What is the Unforgivable Sin?
I recently listened to the roughly three-hour-long conversation between Alex O’Connor (of the Within Reason podcast) and Cliff and Stuart Knechtle (of the Give Me An Answer ministry).
This probably wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but for me this was fun. I respect all three men. I disagree with all three men. I still have things I can learn from all three men. And I love getting into difficult philosophy and theology, and particularly wrestling with the Bible.
One of the many questions Alex posed to the apologists was about the “unforgivable sin”, what “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” actually meant, and whether the prospect of crossing an unforgivable line was theologically contradictory or incompatible to the rest of Christian theology which centers so much around forgiveness, grace, mercy, etc.
The Knechtle father-son duo basically responded by explaining that in their opinion, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is a state of being in which someone becomes so hardened against God and morality that there is no more light or conscience in them. In other words, that they have changed through repeated action, and gone past the point of ever seeking forgiveness from God again. They don’t have it because they would never seek it.
And while there is definitely a certain logic or coherency to this idea — it’s certainly a gratifying enough answer to give a fearful teenager trying to make sense of guilt and shame and grace and forgiveness — I really do have to push back a little against it.
For starters, there was nothing in the answer to connect it coherently in anyone’s mind to the phrase “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit”.
Biblical Linguistics
The Bible has really come alive for me the last few years since I began actually going through it in the Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, etc., and began understanding what certain words actually meant and why things were translated into English the way they were.
And in most cases, I’ve found it’s our English words that have shifted meaning over hundreds of years so that we no longer understand them.
For example, I the Lord am a jealous God. This is one of the primary ways we think of the “God of the Old Testament”, and prominent atheist commentators have effectively used this to describe Old Testament God as a tantrumming toddler raining fire and brimstone on anyone he doesn’t like. And it’s easy to be confused trying to rectify in your mind these two apparently different Gods, one of love and one of jealousy.
But when we dig into the linguistics, we get some simple answers.
Firstly, in the 1500s/1600s, there was no letter “j” yet, so it’s actual spelled iealous (and likely pronounced “yeelus”).
But even more importantly, when we look into the Hebrew adjective qanna, we see that it’s based on the noun qinah, meaning zeal, devotion, passion, fervor.
And we can clearly see that (to the early English Bible translators) there was no linguistic difference between “iealous” and “zealous”. It was originally the same word. And wasn’t describing bad behavior.
We’ve just created this wholly new meaning for the term “jealous/jealousy” in modern English vernacular, over the course of many generations. The original word has evolved into two different words, one with a “positive meaning” and one with a “negative meaning”.
And as soon as we put that correct word back in its correct context, and we hear God (in making a contractual covenant with the people of Israel in Exodus 20) say, I the Lord am a zealous (passionate, devoted) God, we then immediately understand because the pieces actually fit together now.
God is saying, I want a relationship with you, my people. I am going to be passionate, devoted, and full of zeal in keeping up my end of the deal here, and I’m expecting the same from you in return, so don’t take this name, Israel, upon you falsely, don’t take it on you in vain, don’t do it unless you really mean it, because I will hold you to this agreement we made. I will bless you when you follow it, and I will answer out judgment upon you when you don’t keep up your end of the bargain.
Suddenly, it’s perfectly rational and sensible why God describes himself this way. We’ve just collectively missed the mark for a while here and millions of Christians have gone to the grave still puzzling over this linguistic misstep.
What is “blasphemy”?
Sure, but first, what is “infamy”?
What is it to “defame”?
What does it actually mean, do you suppose, to “blaspheme”?
And what would it mean to you if it were spelled “blasfame”?
The Strong’s Greek Lexicon will tell you that the Greek word “blasphemia” comes from blax (slow, sluggish) + phemi (fame, name, reputation, renown).
However, there’s no actual entry for blax; it’s an unknown root. A half-hour of furious Google-searching brought me no closer to knowing where they pulled it from.
What I did learn though, was that there is a much more common Greek word blapse that appears several times in the Bible that means “to injure, harm, damage, etc.”
Doesn’t it just make so much more sense that blasphemia comes from blapse (injure, harm, damage) + phemi (name, reputation, etc.)?
“Blasphemy” in the Greek, therefore, is a clear and direct reference to the “ninth commandment” against lying publicly about (or bearing false witness against) your fellow men.
Each of the “commandments” in the Exodus 20 Covenant Constitution of the Kingdom of Israel enshrines a right of man. The right to life. The right to freedom/self-determination. The right to property. The right to know that your progeny are your own. The right to a day off each week. The right to be cared for at home by your family in your feeble elder years.
