I shared previously that our church has been studying the book of Acts together.  A few weeks ago I preached a message on Acts 9 and the story of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus.  We looked at how Jesus took an enemy of the faith, someone who breathed out violence against the church, and completely transformed him.  By the grace of God, Paul was forgiven, filled with the Spirit, and sent out to now build the very church he sought to destroy.

In my sermon I looked at Paul’s story and made this claim: with Jesus, there is no such thing as a lost cause. 

I argued that the grace of God can set us free from all the shame, guilt, and mistakes of our past and empower us for a fruitful life of loving service.  The blood of Jesus covers every sin (1 John 1:7).  This means that no matter who you are, no matter where you’ve come from or what you’ve done in the past, you are never too far gone. 

To support this, I simply looked at how Paul understood his own story.  In his first letter to the young pastor, Timothy, Paul wrote:

“Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.  But for that reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display His unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on Him and receive eternal life (1 Tim 1:15-16).”

Paul saw his life as an example of God’s grace to others.  Are you worried that God would never accept you?  Look to Paul.  See how patient Jesus was with him.  And know that Jesus is just as patient with you.

I believe very strongly that this is a message many of us need to hear today.  I’ve met too many people, younger people especially, who simply think that they are destined for hell, no questions asked.  They’ve never heard the real message of God’s love for them.  In their minds, they are too far gone.

But that could not be farther from the truth!  God’s gift is for sinners (Isaiah 55:6-7).  It’s for the broken and beat-down; for the poor, sick, foolish people of the world.  It’s for you and me (Matthew 11:28-30).

After the sermon, someone asked me a great question: “What about the unforgivable sin?”  He was pretty gentle in the way he asked the question, and I knew he was sincere and was not just trying to critique me. 

But wow, what a great question to ask!  Because what he was really asking, in a way, was this: If there is no such thing as a lost cause, if there’s no sin we can commit that cannot be forgiven, what do we do with Jesus’ own words when He says there is an unforgivable sin?

For anyone who is unfamiliar with the idea of an “unforgivable sin”, it comes from a story found in Matthew 12:22-37.  There, some people bring a demon-possessed man to Jesus in order for Him to heal him.  Jesus casts the demons out, but the religious leaders who were there, called the Pharisees, start trash talking Jesus, saying that He only drove out demons through the power of the devil.

Jesus has a fairly lengthy response to them, in which He says that every blasphemy will be forgiven, even every blasphemy against Him, but not the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.  If anyone blasphemes the Holy Spirit, he or she will never be forgiven, either in this age or the one to come.

Right off the bat, then, it’s pretty clear I may have spoken too soon!  Or at the very least my statement was too strongly worded.  It would appear, after all, that there is a sin which can make someone “too far gone.”

Still, it’s worth considering this story in more depth because it raises some very good questions.  What is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit?  Could I have committed that sin?  Am I a lost cause after all?

I won’t presume to have all the answers here, but I’d like to offer a few thoughts.

First, we need to understand what the term “blasphemy” actually means.  In the English-speaking world, blasphemy is something of a technical religious term.  What I mean is, when we think of blasphemy we think of someone using a word or phrase which is derogatory against God.  In some cases we include a wide-range of vulgarity in this as well.

But “blasphemy” is what’s called a loanword.  It’s a word that English simply borrowed from Greek instead of translating it.  Languages do this all the time, and often we don’t even know it.  In fact, there are quite a few “Church” words that we use all the time without even realizing they are loanwords (“baptism” is a big one that comes to mind).

What this means is, whenever you see “blasphemy” written in your Bible, that expression was not translated, but was simply snuck into the English (the big academic word is that it was transliterated).

So, what did blasphemy mean in first-century Greek? 

Originally, blasphemy referred to any kind of speech which was abusive, denigrating, slanderous, and intended to dishonor another person.  It was not something reserved just for the gods; humans could be on the receiving end of blasphemy, such as in Revelation 2:9 where the church had been blasphemed by those who claimed to follow God.

The key idea here was honor.  If you were seeking to defame someone publicly, and you were heaping insult and abuse on them with the intention of hurting their reputation, you were “blaspheming” them.  Christians are commanded to avoid such language and practice (Ephesians 4:31, where the same term is used in Greek but is often translated as “slander”).

With this in mind, the portrait begins to become much clearer.  Jesus accused the Pharisees of trying to publicly malign the reputation of the Holy Spirit.

This leads to the second thing I’d like us to consider: how did the Pharisees “blaspheme” the Holy Spirit, exactly?  That is, in the context of the story, what was the sin the religious leaders actually committed?

