If you read the book of Revelation, from what I am understanding
If anybody tries to make their own version of a Bible, change the words of scripture or remove some of it. That seems to be the unforgivable sin or is it not?
Cult leaders have done this, what if they knew what they were doing? Have they did the unforgivable sin if they have deceived many for money or power?
Hey John.
The unforgivable sin is unbelief, pure and simple. And the kicker here is, we are all guilty of it since, by default, we all come into the world unbelievers, and remain unbelievers until we choose to believe.
In John 16:8-9, Jesus, who will have already died for the forgiveness of sins by the time the holy spirit comes, makes it clear that the only sin the spirit will convict anyone of, is the sin of unbelief. Unbelief is the only sin not forgiven at the cross, Matt 12:31. It is this sin we are asked to repent of for salvation. We are to turn from our unbelief and believe, since all other sins and blasphemes of man will have 'already' been forgiven. God tearing the temple curtain in two, at the moment of Christ's death, was a visual representation of this fact.
If you read Matt 12:31 believing that the forgiveness of your sins is only received at the moment of salvation, then there are only two possible conclusions we can make from what Jesus said. The first is that none of us are saved since Jesus tells us that our unbelief will not be forgiven, or Jesus lied and our unbelief was forgiven along with the rest of our sins. Since neither one is true, we are left to conclude that all sin was forgiven at the cross except the sin of unbelief, which is left up to us to repent of. Hence why we call it the unforgivable sin.
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This is a followup to my above response. It's something I realized after giving this some more thought. I hope it will shed some more light on your understanding of the unforgivable sin.
When most people hear the term 'unforgivable', or 'unpardonable' sin, they naturally assume that there is some sin so horrific and terrible that not even Jesus can for give it. It is this assumption that leads people to start throwing out their ideas of what this sin must be.
If we were to take a step back and look at who Jesus is, we realize that he was there in the beginning and is the creator of all things. With that in mind, what sin could one of his creations perform that he couldn't, or wouldn't be willing to forgive? Lets take it a step further.
If you could imagine the most horrific sin imaginable and you compared that sin to your entire lifespan of sins, collectively, which would be worse? You have a very powerful imagination you say? Okay, I'll give you that. It's a little scary, but I'll give you that. How about this, take every sin of the entire world, wait! Lets take every sin from Adam too the very last person to exist, since these are the sins Jesus died for. Lets compare your imaginatively worst sin to the whole of the human race collectively. I'm confident that you and I would both agree that your sin wouldn't even qualify as a drop in the bucket. Do you see where I'm going with this?
There is no sin that Jesus can't forgive. The reason why 'unbelief' is termed an unforgivable sin is because it would be a violation of our free will if Jesus outright went and forgave it. Our unbelief is a position we have chosen to remain in of our own freewill. A persons choice to remain in unbelief is them simply saying they don't want anything to do with God. They are happy with who they are without him. Our freewill was given to us by God. He has given us the freedom to deny him and to remain in denial of him should we choose so. For Jesus to forgive this position that someone has chosen to remain in would be in essence Jesus saying, "Nah, even though you don't want to spend eternity with me, I don't care. You will spend eternity with me anyways." I believe we would call that an abuse of power. Not something Jesus was ever know to do.
So in summation, the unforgivable sin isn't a sin that Jesus is unable or unwilling to forgive. It is unforgivable because it would be in violation of our freewill. We must make the choice.