And this one is the right to your name/reputation in the community.
So what then does it mean when Jesus says in Mark 3 that we can/will be forgiven for all of our blasphemies against man, BUT we cannot be forgiven for blasphemy unto the Holy Spirit?
Well, as a born-again Christian, here’s how I understand the simple gospel from my own experience.
My Spiritual Rebirth
I was born and raised in a devout latter-day saint.
As a latter-day saint, we believed that we were Jesus’ “one true church”.
We believed that once you were eight, you were now accountable to God, and thus required baptism and confirmation into his “one true church”.
And we also believed that once you were confirmed into his “one true church” by the authority of the LDS priesthood, who laid their hands on your head and blessed you publicly, you received the “gift of the Holy Ghost” because they (with all their authority from God) said “receive the Holy Ghost”.
However, from the age of 8 when I was baptized and confirmed in the LDS church, until the age of 17, I never once felt the Holy Ghost.
I believed that I must have it with me, because that’s what I was told by people I trusted in religious authority, but I never actually ever felt it. And for most of the people I heard speak about “feeling the Spirit”, it was always generic positive emotions, like peace, warmth, happiness.
And as someone who wasn’t particularly emotional (because I was both a little autistic and very repressed because of the high-demand religious framework) I didn’t buy in like everyone else seemed to with the emotional stuff. My emotions were my own and weren’t the result of outside manipulations from either good or evil sources.
But because every other latter-day saint I knew were all good, well-intentioned people, and they obviously believed it, I was happy to go along, until I moved away to college at 17 years old.
It took me all of a week or two to realize that nobody 6 hours away from home was going to insist that I went to church, or keep any of the expected religious habits of a latter-day saint. Suddenly, the social expectation that had kept me going and actively participating for years was gone.
And I realized I was standing at this giant life-fork in the road, and it was up to me to choose what path I would take.
It wasn’t enough to simply ask God what to do in prayer, because surely he would answer me through the Holy Spirit and I had no idea what that felt like or how to discern or interpret a useful answer from an emotion.
I realized that I needed to actually ask God to show me the Holy Spirit. I needed to feel it for real and know that it wasn’t just me. I needed to know for certain that God really was there, and that he would give me actual guidance and direction from something outside of myself.
And so, when I prayed and fasted to God, I was really frank about it, God, I need to feel the Spirit, for real; I need to know that you really exist. If you reveal yourself or your Holy Spirit unto me in an undeniable way, I will follow you for the rest of my life. And I’m going to keep praying and fasting and if I don’t receive any answer from you by next Sunday, I guess I’m going to have figure out things for myself from now on, because this obviously wasn’t true.
That’s not word-for-word, but you get the gist. I was sincere in my intention and, like ancient Israel, I made a deal or covenant with God.
And you know what, he kept up his end of the bargain.
I was in church the next Sunday. It was a testimony meeting. Some woman got up and read a verse of scripture that really hit her hard that morning, and…
BAM!
This burning or electric physical sensation shot up my spine and throughout my whole body to the extremities, and I must have leapt up out of my seat, but it sure felt to me like God’s hand reached down, literally picked me up out of my seat and dropped me onto my feet in shock.
It wasn’t an emotion. It wasn’t warm fuzzies or happy feelings. It was a literal fiery sensation through my whole physical being. It was a supernatural yet physiological experience that originated from outside myself.
It was a baptism of fire.
And from within my LDS programming, I really didn’t understand the true significance of the experience, that it was my real baptism of fire, and that I only now had the actual Spirit of God dwelling within my body temple.
All I really took from the experience (which was the most important part) is that I had made a promise to God to earnestly follow him the rest of my life if he revealed himself to me, and he did. He answered me faithfully and I can never deny that experience or deny God’s existence.
After a number of years, I learned to discern God’s answers for me well enough that he was able to lead me out of the error that was the LDS religion, and I’m in a much better, healthier place now, both myself and my family.
I understand that experience now to be central to the gospel that Jesus taught.
The Simple Gospel
God made a covenant with Israel in Exodus 20. Part of God’s end of the bargain was that his presence (shekinah) would literally be with their people/nation. This is why they had to build the tabernacle/tent, for God’s presence/essence/Spirit to dwell within the Holy of Holies.
Jesus came to fulfill the sacrificial portion of the Law/Torah, and when he was slain as the sacrificial paschal lamb, the final sacrifice for sin, the veil in the temple (that separated God’s Spirit from mankind) rent from top to bottom and God’s Spirit left it forever.
