So, how is neglecting to trust Christ a sin which cannot be forgiven on this side of the grave since most (if not all) believers are guilty of committing it prior to putting our faith in Christ? Also, how can neglecting to do something be understood to be, "blasphemy"?
There is a sense in which a man living in determined, persistent rebellion toward God, refusing His gracious gift of salvation, is in an unforgivable state. He
could be forgiven if he
would be forgiven, but since he has refused to come under God's love and authority and be redeemed, he remains unforgivable - rather like a man who is dying of cancer who refuses a life-saving treatment. The sick man could be saved if he would be saved, but until he chooses to receive the treatment, he remains ill and will, eventually, die. It's not that the treatment cannot save him, only that
he will not take it and so his condition is essentially the same as a man whose fatal sickness is untreatable.
The blasphemy isn't actually in the neglect of the Gospel but in the Self-worship that always supplants God in the life of the unrepentant sinner and out of which spills the sort of garbage the Pharisees spoke in
Matthew 12:24. The blasphemy is in a man making himself God, worshiping and serving himself more than his Creator. (
Romans 1:25) And when he does, like the Pharisees, the fruit of his lips is blasphemous and false, bearing witness to the evil in his heart. So it is that on the heels of warning the Pharisees about the "unforgivable sin," Jesus spoke of the relationship between the state of one's heart and the character of one's speech:
Matthew 13:34-35
34 O generation of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
35 A good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.
I've had conversations with new believers who are obsessive-compulsive and who, when they hear about the unforgivable sin, begin to anxiously obsess about it and finally, in a fit of compulsiveness, blurt out, "The Spirit is the devil!" They then become madly fearful, despairing of their salvation, certain they have behaved just like the Pharisees in
Matthew 12. This is silly, of course. It isn't the words that are the terrible thing, but the character of the heart out of which the words have come. And a new believer laboring under the terrible grip of anxiety and OCD is not speaking from the same place as the wicked Pharisees in
Matthew 12:24. Their heart may be bound up in the sin against which all new believers struggle to be free, but the fundamental orientation of their heart is towards God, not away. And so, where the Pharisees blasphemed the Holy Spirit without qualm, the obsessive-compulsive new believer who has done the same is horrified that their worst fear has come upon them (which is the heart of obsessive-compulsiveness) and they have become irredeemable. They have done no such thing, of course, and it is important, I think, to tell them so. These situations are what prompt me to emphasize the heart condition of one who is guilty of the "unforgivable sin" and not the words they speak.
