What is Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit?

Blasphemy against the spirit. Matthew chapter 12, verse 31 and 32. Jesus says, “So I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven either in this age or in the age to come.”

This obviously creates a lot of questions because you read this, “blasphemy against the spirit will not be forgiven,” people immediately start to think, “Well, have I done this?” And says, “Have I committed the unforgivable sin?” And it’s a good question to ask. Obviously, this is a very stern warning here that Jesus is giving. So how do we understand this passage, though? The definition sin is deliberate disobedience against God, deliberate disobedience against God.

What is Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit?

Blasphemy is defiant irreverence toward God. Blasphemy is defiant, irreverence toward God.

Old Testament, anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him. Blasphemy is extremely serious. Intentionally, openly speaking against a holy God, defaming Him, mocking Him, that’s blasphemy, to blaspheme, to defame, to mock, to insult. Why does this fellow talk like that?

This is people talking about Jesus. He’s blaspheming because he was claiming to be able to forgive sins. So deliberate disobedience against God is sin. Blasphemy is defiant irreverence toward God. Now, here’s the difference. Blasphemy against the Son of God is forgivable. Every… Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. So blasphemy against the Son of God is forgivable. To speak against the Son and irreverence toward the Son is forgivable.

Repentance Leads to Forgiveness

The avenue to forgiveness is repentance. And this is Paul talking. “I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” And so he was saved. Technically, any believer can blaspheme, well, really, because there are oftentimes we say things very casually that are in irreverence toward God about God, regarding the Son. To question God’s goodness, wisdom, faithfulness is in one sense to blaspheme. All of that is forgivable by grace. It’s forgivable by grace. But blasphemy against the spirit of God is unforgivable. What is Jesus saying here? The reason blasphemy against the Spirit of God is unforgivable is because the avenue to forgiveness is rejected.

We’ve talked about what the Spirit does. The Spirit regenerates. The Spirit’s the one who’s working our hearts. The Spirit is the one who draws us. If we speak against the Spirit, blaspheme the Spirit, we are rejecting the one who is able to bring us to God. This is willful unbelief and this is the context here. Wish we had time to really dive into the whole context in Matthew 12, but the context here is the people who had seen Jesus drive demons out, forgive sins, and they’re charging him with deceit and falsehood and demonism and they’re saying He’s a demon who’s possessed by demons.

In the face of every possible evidence of Jesus’ messiahship and deity, they are saying, “No.” Willful unbelief, persistent refusal. Here’s the picture. Many of these religious leaders, the more they saw, the more they rejected Jesus. They had seen so much. They persistently refused him. It’s a final denial. It’s ref-… It’s seeing the truth incarnate in front of you and knowingly rejecting him and condemning him. And so the picture is permanent refutation leads to permanent condemnation.

He says, “in this age or in the age to come.” This is rejecting the drawing of the Spirit toward Christ. Willfully unbelief… A willful unbelief, persistent refusal, final denial, permanent refutation that leads to permanent condemnation. You think, “Well, have I done that?” Well, here’s the question. Are you living in willful unbelief when it comes to the Spirit drawing you to Christ? Persistent refusal, final denial, permanent refutation that will lead to permanent condemnation?

Here’s the implications. We must realize that the unforgivable sin is a sin of the heart, not the lips. This is really important and you might write this down; just chapter 12 there, verse 34 and 35. Our words are evidence of the condition in our hearts. Evil words reflect evil hearts. And so this is not, “Okay, did the wrong words come out of my mouth?” This is a heart condition that’s being talked about here.

Don’t Label Others As Guilty Of Unforgivable Sin

Second implication, I believe it’s wise for us to avoid labeling anyone as guilty of the unforgivable sin. And here’s why. Paul… If anybody was looking for a person that was potentially guilty, a blasting of the Spirit and the Son, it would seem like Paul was. He was persistently refusing Christ, persistently speaking against Christ, not responding to a Spirit drawing him to Christ. But there comes a point, obviously, where Paul’s life is totally transformed. And I don’t think there’s any person in Birmingham or any person among the nations that is without… outside the bounds of God’s reach and His grace and His mercy. And so we need to be careful not to label people.

Well, number one, we trust that God alone knows a person’s heart. Number two, so we work and we pray with a constant hope. I know there are people in your life that maybe you work with, maybe you live with, who are so hardhearted toward the gospel that they constantly reject any prompting of the spirit constantly, constantly.