Jesus taught us repeatedly that God doesn’t dwell in buildings made by the hands of men; he’s a Spirit and can dwell within our hearts directly.
After Jesus’ water baptism, the Spirit of God descended upon him, and the earliest documents agree that the voice of God was heard to say “this day have I begotten (monogenes, meaning become one-flesh with) you”.
A New Testament covenant with God is individual, because of what Jesus did removing the barriers for us, and it’s likened most often and most directly to a marriage covenant, because the essence/Spirit of God coming into our bodies is reminiscent of the intimate pair-bonding that occurs when a woman receives and retains a man’s seed inside herself. Her brain will literally retain a portion of any man’s semen for something like forty or fifty years (or perhaps permanently). This is why Jesus is the bridegroom and we are the bride, and it’s a marriage feast when he comes again.
We no longer need a religious priest-class over us to approach God on our behalf, because we can all have a personal relationship with our Creator. We earnestly covenant with him, and he imparts the baptism of fire upon us, so that he is with us always.
Problematically though, just as most LDS people believed that they had the Holy Spirit within them even though they’d never actually been born-again, a huge number of mainstream Christians appear to be exactly the same. They profess Christ, they preach and prophesy and cast out demons in his name, but he doesn’t actually know them intimately, because there’s no actual one-flesh relationship there. They’ve never truly been born again.
This is what Jesus’ teachings warn us about repeatedly. Half of the ten virgins were only playing brides and had no real oil (spirit) or fire in their lamps, so when the bridegroom showed up, they scrambled to find oil for their lamps and were shut out of from the consummation and wedding feast. He said “I never knew you”, and the word “knew” here implies intimate and experiential knowledge, and it’s the same word for when “Adam knew his wife Eve, and they begat sons and daughters.”
And this is honestly one of my bigger concerns here with Cliff and Stuart Knechtle.
I don’t know them personally. I haven’t heard everything they’ve ever said publicly. And I haven’t heard them preach about the baptism of fire specifically, so I don’t know where they stand on this, but not once in the three-hour podcast/interview did they speak of being born again or receiving the Holy Spirit as more than just a feeling.
I can’t speak to their experience or relationship with God.
But I can speak to my own.
I know God exists, because I have a personal one-flesh covenant relationship with him, and his Spirit literally dwells within me. He gives me direction, he gives me peace and often he convicts me of what I need to be doing better or where I might be going wrong.
And if I were to ever deny that personal, experiential knowledge of God; if I were ever to deny that he existed, or that I had received his Holy Spirit, or that I had had that supernatural electrical sensation from outside of myself, then THAT, I believe, would be blasphemy unto the Holy Spirit.
That is how I, as a born-again, Spirit-filled Christian, understand the “unforgivable sin”.
Theoretically, I could lie publicly about everyone else I’ve ever known and God would forgive me if I asked (genuinely), but he has one hard boundary in our relationship that he would not forgive me for crossing (which is totally fair as boundaries go): publicly denying my personal, intimate relationship with him; or what I know of him by real experience.
Can you accidentally commit the unforgivable sin?
I don’t even know if anyone will actually ever fall into that category. Even Judas who betrayed hanged himself shortly thereafter before the Spirit poured out on the rest of the Apostles at the day of Pentecost, so even he isn’t guilty of this sin.
So, I really don’t think it’s something you ever have cause to worry about, because if you know you know. You either know for certain, undeniably so, (because the sin is in the denying it) or you don’t.
You can’t accidentally commit this sin.
We know from the parable of the ten virgins and Jesus’ words at the end of Matthew 7 that something like half of alleged followers of Jesus will falsely think they have a personal relationship with him when they actually don’t, but we never see any examples that I can recall of any born-again believers who then denied that they had received God’s Spirit into their body temple and were cursed for all eternity for it.
You have to truly be born again, have that one-flesh relationship with God directly, so that you know without a doubt he’s real and present in your life and in your being, and then publicly deny it/bear false witness against it.
As someone already in that born-again category where I can’t deny God’s existence, I can’t imagine ever doing that. Even the very idea of lying publicly about that life-changing experience is horrifying to my core.
So, please rest assured, you can’t just slip up, whoops, and commit the unforgivable sin.
I feel so strongly within myself that I would be convicted by the Holy Spirit if I ever even got close to crossing that boundary. It’s inconceivable that someone could do it by mistake, because you would know, and you would know, and you would know. There would be no question in it.
In other words, if you need ask yourself, “oh no, am I committing the unforgivable sin here?” …you’re not. There’s not room for doubt there.
And if there’s room for doubt, there’s definitely room for forgiveness.
