You have had it announced that this evening we are going to seek light from the Lord on a matter which has a long, painful, terrible history: the unpardonable sin.
We will first read the Scriptures most closely connected with this matter: Mark 3:28-30.
Verily I say unto you, All their sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and their blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme:
but whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin:
because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.
In the letter to the Hebrews, Hebrews 6:4-8:
For touching those who were once enlightened, and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit,
and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come,
and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance;
while they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame.For the land which hath drunk the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them for whose sake it is also tilled, receiveth blessing from God:
but if it beareth thorns and thistles, it is rejected and nigh unto a curse; whose end is to be burned.
Hebrews 10:26-31:
For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins,
but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries.A man that hath set at nought Moses’ law dieth without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses:
of how much sorer punishment, think ye, shall he be judged worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?For we know Him that said, Vengeance belongeth unto Me, I will recompense. And again, The Lord shall judge His people.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
So we solemnly, and with trepidation, take up this matter: the unpardonable sin.
This, of course, is no new matter—not something which has recently arisen. It has a very long history. In my own ministry, over forty-five years, right from the earliest days, again and again one has had to deal with this matter in cases which have come under the terrible shadow, cloud, of this accusation.
It is far-reaching. You find it everywhere where there are Christians, at all times and in all places. There it is. Many, many have come under the power of this assault, and its consequences in human lives are nothing less than devastating—crippling, life-paralyzing, testimony-nullifying, service-wrecking, often mind-wrecking, and driving to terrible excesses.
It is not without knowledge that I say that many, many in our mental institutions are there because of the harassment of this thing. There it is.
Now, it may not be that many of you are troubled personally about it, but it is well that we all have some understanding of this. We may have to try to help others, and not one of us knows when our turn will come to suffer this very assault. You know, when things are extremely difficult, well, that is the time when these things arise.
I propose to divide this matter this evening into two: spending a little time first on the non-spiritual and non-scriptural side, and then passing over to deal with the scriptural aspect of it.
It would be very unwise to deal with only one side of this, even the scriptural side alone, because a very large proportion of those who are suffering in this matter are not on scriptural ground at all. There is no scriptural basis for the position and condition in which they are. There are other reasons.
So it is only right that we spend a little time on this non-spiritual and non-scriptural ground for this accusation and its acceptance.
Now, out of this long experience that one has had, there is this which, to me, is very significant: this thing is not the trouble, or the malady, of a grossly abandoned sinner.
I have never yet met such a person—Godless, abandoned to sin—who has suffered from this accusation, had any worry or trouble or bother about having committed the unpardonable sin. This is ever and always the trouble of the sensitive, would-be devoted child of God.
Those who really, in their heart, love the Lord; who want nothing more than to be wholly the Lord’s. In, I could say, practically every case that has come to my knowledge, it has been like that. It is a particular malady of those who would, if they could, go all the way with the Lord, and who really, in their heart of hearts, have a great love for Him.
I could say that in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred, it is like that. Well, we shall have to deal with the hundredth case presently, where the case is perhaps a true one. But first of all, let us look at these ninety-nine.
I have already said that in their case it is not basically a spiritual matter at all. This particular thing can be classed with many other things that go by the name of obsessions.
You know, there are many obsessions that people get. Someone will get a ministry obsession: they are called for a special ministry, and it becomes a perfect obsession with them. One could mention many things like that.
This is just one of many things which become obsessions. They get a grip upon the mentality, make a groove in the mind, and become the one thing—the one thing haunting day and night, pursuing them, and becoming the centre around which they continually circle.
Yes, an obsession. And the ground of such is not Mark 3:29. It is other ground, and we would analyse that other ground.
First of all, it is very often a matter of moral weakness. Now, I use that word moral in its broadest sense, not in a particular sense, but in its broadest sense.
Somewhere in the background of the life there has been, and is, a lack and absence of discipline—of real hardship being faced manfully, courageously; of moral toughness.
This may be due to a hundred things, but I have found in many cases that often it is due to one of two extremes. One is a childhood that was pampered and spoiled, where a child was given everything that it cried for or asked for—completely pampered, spoiled.
It has only got to whimper and it gets all that it wants. Over an extended time, with nothing to the contrary in the way of discipline, deprivation, or training, the child grows up to youth, manhood, or womanhood like that: self-centred, wholly self-centred.
