What is the Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit?
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
In Luke 12:10, it is mentioned that there is forgiveness for speaking against the Son of Man, but no forgiveness for blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Please elaborate.
Luke 12:10 states, “And anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but to him who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven.” We need to know more about the context in which this statement was made. In Luke 11:14-23, Jesus was accused of casting out demons by the prince of demons. Mark records this in Mark 3:20-27. Mark mentions blasphemy against the Holy Spirit immediately after this story, as does Matthew, in Matthew 12:22-30. Luke mentions it a little later on in a general rebuke against the Pharisees. The context is the accusations of the Pharisees against Jesus. Their accusation that Jesus cast out demons by the prince of demons, Beelzebub, that is, Satan, was not a charge against Jesus, but against the Holy Spirit since it was through the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus was casting out the demons. Matthew’s account makes that very clear when Jesus says, “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12:28). All of the miracles that Jesus did were by the power of the Holy Spirit because God did not give the Holy Spirit to Jesus with measure (John 3:34). This meant that Jesus always had full access to the power of the Holy Spirit to do the miracles that He did. Jesus never says that these Pharisees had blasphemed the Holy Spirit, per se, but they were evidently in danger of doing so, hence the warning that Jesus gives them.
What is the danger that Jesus is warning them against? It is the danger of so rejecting the Holy Spirit that you cannot recognize Him and His work anymore. The Pharisees were filled with pride and envy. They delivered Jesus to be crucified because of their envy (Matthew 27:18, Mark 15:10). These things had blinded them to the truth of Jesus’ good works. Hence, they were willing to go to any length to destroy Jesus, including to reject the Spirit by which Jesus did the good works that He did. When a person is so filled with pride and envy that He cannot recognize when someone does a good work (and Jesus’ casting out a demon was a good work), that is a dangerous place to be spiritually. Through His envy and pride, he has closed himself off to listening to the Holy Spirit whether in the demonstrations of the Spirit through Jesus, or the teachings of the Holy Spirit in the word of God. This is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.
Today, the Holy Spirit speaks through God’s word, the Bible. In 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 Paul makes this very clear, especially in verse 10 when he writes, “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.” What did Paul do with the things revealed to Him by the Spirit? He spoke them to others. “These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual” (1 Cor.2:13). Notice that the “the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor.2:14). In essence, the natural man is the one who is so consumed by sin, that it is impossible for him to repent and turn to God, and it is true that some people are just so far gone into sin consumed by their own pride, envy, and hatred of others, that they will not listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit through God’s word. This is what the Pharisees were involved in, and this is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.