[Note: This sermon expounds Matthew 12:31–32 and Matthew 12:33–37. Delivered 23 April 1978, Montreal.]
Today we return to the exposition of God's Word. For the last 14 Sundays, from the first Sunday in January to now, we have been expounding the scriptural teaching on salvation, and by God's grace last Sunday we completed that task. You will remember that in December we stopped at Matthew chapter 12, verse 30 — those wonderful words of the Lord Jesus, "He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters." We saw what it meant to be with Christ, and that it was not enough just to be for Christ. Today we come to verses 31 and 32, words which have brought many problems to commentators and Christians alike, but which we shall see are not so difficult to understand if our hearts are open to the Lord.
Before we consider the passage itself, there is a fundamental principle of Bible study I want to emphasize. Often a passage seems difficult to understand because we have already come to the Bible with certain fixed prejudices in our minds. I have warned those in training: when you study the Word of God, come with an utterly open heart, with no prejudices of any kind; say, Lord, I am absolutely teachable, I have no dogmas to defend, no doctrines to which I cling more than to your Word. When you come to the Bible with a preconceived idea already fixed in your mind, your mind is already closed — you don't want to listen to the Word of God, and whenever the Bible seems to say something contrary to a doctrine you have already accepted, you will simply not want to hear it.
I remember how uncomfortable the Word of God made me time and again when it clashed with a doctrine I had been taught. For example, the doctrine of once saved, always saved, which I was brought up on and accepted without question as every Chinese Christian is taught to accept. But when I studied God's Word, I was puzzled by so many verses that so obviously contradicted it — and what did I do? I ignored the scripture in order to hang on to the doctrine I had been taught. When we do this, or when we come to the scriptures with a sinful heart already laden with sin, our heart is already closed. This is the reason why a non-Christian often finds it difficult to accept the Word of God — it convicts him. Still I plead with you: come to the Word of God with an open heart, and let him speak.
Now let us approach Matthew 12:31–32 with this attitude. From the point of view of exegesis, there is no grammatical problem in the Greek — the only problem comes when we bring a preconceived idea. The first thing to observe is that the Lord Jesus draws a distinction between two kinds of blasphemy. Verse 31 says that every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men — only one sin is excepted. Verse 32 states that whoever says 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.
The first question is: why can one speak against the Son of Man — against Jesus himself — and still be forgiven? John the Baptist said to the people, "There is someone standing among you whom you do not know." Jesus was standing among them in flesh and blood like any other human being, and the people did not know who he was. This means you can sin against him in ignorance, and a sin in ignorance is pardonable — "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do." Those who crucified him had committed every sin against him, and yet the Lord Jesus forgives them because they acted in ignorance. The Apostle Paul confesses in 1 Timothy 1:13 to blasphemy, persecution, and insulting Jesus, yet he received mercy because he had acted ignorantly in unbelief. In verses 13 and 14, Paul's three confessions — blasphemy, persecution, insult — are all met with God's overflowing grace and mercy because he acted in ignorance.
Why, then, could Paul blaspheme against Christ and still be forgiven, while never blaspheming against the Holy Spirit? Because Paul's heart was always one that was open to God. He had a zeal for God, even if misdirected — Philippians 3:6 shows he persecuted the Christians out of a misguided zeal, not out of hatred of God. More importantly, Paul had one lifelong principle, even before he became a Christian: to live in a good conscience before God. In Acts 23:1 and 24:16, he says, "I have always lived in a good conscience before God to this day." This matters supremely, because God the Holy Spirit speaks to us through our conscience. Your conscience is your God-given spiritual radio set, the channel through which the Holy Spirit communicates with you — switch that off and you are finished; how is God going to speak to you, how is he going to convict you of sin?
