Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

A certain seer warned Caesar to be on guard against a great peril on the day of March which the Romans called Ides.

When the day came and Caesar was on his way to the senate house he greeted the seer with a jest, and said, "Well, the Ides of March are come."

"Aye," said the seer.

"They are come, but they are not gone."

In other words, the warning would not be proven false until the day ended, and as we know, the Ides of March prove to be the last of Caesar.

Jesus gave His critics a very serious warning; in fact, the danger was so great that there is nothing else to equal it.

He warned them concerning the unforgivable sin.

It is such a terrible thing to consider that many prefer to ignore it, and others just dismiss it as a sin that could only be committed by people in the day of Christ, and it does not concern us now.

They would dismiss the warning with a Caesar-like, "Well, that danger is past and gone."

But the Sovereign Seer, our Savior, I fear would reply, "Aye, that danger is past, but it is not over.

It is also present.

It has come, but it has not gone."

It is unreasonable to think that Jesus would declare a sin to be unforgivable, and mean by it, it is only unforgivable if you do it now rather than later.

If blasphemy of the Holy Spirit was unforgivable before the Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost, then by what logic can it be maintained that it is not now unforgivable sense the Holy Spirit has more prominence then ever in God's plan?

If Jesus meant to limit the danger just to those Pharisees who criticized Him that day; who said He was filled with the devil, He did not make it clear, and if this was the case, there would be some weight behind Bertrand Russell's criticism of Christ in giving this warning.

Russell, the well known atheist writes in his book, Why I Am Not A Christian, concerning this passage:

"That text has caused an unspeakable amount of misery in the world for all sorts of people have imagined that they have committed the sin

against the Holy Ghost, and thought it would not be forgiven them either in this life or in the world to come.

I really do not think that a person with a proper degree of kindliness in his nature would have put fears and terrors of that sort into the world."

The facts of history will back him up as to the misery this warning has caused.

Doctors, psychiatrists, and preachers can testify to the fact that many people have gone insane over worry about this sin.

D. L. Moody said in his wide experience, "We have not been in a place in this country-and I think we were not in more than one or two places while we were abroad-but we found some people who thought they had committed the unpardonable sin."

We could quote from ancient history and modern days from men who find this same thing to be true.

This means that if Jesus meant only to say that this sin applied just to those who criticized Him, and to no others, but did not make it clear, he would be guilty for all this history of unnecessary agony.

This leads us to the obvious conclusion that the warning was not just for them, but for all time.

Men can blaspheme the Holy Spirit today just as they could then.

This being so, it was not unkind for Jesus to give the warning as Russell charges, but was an act of marvelous mercy.

Jesus could have let these cold-hearted cruel critics go on in their evil to a ruin without remedy, but as verse 23 makes clear, He called them aside purposely to show them their folly, and to warn them less they go beyond the point of no return.

Where can one find an act of kindness to match this?

Warning men who have just maliciously slandered you by calling you an agent of the god of flies and dung, in the hope that they might stop short of a sin beyond hope.

The vast majority of commentators agree that the Pharisees were not yet guilty of this sin, but would be if they persisted in their accusation after this warning.

We have established then that the unforgivable sin is still possible, and will be to the end of history.

And also that to be warned of it was an act of kindness on the part of Christ, there being nothing kind about letting men plunge to their doom without warning because you didn't want to make them nervous by telling them the bridge was gone.

Any sane person would prefer the kindness that warns over the kindness that leaves one blind.

The fact remains, however, that there are masses of people, and many of them Christians, who go through awful but unnecessary anguish because of this warning.

The problem is not in the warning, but in the ignorance of people concerning the warning.

The vast majority who fear they have committed this sin are dupes of the devil, and are unaware of the subtle tricks of Satan whereby he can bring even a believer to despair about his salvation.

Many men of God have had to go through real battles over this sin.

This can be avoided if we cease to be ignorant of Satan's devices.

