²⁸ “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, ²⁹ but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—³⁰ for they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”

(Mark 3:28-30 ESV)

These words are the words of Jesus and they are staggeringly sober.  Contained within is an amazing promise that “all sins will be forgiven the children of men” along with “whatever blasphemies they utter.” That is an amazingly broad promise.  However, there is one sinful blasphemy which places one beyond the broad scope of God’s gracious forgiveness.  Jesus warns that there is a sin so heinous that once committed, one “never has forgiveness” thus leaving one in an eternal state of guilt.  Jesus calls this unpardonable sin “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.”

The Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament defines blasphemy as, “to speak against someone in such a way as to harm or injure his or her reputation—to revile or to defame” a person’s character; “to speak of or address with irreverence;” “to slander, to speak lightly or profanely of sacred things.”  The Old Testament reveals that speaking in such a way about God was punishable by death.  The word ‘blaspheme’ appears in the Bible 29 times and in all but four instances the word explicitly refers to slanderous spoken words.

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit therefore relates to speaking against his holy character or his name in an irreverent, profane, contemptuous, and insulting manner.  This understanding is borne out by further examination of the passage at hand.

It is clear from Mark 3:28 that the particular sin Jesus has in mind was a sin that was spoken, for Jesus says, “whatever blasphemies they utter.”  That which is “uttered” is that which is spoken.  Furthermore, in verse 30, Mark explains the context which required Jesus to address this particular sin, “for they were saying, ‘He has an unclean spirit.”  Again, we see the unpardonable sin is manifested in speech.  In the parallel account of this event in Matthew’s gospel, the point is made even clearer.  Matthew indicates that Jesus said, “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come” (Mt 12:32).  Clearly the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is a sin that is spoken.

This does not mean that the unpardonable sin is merely limited to the physical mechanics of speech as though speaking certain words in a certain order would heap upon one the condemnation of eternal guilt.  In Matthew’s account of this instance Jesus makes this clear as he goes on to say, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”  The significance of this kind of blasphemy is not merely the wickedness of the words that are spoken, but the fact that what is spoken flows out of a deeply settled internal conviction of the heart.

Continual Willful Resistance

For example, Mark notes that the Pharisees “were saying that Jesus had an unclean spirit” (Mk 3:30).  The verb ‘were saying’ is in the imperfect tense which indicates that they were habitually saying and teaching the people that Jesus was possessed by a demon.  This was not a one-off slip of the tongue.  It was a persistent teaching and it was one that willfully evil in the face of clear evidence to the contrary.  Concluding that Jesus was a servant of Satan, despite the wonderfully good works he had done, could only have resulted from a willful, hard-hearted rejection of the clear work of the Holy Spirit.

When Jesus heard these Pharisees saying that he was an agent of Satan, even after they had heard him teach, watched him heal the sick and the blind, and cast out demons, Jesus warned them that they were standing on the brink of committing a sin from which they would never be forgiven. They had seen enough to reach the right conclusion about Jesus.  Unlike the apostle Paul, who describes himself as a “former blasphemer,” who was forgiven of his blasphemies because he had acted in ignorance.  Paul blasphemed in ignorance and so he was forgiven.  But the one who rejects the clear work of the Holy Spirit and blasphemes will not be forgiven.  This means that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit results from an unusually hard heart which flows from continual, willful resistance to the clear working of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus explained in Mark 3:28-29 that “all sins of mankind and whatever blasphemies they utter would be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit would never be forgiven.”  Jesus does not say, “all blasphemies will be forgiven except the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.”  What Jesus means is that the one who blasphemes the Holy Spirit, after having witnessed such evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit as had the Pharisees and yet willfully continues to reject him, has become so hard-hearted that repentance is rendered impossible.   Forgiveness of sins is not automatic.  Forgiveness is predicated upon repentance.  However, the one who blasphemes the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness because his heart is rendered so hard that it is impossible to repent—ever.

The reason blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable is because the heart is the realm in which the Holy Spirit works.  It is the work of the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth of the gospel (Jn 14:17), to open the heart to receive the gospel (Acts 16:14), to grant wisdom to “enlighten the eyes of the heart” (Eph 1:17-18), to remove the veil that clouds the mind and illumines the mind to the see the glory of the gospel (2 Cor 3:14-16), to enable one to clearly see one’s sins (Jn 16:8), and to guide one into all truth (Jn 16:13).  Furthermore, it is the work of the Holy Spirit to glorify Jesus (Jn 16:14).

When a person continually resists the work of the Holy Spirit in each of these arenas and has seen the power of God demonstrated (as the Pharisees had through the miracles of Jesus) and the goodness of the manifest work of God and then willfully rejects that work, refuses God’s grace, denies his power, and then goes on to speak about ultimate goodness so as to equate it with ultimate evil, then that person runs the risk of so offending the Holy Spirit that he will forever withdraw from that person leaving them in such a hard-hearted condition that any future repentance of sins is impossible.

More than Persistent Unbelief 

The unpardonable sin is not merely persisting in a state of unbelief until death.  We know this because Jesus said that the person who commits this sin will “not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”  If the unpardonable sin was simply persisting in a state of unbelief until death, then Jesus’ words that the unpardonable sin “would not be forgiven in this age” are meaningless.  If it is only at the end of life that this sin will not be forgiven, then why did Jesus say that this particular sin would not be forgiven “in this age?”  The unpardonable sin, therefore, is a sin that can be committed “in this age,” while one is living, that is so offensive to the Holy Spirit that one is placed beyond all possibility of repentance and forgiveness.

Definition of the Unpardonable Sin

We may therefore define the unpardonable sin as slanderous, contemptuous, irreverent, and profane speech about God, flowing from the settled conviction of a hardened heart that knowingly and willfully has chosen to reject God after having witnessed the life-changing powerful work of the Holy Spirit, which so offends the Holy Spirit that he permanently withdraws leaving one in a guilty, hardened condition that is beyond all possibility of future repentance and forgiveness.

The person who is grieved that they may have committed this sin somewhere in the past, is mostly likely not guilty of this sin, since the hardness of heart that would necessarily result from this action would not allow such a tender hearted response.  The person guilty of committing the unpardonable sin would be so hard-hearted that he would not care that he had committed this sin.  In contemplating this sin, if there is a particular instance that is brought to mind for which you desire to repent, then the fact that you desire to repent of it would certainly indicate that you have not committed the unpardonable sin, since repentance is impossible for the one who has committed this sin.  No Christian should ever worry that he or she has committed this sin since the Holy Spirit would never allow one of his own, “whom he has sealed unto the day of redemption,” to commit a sin for which he would be eternally condemned, since for those who are in Christ Jesus, all condemnation has been taken away.