Christians today do not often understand conscience clearly. Some people's consciences are very sensitive and can receive God's voice speaking to them plainly; others are so insensitive that you can shout into the microphone and hear almost nothing on the receiver because the radio is not properly tuned. In Romans 2, Paul shows us that even the non-Christian has a conscience, and that remaining last link with God means he can still be reached and spoken to. Now, in 1 Timothy 1:5, Paul shows us the critical chain: "The aim of our charge is love, that issues from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith." Unless you have a pure heart you cannot have a good conscience, and without a good conscience you cannot have a sincere faith. If there is something wrong with your faith, look at your conscience; if there is something wrong with your conscience, your heart is not pure.
In verse 19, Paul states the corresponding danger: "By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith." Notice: they did not reject the faith first — they rejected the conscience, and therefore ruined the faith. You cannot wreck a ship you don't have; the very fact that he speaks of shipwreck presupposes a genuine faith that can be destroyed. Brothers and sisters, watch carefully how you live. If you squash your conscience, if you destroy it, you are in for irreversible disaster. In verse 20, Paul names two people — Hymenaeus and Alexander — "whom I have delivered to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme." Notice the word blaspheme, which connects us directly to the passage we are now studying.
How, then, does one actually commit the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? It is the Pharisees who are warned about this sin in Matthew 12:24 — not ignorant outsiders, but people well instructed in scripture. And notice: the Pharisees were the very last people who would ever take the name of God on their lips. They used circumlocutions — "the Majesty," "the Holiness," "the Shekinah," even "heaven" — and would never directly pronounce the name of God. So if blasphemy against the Spirit meant speaking the name of the Holy Spirit directly, the Pharisees would be the last people ever to commit it. The parallel passage in Mark 3:29–30 resolves this: "For they had said, 'He has an unclean spirit.'" They never mentioned the Holy Spirit at all, yet the Lord Jesus says they committed this very sin — by implication, by calling the Holy Spirit an unclean spirit without ever naming him.
The sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is therefore committed by implication, not by direct reference. It is not so much what is said that matters as the attitude of the heart expressed by what is said. Matthew 12:33–35 shows this clearly: "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." The Pharisees were not speaking thoughtlessly; they were speaking out of an abundance already stored up in their hearts against God. Notice throughout these verses the constant distinction between good and evil — a good tree and a bad tree; a good man bringing forth good from his good treasure; an evil man bringing forth evil from his evil treasure. "Evil treasure" — he stores up evil because you only store what you love. The Pharisees had made a deliberate, reasoned choice of evil, and their words expressed the attitude of that choice. That is the attitude of the heart that the Lord Jesus is warning against.
# The Unforgiven Sin — Matthew 12:31–32 (Part B) — Hardening the Heart; the Progressive Path to the Unpardonable Sin
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Matthew 12:31–32, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 23 April 1978, Montreal.]
The Pharisees had made a deliberate choice of evil over good, just as John 3 says: men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. The remarkable expression in Matthew 12:35 is "evil treasure" — he stores up evil, treasures it, because you only store what you love. This storing up of evil is often a very gradual process: you choose a little evil, then a little more; you become more rebellious, your heart gets harder and harder; you don't want to listen to God's Word; you reject it; the more you argue against it, the harder your heart becomes, the more determined you are in evil. There are some people who listen to the Word of God for days, weeks, months, but because they refuse to make a choice, by the very fact of refusing to choose they have chosen — chosen not to choose what is good.
This brings us back to the Holy Spirit. His name is "Holy Spirit" — he is holy, and anyone who loves darkness and evil will not love what is holy. You are making a moral choice every day of your life. Consider: if you are a non-Christian and you say, "I know there is good, but I do not want any part of it" — what hope is there for such a person? But if you say, "I am evil but I wish to become good, I genuinely want to be freed from the bondage of sin" — there is hope. The same danger faces Christians who, having once chosen good, are tempted by sin, find the attractiveness of evil, and slowly go over to it. They fall away from the faith, they deny their conscience, and then — as 1 Timothy 4:1–2 says — "some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, their consciences seared."