I trust that our approach to this subject will diminish our ignorance, and give light for our own walk as well as light to help others who are in the dark.

First we want to consider what this sin is not, for this will help us clear away a great many cobwebs of misconception.

Then we will be able to see the light concerning what this sin really is.

I. WHAT THE UNFORGIVABLE SIN IS NOT.

It is not any sin that can be forgiven.

This might sound simplistic, but a great deal of misunderstanding arises because this simple truth is missed.

As you can imagine, there are a number of different ways men have interpreted the meaning of the unforgivable sin.

There is usually so much truth in each of them that one gets confused as to which can be the right interpretation.

By simply keeping in mind the fact that the unforgivable sin is not a sin that can be forgiven, you eliminate all the theories of men and narrow yourself down to the words of Christ.

For example, could the unforgivable sin be a rejection of Jesus as the Son of God?

Not a chance.

Why?

Because this sin is forgivable.

No sin is more forgivable than the rejection of Christ, for when one repents of it and receives Christ, God and all the angels of heaven rejoice.

Paul was a great Christ rejecter.

He writes in I Tim.

1:13, "I formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted him; but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief."

He even blasphemed Christ, but he was forgiven.

This gives us another clue.

The unforgivable sin is not a sin you can stumble into accidentally, or perform in ignorance.

You can blaspheme God and Christ in ignorance not knowing what you are doing, but the unforgivable sin is a sin done with clear and certain knowledge.

It is a definite sin against light.

Jesus said on the cross, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do."

Men who do grave sin like the men who crucified Christ, and like Paul who blasphemed and persecuted Him, but do so in ignorance, are forgiven.

Any sin of ignorance is forgivable, and so no person need fear they can ever stumble into this unforgivable sin unknowingly or against their will.

This is important to understand, for it is just at this point that Satan is able to make so many miserable.

Here, for example, is part of a letter written to Dr. W. L. Northridge, a Christian doctor who deals with many Christians who are distressed about this sin.

"I hope you will forgive me writing to you, but I feel terribly

distressed.

I am worried about the unforgivable sin.

My

thoughts are bad even when praying.

I confess to a Christian

friend and gave her a fair idea of the bad words that come into

my mind.

They are about holy personages and things, and about

the Savior Himself.

I hope that these thoughts do not mean the

unpardonable sin mentioned in the Gospels.

They haunt me, and

force themselves on me.

Do tell me that I have not committed the

unforgivable sin."

It was easy, of course, for him to assure her that she had not done any such thing.

Her experience was a perfectly normal one which millions of Christians go through, but which can affect sensitive Christians even to the point of a breakdown, because they are ignorant of Satan's devices.

One young married women came to Dr. Northridge, of whom there was no doubt as to her genuine Christian experience, yet she was a nervous wreck because she was obsessed with the thought that ran through her mind about damming the Holy Spirit.

Other Christians have sacrilegious and obscene thoughts about Christ and God.

None of these involuntary obsessions are even sin, let alone the unforgivable sin.

The wise Christian does not suppress them, but recognizes them to be a normal possibility for anyone thinking on holy things.

The mature Christian will not give Satan advantage to use these obsessions, but will immediately take them to the Lord who knows they are involuntary, and come into your mind against your will.

He will give you assurance that you are not cut off from Him by such thoughts.

The unforgivable sin, we repeat, is not any sin that can be forgiven, or any thought that is involuntary.

We need to stress in the emphasis of Jesus that this sin is the great exception.

All other sin is forgivable.

Only this one is not.

It is distinct and in a class by itself.

Many by not paying attention to this build up elaborate explanations about hardening the heart until one cannot repent, as if this was the unforgivable sin.

They complicate the issue by making this, not an act, but a whole way of life.

This leads to a total neglect of the exceptional nature of this sin.

Many men harden their hearts by a life of crime and immorality, and they die without Christ unrepentant.