If blasphemy is an unpardonable sin that people can't come back from, why does God grant them more time on earth and prolong the inevitable?

[ViaCrucis]

I find it fascinating that, as one peruses commentaries on this, going back to the earliest commentaries we have such as from Augustine, Jerome, and John Chyrosotom, that essentially two streams of interpretations come:

1) The one I've essentially ought to provide earlier in this thread, that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is a thorough rejection of the Holy Spirit's work and power to convict and bring us to faith in Christ by the forgiveness of our sins, etc.

2) The attribution of God's power through the Holy Spirit to evil. Which @JimR-OCDS provides above from a footnote from the NAB.

I suspect that these are not mutually exclusive interpretations, but rather emphasizes this:

The Pharisees in beholding God's works and power sought to make Christ of ill-repute by accusing Him of relying on the power of demons to cast out demons; Christ warns them with dire warning that it is one thing to speak ill of Him insomuch as He is still human, but to suggest that the power with which He works is diabolical rather than divine risks not merely speaking ill of Him who came in the flesh, but endangers them to thinking ill and speaking ill of God even as they had known of God through the Scriptures. Representing not a blasphemy by way of ignorance--to speak evil against God out of ignorance, such as when a non-believer does so because they do not truly know any better. But rather that, truly knowing the power and work of God but in stubbornness and defiance refusing what they know to be true: That God was with Christ as evidenced by His works. They knowing God and knowing the works of God and knowing the promises of God, yet denying them and choosing rather to wish to call the works of God the works of devils so as to deliberately deny that they must, before Christ, submit to God in repentance and trusting in the Messiah put themselves at dire risk of finding themselves, one day, without repentance and faith, and thus without forgiveness when they stand before God on the Day of Judgment.

What Christ speaks He speaks in warning, rather than as having already been committed. Those who attributed the works of God to the devil placed themselves at risk, because should they continue in this denial, in this refusal, in this rejection of God's work made evident and obvious through Christ--which work is also the work of the Spirit, not of the Father alone or the Son alone, for the works of God are always the work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--they sear their conscience against the Holy Spirit, they dig their heels in and double down. Such a path, if walked to its natural course, will be an end that is without forgiveness for one will have spent their life deliberate and knowing what is true but choosing the way of destruction anyway for it is easy and broad.

Here I believe it still dearly important, that rather than this being a discreet sin that one may later regret but then be unable to repent of; instead this represents the sin of non-repentance itself. If one repents, then we can safely say they have never committed such a sin. If one is worried that they have committed it, then they have not. For the one who blasphemes the Holy Spirit knows what they do and does not feel remorse and never shall feel remorse. That is why it is called unpardonable, not because God is unwilling or unable to forgive; but because the one who commits will have nothing to do with forgiveness, will look at mercy as mercy and wish to have none of it.

I feel comfortable saying, then, that this sin is comprised of several parts:

1) The one who commits it can never be one who does so merely out of ignorance, or by accident; but it is conscious, deliberate, and knowing.

2) The one who commits it is impenitent, without remorse, and never will show remorse or repent; for if they repent then they have not committed it. It therefore must be a state of permanent and immovable impenitence. For should they repent, the promise of God is that He forgives all sins; so such as it is, the sin remains without forgiveness from the side of the sinner rather than God who promises forgiveness.

3) It is a sin that is only fully realized after the conclusion of this life, as it ultimately means a knowing impenitence until the very end; such that it is said to be neither forgiven in this age or in the age to come. It is a sin that is intentionally carried right up until the Day of Judgment.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Sabertooth]

In other words, it's attributing to Satan the work the Spirit of God does.

Hopefully that only applies to knowingly or deliberately doing so or that will put a lot of Cessationists at risk. (And I got Saved at a Cessationist church.)

 

[Pavel Mosko]

People guilty of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit are beyond redemption as it's the one Sin that God won't forgive, which surely would mean their inevitable fate after death is going to Hell. With that in mind, why does God even bother to grant them more time on earth? Surely it's just prolonging the inevitable as they're on a one way ticket anyway. It puzzles me that he gives people guilty of blasphemy time that they cannot actually use.

I don't think most of Christendom really get the unforgiveable sin passage.

I believe the only real unforgiveable sin is unrepentance. The blasphemy of the Holy Spirit line mentioned is a special case of hard heartedness when a person attributes to Satan a miracle or other supernatural work that they obviously contextually speaking should recognize as coming from God because the minister with the gift has a good fruit in their life, preaches the word of God, stands up for righteousness etc. Many of the Pharisees had this kind of thing in their lives because of religious pride, being hungry for status, fame, money etc.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Interesting enough I happened to watch on a certain apologist every week. In passing today he happened to briefly discuss Judas and whether or not he was "unregenerate", or somehow predestined to not be saved etc. There are a number of passages that seem to imply that was not the case in the beginning.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Hopefully that only applies to knowingly or deliberately doing so or that will put a lot of Cessationists at risk. (And I got Saved at a Cessationist church.)