Seared means cut through, destroyed, burned — the conscience has been utterly ruined. The Holy Spirit then has no more channel through which to speak to that person. If a person's conscience is seared, how can God speak to him? If God cannot speak to him, how can he be saved? You can say that the searing of the conscience is the committing of the unpardonable sin — because you can never be forgiven when forgiveness can no longer reach you, because you will never ask, because you no longer hear the voice that calls you to ask. Forgiveness can only come to those who ask for it.
What is the work of the Holy Spirit? It is to set us free from sin and from the power of Satan. The Lord Jesus cast out demons by the power of the Holy Spirit — without the Holy Spirit we cannot be free from the power of evil. If you reject the Holy Spirit, how will you ever be free from sin? And if you are not free from sin, how can you ever be forgiven? The Holy Spirit is God's agent of grace, God's channel of forgiveness to us. Reject the Holy Spirit and you have rejected forgiveness. Reject forgiveness and by very definition you can never be forgiven — for the unpardonable sin is quite simply the one that refuses to be pardoned and thus closes the door of forgiveness.
Proverbs 29:1 says: "He who is often reproved yet stiffens his neck will suddenly be broken beyond healing." And 2 Chronicles 36:15–16 records: "The Lord the God of their fathers sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people... but they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his word and scoffing at his prophets, till the wrath of the Lord rose against his people, till there was no remedy." Those last words are terrifying — "till there was no remedy." God was very patient; you do not commit this sin in one moment. But a point came when he was finished with that generation, and seventy years of exile would wipe out the entire generation — not one of them would survive, just as the generation in the wilderness was wiped out.
Now what can we learn from all of this? First, understand the importance of conscience. The Holy Spirit speaks to you through your conscience; let it always remain sensitive and open to him. And know this: since God is always willing to forgive if only you are willing to let him forgive you — why should you ever run away from him when you commit sin? When we sin, our first reaction is to flee from God, as Adam and Eve hid among the trees. But that is foolishness. The time we most need God is when we have sinned, just as the time we most need the doctor is when we are sick — what a reaction it would be to run away from the doctor whenever you fall ill. Learn to flee back to God whenever you sin; he is your refuge and your fortress.
When I was in England before I began to serve the Lord, I often did personal work in Cambridge. I was called by a lady at a hostel to speak to a Chinese medical student. After some conversation, I asked whether he would receive the Lord, and I noticed a certain hardness in his heart. We knelt together; I prayed and waited in silence. Then I heard groaning, and he said, "I can't do it — there is some power that is preventing me." He knelt there for what seemed like an hour, groaning and refusing to rise. When I asked if he wanted to be freed from the power of Satan, he said, "No." When I pressed him further, he said, "In a certain sense I do want to be free, but in another sense I do not want to be free." He then told me his background: in his younger days he had wanted to be a Christian and in fact had become one, but then hardened his heart against God, went into sin and evil, was constantly reproved by the Holy Spirit, and stiffened his neck — until it seemed the Spirit of God left him and he was committed to the power of Satan, as in the case of Hymenaeus and Alexander.
I will not be dogmatic about this case; it is never right to pass judgment on an actual historical person. But I wonder whether he had committed the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and gone beyond the stage of forgiveness — because he had destroyed his conscience, did not want to be freed, and yet in some corner of his being still longed for the freedom he had once known. I have never seen a person more wretched and miserable. That case has exercised and grieved me for many years, and it stands as a warning to me and to all of us.
Let me finally make plain that the blasphemy of the Spirit can be committed by both non-Christians and Christians alike. It cannot be limited only to Christians, as some scholars think, because they mistakenly supposed the sin means referring to the Spirit by name — but we have seen that it is committed by implication, by attitude of the heart, whether by deliberate choice of evil or by sheer negligence and refusal to act on what God's Spirit is saying. God is very patient, but there comes a time when the door closes. Whatever sin you commit, never close your heart against God — that is the only path to final disaster. And when you sin, however badly, run back to him. As David said: have regard for me, I am only flesh and blood, only dust — have pity on me and forgive me my sin. And he will forgive. Let us be quiet before God in prayer.