Eventually, when difficulty, adversity, denial, and hardship arise, they have not the moral stamina to stand up against it and are predisposed to the acceptance of a thing like this. When failure comes, very often the background is that which shows the necessity for self-control, for discipline, and for facing life as Paul says: “Gird yourselves like men.”
The glass-case-and-cotton-wool person is exceedingly open, in the day of adversity, to this suggestion, and will take it on. The characteristic of such people is always to be occupied with themselves, drawing to themselves, and never content unless they are occupying you and obsessing you with themselves.
You can trace that fact very often to the lack of discipline and training. We have got to face this thing in a common-sense way, because it is very practical. It is not always spiritual, dear friends.
On the other hand, there is the other extreme: a frustrated life, a frustrated childhood, and life frustrated since childhood—ambitions disappointed, expectations not materialising, many adversities and difficulties in life bringing about a frustration complex.
Anything like that is very dangerous and susceptible ground for suggestions of this kind. We have to be very careful how we react to adversity, to disappointment, to contradiction, and to frustrations.
For a frustration complex is just the contrary to a faith complex.
Then, pursuing it along this level further, very often the basis and background of this terrible malady—and no one will think that I am making light of it, because it is terribly true to the person who suffers—is very often due again to a nervous and constitutional deficiency or disorder.
It is really a case of constitution: some lack in the vital nervous constitution. Very often that is it. It represents a terrible handicap for the people concerned. There it is.
Because of something lacking in their constitution, they collapse before every onslaught of difficulty and adversity. They go down. People who come up a thousand times, but they go down just as many times. There is just something there lacking in the matter of stamina, and it is a physical matter and a nervous matter.
We ought to face this quite frankly. It is not necessarily a spiritual thing at all. It is just that.
Or again, it is what we call temperament. Temperament. We speak of people being temperamental, but when we use that word we are thinking only of one class, one temperament, of the half-dozen or more temperaments there are.
That temperament is particularly prone to rising at one time to higher levels and then, as quickly, sinking to the very deepest depths of despondency. It is temperament, and it is something quite natural.
It does not make it easier for the person. It makes life very difficult for those who have that temperament. But mark you, there are great values in that temperament as well as weaknesses and losses. I am not here to deal with these things fully; I am simply pointing them out.
Some people are temperamentally prone, or predisposed, to depression, despondency, and morbidity. They therefore become very fruitful ground for this whole idea of the unpardonable sin.
Going further, getting nearer to the centre of this, it is often a matter of spiritual debility and spiritual ignorance—an imperfect apprehension of the fundamental facts of the Christian life.
Those facts may be known: the great facts of justification by faith, the great facts of Christ’s substitutionary work on the Cross, and much more. These are the fundamentals of the faith. They may be known in theory, but there may be a weak apprehension of these fundamental facts.
When you come to it, you really find that these people are not standing upon the ground which they believe in, in a way. They either do not know the true ground of faith, or they are weak in their stand upon that ground and in their apprehension of these facts. There is a gap between their hearing and their life.
They are really standing upon some other ground than God’s declared facts. Let me say, for such and for all others, it is imperative that we know what God has declared in His Word as His facts.
That is, His facts in the matter of sin—what He has done with it, and so on. What are God’s facts? Not what we feel about things at all, but God’s facts. Here rescue lies very largely.
But still I have to proceed on this very unpleasant and wholesome line. Another thing which brings us again very near to the heart of this matter is what we might call psychical exaggerations and excesses. If you do not like the word psychical, you can put the word soul in, if you like.
I am thinking of those people—and they are a great company—who set their whole strength of soul upon getting an experience, and strain themselves in a psychical, as we understand it here, a soulical way. It is an excess; it is an exaggeration.
It very often results in some kind of experience which is a deception. Any who are older will know what I am referring to. It is possible to get a psychical imitation of the Holy Spirit in an experience.
Because it is psychical, wherever there is action, there is always a reaction—invariably. That excess will pass, sooner or later. It will come into the realm of questions; and when it has passed, the suggestion comes: “Of course, you have sinned against the Holy Spirit, and there is no pardon.”
It is not spiritual ground at all. It has been wholly psychical. I would like to enlarge upon that particular way, but there is no time at the moment. Take it as a warning.
That is not meant to indicate that we must not be, as we so often put it, utter for the Lord. But let us beware of soul-assertion, either in the emotional, the mental, or the volitional—in the will—where we are projecting ourselves in a forceful and excessive way. We lay ourselves wide open to deception and may come into a place where there seems to be no return, no getting out—may be locked up.