A sin has to be an act done with full conscience and consent against God.

 

[St_Worm2]

Hello @someoneig, in reply to your comment from earlier today (see Post #11), I can't say this any better than Dr. Packer does (in one of his articles about the unpardonable sin), so I'll post what he had to say here for you to read (the highlights in bold are mine, just FYI).

When Jesus warned the Pharisees that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit was unpardonable both in this world and in the next (Matthew 12:32; Mark 3:29–30), it was because they were saying that He exorcised demons by being in league with Satan (Beelzebub). His warning revealed his view of their spiritual state.​

He could, and later did, pray for the forgiveness of those whose blasphemy against himself was ~the fruit of ignorance:~ “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). But that was ~not~ how he saw the Pharisees.​

It is possible for people to be enlightened to the point of knowing inwardly that Jesus is the divine Savior he claims to be, and still not be willing to admit it publicly, because of all the behavioral changes that such an admission would make necessary. It is possible to try to make oneself feel good about one’s own moral dishonesty by inventing reasons, no matter how absurd, for not treating Jesus as worthy of one’s allegiance. Jesus evidently perceived that in calling him Satan’s servant the Pharisees were doing exactly that. They were not ignorant; they were stifling conviction and smothering real if unwelcome knowledge; they were resolutely shutting their eyes to the light and callousing their conscience by calling it darkness. The madness that Jesus exposed in what they were saying (Matthew 12:25–28) was an index of the pressure of conviction that they were feeling; irrational reasoning is a regular sign of conviction being resisted.​

By attributing exorcisms wrought through the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:28) to Satanic power, the Pharisees were blaspheming (speaking impiously) against the Spirit. Such a sin would become unforgivable when the conscience had been so calloused by calling good evil that all sense of the moral glory of Jesus’ mighty works (which were in a real sense his credentials: Matthew 11:2–6; John 10:38; John 14:11) was destroyed. This hardening of heart against Jesus would preclude any remorse at any stage for having thus blasphemed. But nonexistence of remorse makes repentance impossible, and nonexistence of repentance makes forgiveness impossible.​

Callousing one’s conscience by dishonest reasonings so as to justify denial of God’s power in Christ and rejection of his claims upon one is the formula of the unpardonable sin. ​

​

Another version of it, this time in professed Christians who fall away from Christ, is described in Hebrews 6:4–8. Christians who fear that they may have committed the unpardonable sin show by their very anxiety that they have not done so. ​

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Persons who have committed it are unremorseful and unconcerned; indeed, they are ordinarily unaware of what they have done and to what fate they have sentenced themselves. Jesus saw that the Pharisees were getting close to committing this sin, and he spoke as he did in hope of holding them back from fully lapsing into it. ~Packer, J. I. (1993). Concise theology: a guide to historic Christian beliefs (pp. 244–246).​

God bless you!!

--David

 

[fhansen]

People guilty of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit are beyond redemption as it's the one Sin that God won't forgive, which surely would mean their inevitable fate after death is going to Hell. With that in mind, why does God even bother to grant them more time on earth? Surely it's just prolonging the inevitable as they're on a one way ticket anyway. It puzzles me that he gives people guilty of blasphemy time that they cannot actually use.

In the very early church wherever it existed it was held, mainly due to several bible passages: Matt 12:22-30, Mark 3:22-30, Luke 12:10, but also 1 John 5:16-17, 2 Pet 2:20-22, Heb 6:4, Heb 10:26-31, that any serious or grave sin/return to the flesh after conversion made a person unredeemable (it was considered, for example, that there was no forgiveness for adultery or murder after conversion). Becoming a follower of Christ entailed turning away from sin and the ways of the world and to God. Most had given up much to become Christians and so were very serious about sin.

By the efforts of Callixtus, an early bishop of Rome, against much resistance, that concept would eventually be modified throughout the whole church. With an understanding of the love and unending mercy of God, and His desire that none should perish but all come to repentance, he taught that no sin was unforgivable if a person had a true change of heart. Much penance would be required back then, and much time before they were fully accepted back into the fold, but it was then understood that they would be restored back to union with God and His church. This would eventually become the universal church teaching. Callixtus, himself, would be martyered around 222 AD.