3882—Sinning Against the Holy Ghost
By Editor
Compare these two scriptures with Mark 3:28-30. It will be clearly seen by this comparison with the words found in Mark, that the sin against the Holy Spirit on the part of the Jews was attributing the power by which Christ wrought miracles, to Satan. Jesus was working miracles that only Divinity could work. It was a strong, clear manifestation of the Spirit of God in Him. His teaching was in harmony with those miracles. He taught also the things of God. To declare, as the Jews did, that He cast out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, was utterly to turn away from the only power that could save them, the power of the life and Spirit of God. This is the teaching of Jesus, and this will serve to show what the sinning against the Holy Spirit is. The only reason why a sin is unforgivable is that it is unrepentable. God has but one power to save His people, one means of cleansing. He cleanses by the blood of the Lord Jesus. He gives life and power by His Holy Spirit. See Heb. 10:29. When, therefore, the soul rejects the only means by which God can save him, when he continues to reject that, when he counts the thing which will make him holy an unholy thing, when he declares that the very Spirit which would woo him to repentance is not of God, but a mere delusion or a cheat, he puts himself in a place where God can not reach him, because God will not compel acceptance. The sin, therefore, against the Holy Spirit, is the attributing to the enemy the work of the Holy Spirit, or in other words, it is denying the Spirit in its working. The unforgivable sin is therefore not one which God is not willing to forgive, but of the forgiveness which man can not receive, because he does not know it when it is offered.