Now, all that is an attempt at explaining this from the natural side. But while the explanation is never the remedy, it is of great importance that we should know ourselves. Really, we should know ourselves.
If we did know ourselves, we should save our trouble very largely. You might perhaps not be a very good sleeper, and then overnight take something—a drug—to help you sleep. You have your good night’s sleep, but strangely, during the next day, you feel terribly depressed.
Terribly depressed. The very heart has gone out of living. There is no longer any purpose in life. You extend it below the screen of your natural condition; you bring it into the spiritual realm. Everything is wrong. Everything is wrong. Faith is gone, hope is gone, peace is gone—God has gone.
Has He? Is that true? Now, if you were only alive to the simple facts, you could trace it right to that little thing you took last night. You would say, “Oh, well, this is only the after-effect.” But do you see what I mean? That is only an illustration.
David, on one occasion, had one of those pits of stark depression. There was nothing good anywhere, in anybody; nothing worth anything. He went over it all, and then he said, “This is my infirmity; I will remember the years of the right hand of the Lord.”
If we knew ourselves, we would save quite a lot, and we would not be blaming the Lord for everything—not always the devil either. We very often blame the devil for our overnight drug. It is like that.
I say, while the explanation is not remedy, it is something to know ourselves temperamentally, constitutionally, and in every other way, and it may help quite a bit. All the things that I have mentioned do make life a great battle. They do.
And here is where grace has its meaning. When we have said all that, we have yet to face this Scripture. For here in these Scriptures we are presented with a true case where it is possible to commit a sin which has no forgiveness.
There is such a thing as the unpardonable sin according to the Word of God. What is it? What is it? Have you ever tried to answer that question?
That question must be faced and answered by anyone who is tempted to think this about himself or herself—anyone who has got into the toils of this accusation. The very first thing they are really called upon to do is to answer the question: What is the unpardonable sin?
You ask, and the answer is usually their feelings, or some very flimsy usage of Scripture. They refer to the Scriptures that I have mentioned, but they do not know what they are talking about. They have never studied those Scriptures. They have never looked into them.
They have taken them merely on their face-value and suggestion—“Oh, meaning!” They have never got down to it and said, “Now, what really does the Word of God teach about this matter? What is the answer to the question: What is the sin without pardon?”
So we must come now to the teaching of the Word on this matter. First of all, may I suggest to you that in coming to the Word of God, you must come to the best translation of the Word of God that you can get.
I say that because the old King James, our Authorised Version, is not the safest one in this matter. Indeed, you may get a wrong impression from its terms and language in this matter. So I suggest that you have something safer, surer, as to exactly what was said originally on the matter.
That by the way. But you have got to come to the Word of God on this. So come to it, and compare your versions if you like. My advice is that you get the most up-to-date, or at least the Revised Version, in this connection.
Now, to come to it: you notice the Lord Jesus, in what He said about this matter, focused it down. He focused it down to one point, to one thing, and called it the sin against the Holy Spirit.
He narrowed it down to the Holy Spirit and called it to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. That is big enough, comprehensive enough, but it will rule out quite a lot.
I think you have perhaps failed to recognise the comment of the writer in the last brief sentence: “Because they said of Jesus, He hath an unclean spirit.” Have you said that of Jesus? That is the sin against the Holy Spirit.
Saying that the Spirit that was in Jesus was an unclean spirit—or, if you like, a demon—attributing to Jesus the spirit of Satan. Have you done that? It is narrowed down to that.
That is the sin against the Holy Ghost. That is blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Jesus calls it blasphemy. What is blasphemy? That is a word used many times in the Scriptures. What does it mean?
It means to revile, to rail upon, to speak contemptuously of, or to slander. That is blasphemy: to rail upon the Holy Spirit or the Lord Jesus; to revile the Lord Jesus; to speak contemptuously of the Lord Jesus; to slander the Lord Jesus. Have you done this?
That is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. But this is where one of our English words leads us astray. We think of blasphemy in the sense of curses, foulness of language, and bringing in the name of God. We call that blasphemy, but that is not the New Testament meaning.
Now, you have the classical case in 1 Timothy 1:13. Paul spoke of himself as one “who was before a blasphemer.” What was Paul? How was he a blasphemer?
He vehemently reviled the Lord Jesus. He denounced the Lord Jesus. He maligned the Lord Jesus. He defamed the Lord Jesus. He attributed to the Lord Jesus evil that was false. In ignorance, he said, “I did it,” but he did it. That was his blasphemy.
Have you done that? Have you done this? Test every case by the true exegesis of the Word of God.