The Pharisees were guilty of taking a public work of the Holy Spirit and giving the glory to Satan instead.  It is strongly implied in the story that they did this with sinister motives, as well.  Jesus had performed a miracle; no one could dispute this.  Obviously some spiritual power was at work.  And yet, instead of recognizing God’s gracious activity in their midst, they tried to dishonor Jesus by saying He was an agent of the devil.

This was not simply saying a cross word against Jesus or the Spirit.  This was an intentional effort on the part of the Pharisees to dishonor Jesus, and in the process they publicly dishonored the Holy Spirit as well.

And now the third and final point: Why is “blasphemy” against Jesus forgiven, but not against the Holy Spirit?

There are no clear reasons given for this situation in the story, but if we look at things from a theological perspective I believe we can appreciate why one type of speech is tolerated while the other is not.

In John 16:7-11, Jesus explains that the role of the Holy Spirit in the world is to convict it of sin.  This means, contrary to the belief of a lot of hellfire and brimstone preachers out there, its not our job to make someone feel guilty for anything they’ve done.  Rather, it’s the Spirit’s job to work in someone’s heart so that they will feel sorry for what they’ve done and turn away from their evil behavior.

Similarly, the Holy Spirit is the one who reveals the truth about Jesus to us (1 Cor 2:6-16).  It was the Spirit who spoke to the prophets of old and gave them a glimpse of God’s Kingdom (2 Peter 1:20-21), and Scripture itself is the work of the Spirit of God (2 Timothy 3:16). 

Taken together, this paints a very important picture of the role the Holy Spirit plays in the world.  To put it simply, the Spirit of God is the main actor on the stage when it comes to moving someone into a relationship with Jesus.  This is why Paul says that “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3b).”

And if that’s the case, then what is the result of openly maligning the Spirit?  Well, what you’re really doing is directly attempting to interfere with the saving work of God in the life of someone else.  You are slandering the very One responsible for bringing people to faith.  And that does not come without consequences.

We should also note here that Jesus says that our words reveal the state of our hearts.  “The mouth speaks from what fills the heart (Matt 12:34b).”  If our words are evil, it is simply because evil is what fills us.  Likewise for speaking what is good.

What Jesus is saying is that the Pharisees slandered the Holy Spirit because they had already rejected God’s saving purpose for their lives.  They could blaspheme the Spirit openly only because they had completely shut up their hearts against the Spirit’s call and had made themselves enemies of God.

I think when we look at this story from this perspective, it puts several things into context for us.  On the one hand, I would hope many people would feel reassured that they have not made themselves “too far gone” to receive God’s mercy. 

In fact, I always tell people that if they are worried that they might have committed the “unforgivable sin”, that’s actually a pretty good indication that they haven’t.  Otherwise, they wouldn’t be worried about it!

Does this mean that someone can harden their hearts so as to be a “lost cause”? 

Technically?  Yes.

But I have a tremendous HOWEVER that I would like to add.

It seems that a person could become a lost cause, however, I’m not sure I’ve ever met such a person.  And the simple reason for this is that the “blasphemy” mentioned in this story took place when the Pharisees actually witnessed the power of the Holy Spirit firsthand.  Remember, the Pharisees were guilty of taking a public work of the Spirit and giving the glory to Satan.

So few of us have ever witnessed something like this in the Western world.  We’ve known people who were healed from illnesses through prayer.  We’ve seen God work.  But often God’s power is not as explicit as it was in this story.

This leads me to believe that this type of sin is actually quite rare.  I’ve known plenty of people who had some sort of grudge against God and would slander Him often.  In fact, I’ve known people who went out of their way to try to oppose anything even remotely related to the Gospel.

Yet none of those people ever claimed to have seen a miracle.

If the story gives us a clue as to what blaspheming the Spirit actually looks like, then I think very few of us are ever put in a situation where we can respond like the Pharisees responded.  And fewer still would be so filled with hatred against God that we would actively try to turn people away from Jesus, even if they had just seen the Holy Spirit perform a miracle.

This is not to give anyone a pass, mind you.  Jesus’ words are still true of us: we speak out of what fills our hearts.

What this tells me, however, is that in most cases we are never dealing with someone who is too far out of reach of God’s mercy.  You may think that of yourself, but you are going to have an impossible time convincing me.

The message I shared at the beginning of this post still stands.  God is full of mercy, and He reaches out to the worst of all sinners with an amazing invitation.  It’s the invitation to let go—let go of your mistakes, your failures, your sin and shame and anything else that keeps you from experiencing everything God made you to be.

God is calling you home.  If you can still hear His voice, then you are never too far gone.