by Brandon D. Smith
Throughout Scripture, God demands full credit for the work only God can do. In Exodus 20, God gives his people the Ten Commandments, and their obedience is rooted in God’s reminder, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery” (Exod 20:2). The psalmist reflects on this truth as he remembers God’s deliverance from Egypt and his promises to the patriarchs: “Remember the wondrous works he has done, his wonders, and the judgments he has pronounced” (Ps 105:5). God does not give Israel a pat on the back for their strength or determination—indeed, he is not impressed with human strength (Ps 147:10)—but rather reminds his people that he is their deliverer.
God does not demand worship because he is insecure and needs affirmation, but simply because it is true. This truth means that any time someone misuses or defames the name of the Lord, blasphemy is the charge. One person could sin against another, and it would not be blasphemy; but to dishonor the Lord is to commit a different kind of sin.
Blaspheming the Holy Spirit
In Mark 3, the Jewish leaders misplace credit for Jesus’s work: “The scribes who had come down from Jerusalem said, ‘He is possessed by Beelzebul,’ and, ‘He drives out demons by the ruler of the demons’” (Mark 3:22). Jesus responds first by showing them their false logic:
“How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand but is finished. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder his house.” (Mark 3:23-27)
Put simply, it would make no sense for Satan to work against himself. Why would he undo his own work? No, Jesus tells them, the “strong man” (Satan) has been bound up and Jesus is now undoing his work. Then, he warns them about the consequences of their error:
“Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for all sins and whatever blasphemies they utter. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—because they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.” (Mark 3:28-30)
The problem here is obvious: God is the one who deserves credit for saving and healing, for undoing the work of Satan and his minions. But this passage also raises questions that plague many of us: what is this “unforgivable sin” and how could we say that God would not forgive any sin? If 1 John 1:9 is right—“if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”—then how could the Jewish leaders not be forgiven?
Blasphemy and the Trinity
For our purposes here, we need to think Trinitarianly to find the answer to “the unforgivable sin.” First of all, we know that Jesus, the eternal Son of God, has come into the world to save sinners and to undo the curse of Adam. The work he does cannot be equated with Satan in any way, for he would be undoing God’s work any time he forgives sins or heals someone. Moreover, we know that Jesus and the Holy Spirit work inseparably throughout Jesus’s ministry—from his birth to his baptism to his miracle-working. So if Jesus’s work is separated from the Holy Spirit’s work, we are in the position of denying what Scripture clearly teaches about Jesus being sent by the Father and working inseparably from the Holy Spirit.
The triune God cannot be separated or broken into pieces—we call this “divine simplicity.” The divine persons also do not work in isolation from one another—we call this “inseparable operations.” So to give credit to Satan for Jesus’s work is straightforwardly a denial of the unified power and work of the Trinity. It is the triune God who heals and casts out demons, such that the demons recognize Jesus’s power to cast them out (Matt 8:28-34), and yet Jesus can say elsewhere that he does nothing apart from the Father (John 8:28) and say here that it is the Holy Spirit’s power at work.
When the Jewish leaders fail to acknowledge the work of the Holy Spirit in the work of Jesus, they deny the work of God himself. They make the basic error of not praising God for his work in the world, which is something their own Scriptures warn against. Their posture is not a posture of repentance or even doubt, but rather a posture of blatant blasphemy. How could one be forgiven for a sin without seeking repentance? How could someone be forgiven for a sin while equating God with Satan? Jesus’s answer is simple: they cannot be forgiven. Their posture does not open them up to forgiveness, because they are ten steps behind the first step of repentance and ultimately worship.
We should also notice here that their sin is not a generic sin of unbelief, either. Their sin is a personal sin against the Holy Spirit—they have blasphemed that divine person and the inseparable work of the Trinity when they credited Satan with his work, Jesus tells them. The Holy Spirit is God, and thus speaking wrongly about him is textbook blasphemy.
This story reminds us of a similar event in the book of Acts. Before his ascension, Jesus told his disciples that their own works of healing and exorcism would be done by the Holy Spirit in the power of Jesus’s name (Acts 1:8; cf. 16:18). In Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira threaten to hinder this work by pocketing money they were supposed to give to the church. Their sin?
“Ananias,” Peter asked, “why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the proceeds of the land? Wasn’t it yours while you possessed it? And after it was sold, wasn’t it at your disposal? Why is it that you planned this thing in your heart? You have not lied to people but to God.” . . . Then Peter said to [Sapphira], “Why did you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? (Acts 5:3-4, 9)
This death penalty levied against the couple might (rightly) make some people uncomfortable; yet this is not the first time God has pronounced death on “whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord” (Lev 24:16). Peter recognizes the distinction between Satan’s work and the Holy Spirit’s, between blasphemy and honoring the Lord’s name and work. To go against the work of God is to sin against the Holy Spirit and instead do the work of Satan. Ananias and Sapphira’s sin was, again, not merely disobedience, but a direct affront to a divine person. To lie to the Holy Spirit, Peter says, is to lie to God.
Listening to the Holy Spirit
Interestingly, unlike Matthew’s account of this event (Matt 12:22-32), Luke’s account (Luke 12:1-12) does not mention the demon exorcism and the accompanied scoffing by the Jewish leaders. It does, however, relay the same idea: “everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven” (Luke 12:10)—all in a similar context of warning them against the Pharisees’ teaching (Luke 12:1). Further, Luke’s account adds a phrase that helps pull together an application point: when people scoff at your faith, believers are not to rely on their own words, but should know that “Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say” (Luke 12:12).
Similarly, in Revelation 2-3, Jesus addresses each church with a summary of their current spiritual state. At the end of each address, Jesus says some version of, “Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.” Put simply, when Jesus speaks, the Holy Spirit speaks. So when our triune God is at work, we can blaspheme by joining the scoffers and diverting our praise elsewhere, or we can listen to the Holy Spirit and praise him for his work.
If the Jewish leaders were supposed to be first to recognize their own Messiah, why did they attribute his work to Satan? On the one hand, they disdained his work because they rightly understood that only God has the power and authority that Jesus displays; on the other hand, they were also self-protective and did not appreciate having their authority challenged (Mark 3:1-6). John Calvin helpfully draws out this point:
There can be no doubt that many of them were carried away by zeal for the law; but it appears that there were others who maliciously and impiously raged against God himself, that is, against the doctrine which they knew to be of God. . . . The spirit of blasphemy, therefore, is, when a man audaciously, and of set purpose, rushes forth to insult his divine name.[1]
Instead of responding in faith, allowing the works of Jesus to speak for themselves about his divinity, they fail to recognize Jesus and the Holy Spirit’s unified divine mission (cf. John 10:25-27). In turn, they also reject the Holy Spirit’s inseparable work with the Father and Son to bring about salvation and renewal. May we listen to the Holy Spirit and allow him to teach us the truth about our triune God.
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[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.3.22. English translation from John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008).