Now let us look at this inclusive matter: the Holy Spirit. Notice Paul’s words later: “doing despite unto the Spirit of grace”—the Spirit of grace.
What is the specific and particular purpose for which the Holy Spirit has come and is here in this dispensation? Why did He come, and why is He here?
Do you know the Holy Spirit is here with only one object? Only one object. And that object is not to draw attention to Himself. That is a testing and challenging fact which should test many things.
However, His one inclusive object is to bear witness to Christ—to bear witness to Christ: Christ Jesus as God’s one and final speech; Christ as God’s inclusive and conclusive work.
That, of course, is the substance of this whole letter to the Hebrews from which we have taken these two fragments: Christ supreme and Christ final as to sin.
The Holy Spirit is here to bear witness to Christ in the matter of sin—all His relationship to human sin and what He has done regarding human sin. Christ in the matter of reconciliation with God through His own blood, making peace by the blood of His Cross.
Christ: God’s gift of eternal life to those who will believe on Him. Christ: God’s gift of hope for all despairing men and women. Christ: God’s crown of glory for a humanity such as we are. Christ—His Cross, His blood.
Christ, in all this comprehensive way, is the one sole and only object of the Holy Spirit’s presence in this world: to bear witness to Him.
What then is the sin against the Holy Ghost, the sin which has no forgiveness? It is blasphemy: the deliberate and persistent rebutting of that witness of the Holy Spirit.
It is discrediting what the Holy Spirit says about the Lord Jesus and saying, “It is not true. I am saying it is not true. It is false. The Holy Spirit is a liar. He is not bearing witness to the truth. He is not the Spirit of truth.”
Who would put it in that way? But that is what it amounts to. That is what the apostle means by treading under foot the blood, crucifying afresh the Son of God, and doing despite to the Spirit of grace.
For all that I have said is the grace of God in Christ Jesus. The Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of grace, tells us all about that; and then for men to say, “Nothing in it. Do not believe it. Will not have it. It is all nonsense. It is all false”—that is treading under foot. That is it.
It is refusing, rebutting, the Holy Spirit’s testimony concerning Jesus. That is what the Lord meant by His own words:
Whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.
But then, what about these other passages from Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10? They can all be gathered into this one little fragmentary clause in Hebrews 10:29: “doing despite to the Spirit of grace.”
Despite—what is the meaning of the word? If you really mean business, you will make it your business to find out what the Bible means by its words as well as its statements.
The meaning of the word despite is to treat with insulting disdain—to treat the Spirit of grace with insulting disdain.
Look at the immediate context. The immediate context of these words is this: “seeing they crucify to themselves.” The margin is even more helpful: “while they crucify.” It is the present active tense. While they are at present crucifying afresh the Son of God and putting Him to an open shame—that is the immediate context.
But there is the larger context of this whole book, this whole letter to the Hebrews. It is the context of Israel, as you know so well. The whole history of Israel is brought into the argument about their perishing in the wilderness and not entering in because of unbelief.
Their example is taken up and applied: “Harden not your hearts.” What was their trouble that deprived them of the land, and when they would repent, they found no place of repentance? What was it?
There is one fragment which explains it all: they turned back in their heart to Egypt—the persistent heart-hankering after, and relationship to, Egypt.
Now, I need much more time for that than I have, but I am going to try and finish. We must not leave the subject unfinished.
The writer of this letter analyses this whole thing very much for us. He says about these people, for whom there is no way out—no more sacrifice for sin, no more forgiveness—because they were once enlightened. They were once enlightened. What does he mean?
If you go back into your Old Testament, you will find this. When the Lord sent Moses to Israel in Egypt to say, “The Lord, the God of your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, hath sent me,” what did they say? They said, “What is His name? What is His name?”
Four hundred years in Egypt: they lost the knowledge of the name of the Lord. They did not know their God. They did not know the Lord; they did not even know His name.
Moses went to recover for them, and give to them, the knowledge of God—their God, the God of their fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To give them, note the phrase, “the knowledge of the truth” about God in the name of the Lord. They had forgotten.
Moses brought them to the knowledge of the truth. In Egypt, where they lived through those many long years, they had got to know the names of the gods of the Egyptians very well.
The gods of the Egyptians were very real, and one of the chief gods, if not the chief god in Egypt, was worshipped in the form of a molten calf. Egypt: false-god worship in the form of a molten calf, and the loss of the knowledge of the name of the true God.