Well, that doesn’t mean we give up. We work and we pray with a constant hope. And along the way, we are desperate for the spirit of God in our lives and our ministries. If a person rejects the spirit… And this is really the crux of it. If a person rejects the Spirit willfully, persistently, permanently, and there is no way they would come to Christ. It’d be impossible. They have rejected the only one who is able to bring them to Christ, as a result that’s unforgivable, leads to permanent condemnation. Does that make sense? So all that to say, if you are a follower of Christ who have responded to the Spirit of Christ in your life, you don’t need to worry about the blasphemy against the Spirit. Even a sensitivity toward the Spirit and wondering is a sign that you’re listening to the Spirit, you’re responding to the Spirit.

The Spirit Is the Only Way to Salvation

But the picture here is a person who’s rejecting the Spirit. And the spirit is the only way that they can come to salvation. The Spirit is the only one who can regenerate us. So how can they be saved? If this person… a person rejects the spirit, how will they be saved? But here’s the deal. If Christ followers, if we ignore the Spirit, how will we lead others to salvation? That’s what I mean by being desperate for the spirit of God in our lives and our ministries, because the reality is the hardest heart can come to Christ by the power of the Spirit. But as we share the gospel with them, it’s not something we’re going to say that’s going to break through a hard heart. It’s going to be the Spirit of God that’s going to do that.

This is a great quote from Ian Bounds. He says, “Unction is the sweetest exhalation.” Not insufflation. “Unction is the sweetest exhalation of the Holy Spirit. It carries the word like dynamite, like salt, like sugar.” This is the work of the spirit. “Makes the word a soother, an accuser, a revealer or a searcher; makes the hearer a culprit or a saint; makes him weep like a child and live like a giant. Opens his heart and his purse as gently, yet as strongly, as the spring opens the leaves. This unction is not the gift of genius. It’s not found in the halls of learning. You don’t get the power of the Spirit there.

No eloquence can woo it. No industry can win it. It is the gift of God, the signet set to His own messengers. It is heaven’s knighthood given to the chosen, true, and brave ones who have sought this anointed honor through many an hour of tearful wrestling and prayer. Earnestness is good and impressive. Genius is gifted and great. Thought kindles and inspires. But it takes a diviner endowment, a more powerful energy than earnestness or genius or thought to break the chains of sin, to win estranged and depraved hearts to God, to repair the breaches and restore the church to her old ways of purity and power. Nothing but holy unction can do this.”

Unction is an old word that really refers to the anointing and the Holy Spirit. Ian Bounds wrote a great book called Power Through Prayer. I highly recommend anything that Ian Bounds has written. You can usually find them in the back shelf of the Christian bookstores. They’re 99 cents. So don’t buy the $20 hardback junk, just go get the 99 cent Ian Bounds and it’ll change your life. So anyway, all that to say, we need the Spirit to come to faith in Christ. Therefore, rejecting the Spirit is a blasphemy against the Spirit and it leads to unforgiven, unforgivable, permanent condemnation. At the same time, if we’re going to lead others to Christ, we got to be desperate for the Spirit.

We Need to Walk In the Spirit

This whole picture in Matthew 12 reminds us that we need to walk in the Spirit. We need… In order to share the gospel with somebody… I was talking with somebody in this faith family who just got back from South Africa and they were talking about sharing the gospel with somebody that ended up coming to faith in Christ. And they said… These were their words. They said, “It almost wasn’t fair because the translator I was working with was a church planner who’d been working there for years, and they know all about that culture and they knew all about this person’s life.” And he says, “I’m sharing the gospel with this person, but it’s through this translator. And so this translator is able to take anything that I say that doesn’t sound right and make it sound better and make it work, make it applicable to this person’s life and that person’s culture.”

He said, “It was almost unfair to be sharing the gospel because I got hooked up with this particular translator.” I thought, what a great picture of the Holy Spirit of God. We’re not alone. When we’re sharing the gospel with somebody, especially somebody with a very hard heart, there’s a Spirit that is taking our words, that is giving us the words to say and taking our words and using it to penetrate people’s heart. If they continually reject the Spirit, then that is blasphemy against the Spirit. But we pray. We pray constantly and we work with constant hope that they will come to faith in Christ. Blasphemy against the Spirit.