identify and lift up before God’s grace our moral and spiritual failures, great they may be. Within
that, there is no sin outside the pale of God’s capacity to forgive.
I am convinced that even in His showdown with the religious leaders we read about today, Jesus did
not condemn or assume that they had finally fallen victim to an unforgivable condition. Rather, His
confrontation came as an invitation to become aware of how close they had come to calling God the
devil; his warning designed to bid them to repent accordingly.
Returning to our passage from Isaiah this morning, the prophet is addressing the people as a nation,
warning them of the dire
consequences of falling into such a spiritual condition that they “call evil
good and good evil.” I can’t help but think of our own nation, and how in a thousand ways we have
fallen into such a spiritual condition, where goodness is mocked and evil celebrated; all the ways we as
a culture have learned to love the darkness while shunning the light. Especially for the youngest
generations, the line between right and wrong has become so blurred that they can barely discern the
difference. Are we condemned? I pray not. Are we in danger? Absolutely...... the danger of a nation
losing its soul; of forfeiting its very conscience. That I believe is what Jesus is talking about when He
speaks of “blasphem(ing) against the Holy Spirit. And that applies to the community as well as to
the individual.
Well thank God, this isn’t all dark. At the end of the day, there is good news for Sandra. The fact
that she so lamented her sin of taking the Lord’s name in vain in a fit of anger was the sure sign that she
had not committed the unpardonable sin. There is good news for our nation. As far astray as we’ve
gone, I believe there is still a conscience in America; a glimmer of belief that there is a right and a
wrong way, and that we as free people have a choice. May we be wise enough to choose the right and
begin to cut away at the callous which is threatening to encrust the heart of America. There is good
news for each of us, for as long as we are aware, sensitive to our own wrongdoing, retaining our
capacity to discern between that which is of God and that which is of the enemy, we can never stray
beyond the forgiveness and loving kindness of our Father in heaven.