Transcript

Today's Bible Translation

Bible translation used in today's episode: Ch. 11 ESV. Ch. 12 GNT

Associate Producer

Sister Ann, Anonymous, Michael Haner

Podcast Introduction

It’s Gospels Saturday, and we’ll read Luke 11-12. I’m calling this episode “Nature Abhors A Vacuum.”

Design: Jason Paschall | Photo: David Mark on pixabay.com

Comments on Luke 12

Luke 12:10  “Whoever says a word against the Son of Man can be forgiven; but whoever says evil things against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven."

In the King James, this is translated, "...but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven."

Have you ever wondered what the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is? Some have called it the unpardonable sin. 

William Barclay wrote a very popular set of commentaries on the New Testament, and even though I very strongly disagree with some of his views, I do like what he had to say about this verse. As a matter of fact, I'm going to quote Barclay for the next couple of minutes or so.  

It tells us of the unforgivable sin, which is the sin against the Holy Spirit. Both Matthew and Mark record that Jesus spoke about this sin immediately after the scribes and Pharisees had attributed his cures to the prince of devils instead of to God (Matthew 12:31-32; Mark 3:28-29). These men could look at the very grace and power of God and call it the work of the devil. To understand this we must remember that Jesus was talking about the Holy Spirit as the Jews understood that conception, not in the full Christian sense, about which his audience at that time obviously knew nothing.

To a Jew, God's Spirit had two great functions. Through the Spirit he told his truth to men, and it was by the action of the Spirit in a man's mind and heart that he could recognize and grasp God's truth. Now, if a man for long enough refuses to use a faculty he will lose it. If we refuse to use any part of the body long enough it atrophies. Darwin tells how when he was a young man he loved poetry and music; but he so devoted himself to biology that he completely neglected them. The consequence was that in later life poetry meant nothing to him and music was only a noise, and he said that if he had his life to live over again he would see to it that he would read poetry and listen to music so that he would not lose the faculty of enjoying them.

Just so we can lose the faculty of recognizing God. By repeatedly refusing God's word, by repeatedly taking our own way, by repeatedly shutting our eyes to God and closing our ears to him, we can come to a stage when we do not recognize him when we see him, when to us evil becomes good and good becomes evil. That is what happened to the scribes and Pharisees. They had so blinded and deafened themselves to God that when he came they called him the devil.

Why is that the unforgivable sin? Because in such a state repentance is impossible. If a man does not even realize that he is sinning, if goodness no longer makes any appeal to him, he cannot repent. God has not shut him out; by his repeated refusals he has shut himself out. That means that the one man who can never have committed the unforgivable sin is the man who fears that he has, for once a man has committed it, he is so dead to God that he is conscious of no sin at all.

William Barclay

I recently said to you that we should keep our account with God short, meaning that we should confess our sins often. In doing that, we remain sensitive to the Holy Spirit, and will never have to fear committing the unpardonable sin.

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