Moses brought them out and left them for a little while when he went into the mountain. What happened? Their hearts turned back to Egypt, to the gods of Egypt, and they made the molten calf: “These be thy gods, O Israel.”
From that beginning right to the end, through the whole wilderness journey, right to Kadesh-barnea, their hearts were continually turning back to Egypt. Right there, you notice, at the end they said, “Let us make us a captain, and let us return into Egypt.”
So persistent, so deeply ingrained, was this thing—this Egypt worship. Stephen said some extraordinary things about that, things which we hardly dare to mention, about what really was in their hearts and their thoughts.
He even suggested that, when they made the tabernacle, they were thinking of something in Egypt—the tabernacle of Moloch. That is significant.
This heart-division between the gods of Egypt and the true God never really took place until they passed over the Jordan. What a meaning it gives to Jordan.
Now, it is on that ground that these things are said about unpardonable sin: a heart that persistently and with impunity, in the presence of enlightenment concerning the truth of God, turns back—turns back—hankers for the old life and the old world.
Have you done that? That is the sin which puts us beyond the pale of forgiveness.
It is said that the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he was doomed. There was no salvation. But to Israel the Lord said, “Harden not your heart.” Do not harden your own heart. The same doom will await you as awaited Pharaoh if you harden your heart.
I am going to stop with that argument from nature which the apostle uses here in Hebrews 6. You know the bit there. It simply amounts to this: the mercies and blessings of God have been given and given, as rain and dew to the land, and cultivation and care to the soil.
If God has shown His grace and given His mercies, and then the only result is thorns, the end of that must be the fire. That is all. That is sin against, or doing despite to, the Spirit of grace.
What is the occasion of this warning, or these warnings? They fell away. They fell away—from what, and to what?
Well, take up the book again, the whole book, and it answers those questions. They fell away from a truly and wholly spiritual position to a palpable and external sacerdotal system.
That is what it is. That is what the argument of this book says. These believers had come to Christ in a spiritual way. They had come out of the old sacerdotalism, out of the old palpable system of externals and forms of the Old Testament, onto spiritual ground.
Now they fell away from spiritual ground to that old system again. If there were such amongst the Hebrews who did it, they had gone right back. They had forsaken the true spiritual ground—the ground of Christ spiritually, inwardly, finally in this dispensation—and had gone back to the old dispensation in its meaning.
Well, there is no way back from that. If you forsake true spiritual ground for a purely external sacerdotal system—forms and externals and so on—and leave the spiritual, dear friends, this is a solemn word for us.
You have not come to a palpable mountain which can be touched. You have come to the spiritual counterpart of these things. Do not want to go back to things you can touch.
From the spiritual to the mystical—that is the enticement of it all. These vestments, these sacraments, and all these externals of that system appeal to something mystical in the human make-up, and they seem to be spiritual. But that is mysticism. It makes a tremendous appeal to some make-ups and temperaments, but it is not spiritual.
They fell away from grace to works, from faith to form, and from the light of the Spirit to the darkness of a pre-Holy-Spirit era. They fell away.
Once having tasted, they then say, “I repudiate it all. I reject it all. I choose this alternative, this other.” Do not merely feel it; that is not it. This is it.
There is no way back, that is all. Once you have abandoned yourself, taken the steps, burned your boat—however you may put it—there is no way back.
Now, there is, I say, great solemnity about the warnings, and there is intended to be. But I like the lighter note: “But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation.”
That is the note on which to finish, is it not?
Yes, it is possible to commit that sin, but you see what it is to do it. I trust that the Lord has enabled me to analyse it sufficiently and make you understand what it is.
You should be able to answer your own heart-problem, or that of some other tried and oppressed child of God, and to stand against this master weapon of the evil power—of the one who goes by the name of the accuser of the brethren.
I think this is the focal point of all the accusations. My experience, dear friends, is that once a person has really taken this on—really taken it on—it does not matter what you say. You appeal to the blood; you appeal to the Name. It is hopeless, hopeless.
Oh, do not succumb to that until you have analysed the whole thing. Ask the question, “What is this, then?” Answer it according to the Scripture, according to the Word, and then you can decide where you stand in that matter.
If your heart is still wistful to the Lord, if still you love Him really in the depths of your heart and would go on with Him, despite the thing that worries and troubles and even curses you, the Holy Spirit is not finished with you. Amen. Oh, amen.
The day of grace is not over. Dark, terrible, hopeless, an inescapable void with no love for God anywhere—that is the abyss. But not yet. Not yet, for anyone who wants the Lord.