“THE UNFORGIVABLE SIN”
(Mark 3:22-30)
This will be the last post from Mark chapter three and it will be the hardest message of all the messages from Mark’s Gospel so far. I am sure that most everyone has heard of the unforgivable sin before. This unforgivable sin as John MacArthur puts it “ought to frighten the comfortable and comfort the frightened because on the on hand there are people who have no idea that they have committed the unforgivable sin…they have no idea that they have committed the unforgivable sin. They’re comfortable and they ought to be frightened because they are heading to eternal hell!
“There are other people who think they’ve committed the unforgivable sin and haven’t and need to be comforted.”
This is why the message on the unforgivable sin is so difficult to write about, but something that needs to be written about so that it can be understood. Mark 3:28-30 says, “"Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin"- 30 because they were saying, "He has an unclean spirit.’” We see that Jesus begins this statement with words that He says when He is making a statement that He wants to make sure everyone hears. Kind of like when He is talking to John in the book of Revelations chapters two and three when He says “’He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”
It was two blog entries ago from the book of Mark that I reminded everyone about when Jesus was baptized and that all three persons were represented at His baptism. When Jesus came to earth as a man “He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.” (Phil. 2:7) In empting Himself He laid aside His glory so that man could look upon Him without dying. Jesus said in John 14:9b “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” The point that I am making here is that at the baptism of Jesus the Holy Spirit entered Him in full measure, something that could not happen to another person. Jesus was doing His miracles through the power of the Holy Spirit and as we will see His enemies are saying that He was doing it through the power of Satan.
In the last blog entry on Mark’s Gospel we talked about what C. S. Lewis said of Jesus that He was either Lord, liar, or lunatic. His enemies think that He is a liar and that is why they accuse Him of doing miracles in the power of Satan. Jesus came to earth to show that He was the Son of God and they way that He did this was by the miracles that He was doing, yet some could not see that. If a person says they are God and then does all kinds of miracles showing that He is God then people should believe Him. Now we know that the “false prophet” who will be the antichrist’s co-worker will do miracles but the difference is that both he and the antichrist are evil, probably possessed by Satan. Jesus did not sin and even asked His enemies if anyone could convict Him of any sin. I also mentioned in that blog entry that at this point in the ministry of Jesus Christ while on earth that His ministry changed to begin to speak in parables because of being accused of doing His miracles in the power of Satan.
Warren Wiersbe has this to say about parables, “At this point, Mark introduced a new word-parables (see Mark 3:23; 4:2; 10-11, 13:33-34). Jesus explained the kingdom, not by giving a lecture on theology, but by painting pictures that captured the attention of the people and forced them to use their imaginations and think. Our English word parable comes from two Greek words that mean ‘to cast alongside’ (para—alongside; ballo—to throw or cast). A parable is a story or figure placed alongside a teaching to help us understand its meaning. It is much more than ‘an earthly story with a heavenly meaning,’ and it certainly is not an ‘illustration’ such as a preacher would use in a sermon. A true parable gets the listener deeply involved and compels that listener to make a personal decision about God’s truth and his or her life. So penetrating and personal are parables that, after they heard several of them, the religious leaders wanted to kill the Lord Jesus! (See Matt. 21:45-46).
“A parable begins innocently as a picture that arrests our attention and arouses our interest. But as we study the picture, it becomes a mirror in which we suddenly see ourselves. If we continue to look by faith, the mirror becomes a window through which we see God and His truth. How we respond to that truth will determine what further truth God will teach us.
“Why did Jesus teach in parables? His disciples asked Him that very question (Mark 4:10-12; and see Matt. 13:10-17). A careful study of His reply reveals that Jesus used parables both to hide the truth and to reveal it. The crowd did not judge the parables; the parables judged the crowd. The careless listener, who though he knew everything, would hear only a story that he did not really understand; and the result is his life would be judgment (see Matt. 11:25-30). The sincere would ponder the parable, confess his ignorance, submit to the Lord, and then begin to understand the spiritual lesson Jesus wanted to teach.”
Dr. Wiersbe then talked about the importance of the parables that Jesus taught and they were on hearing the Word of God. Jesus was not talking about physical hearing but spiritual hearing. Jesus will use a parable while speaking to the Pharisees who have just concluded that His miracles were done in the power of Satan. I want to write briefly on the parable that we find in this section of Mark and then a bit more about the unforgivable sin.
There is a parallel passage in Matthew 12 and we will look at verse 22-24 in order to help us better understand the setting, “22 ¶ Then a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute was brought to Jesus, and He healed him, so that the mute man spoke and saw. 23 All the crowds were amazed, and were saying, "This man cannot be the Son of David, can he?" 24 But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, "This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons.’”
Dr. Wiersbe has this to say about Beelzebul, “Beelzebub or Beelzebul is a name for the devil, and it means ‘master of the house.’ Jesus picked up on this meaning and gave a parable about a strong man guarding his house. To plunder the house, one must first overcome the strong man.”
By the way there is another incident where Jesus is accused of doing His miracles by the power of Satan and that is found in Luke 11:14-23, but this is not a parallel passage of Matthew and Mark’s account, it is a different one, which shows that there were perhaps many of these that Jesus encountered.
Why do you suppose that these Pharisees accused Jesus of doing His miracles in the power of Satan and not just simply say that He is a lunatic? Well the answer is that lunatic’s don’t perform miracles and Jesus was performing countless numbers of miracles and that is the only way to explain it.
John MacArthur explains the parable: “He starts with a logical absurdity and then goes to a logical reality. Here's the absurdity. “He called them to Himself and began speaking to them in these kinds of parables. Number one, how can Satan cast out Satan?” Good teachers ask questions, don't they? Ask questions the students have to answer. Even better, ask questions that put students on the horns of a dilemma. Even better, ask questions that makes student's comments absurd. How can Satan cast out Satan? How can he do that? I mean, that is an absurdity. While there might be inconsistency in his kingdom, and there certainly is because he's not omnipresent and he's not omnipotent, therefore he can't run everything all the time everywhere among all the demons. And while there's a certain amount of freedom in the chaos of evil to express itself in different ways, he is certainly not by design going around tearing up his own kingdom. He's not going around exposing people with demons who are sitting comfortably in synagogues doing his damning work. He wants them clandestine and unknown, not exposed. But every time Jesus goes into a synagogue, the demons scream. And, “Oops, there goes our cover.’ He's not designing to destroy himself and his enterprise. Listen, this is a being that was created originally as a holy angel and lived in the presence of God and is extremely magnificent and wise, been around a long time. Satan is no fool. He is cunning. He is deceptive. He is wily. He is conniving.
It's absurd to think that Satan would be running around dismantling his kingdom.
And then he makes some truisms, some axioms, self-evident statements. “If a kingdom is divided
against itself, the kingdom can't stand. If a house is divided against itself, the house will not be able to
stand.” House being some entity, any entity. That's obvious, that's a truism.
“So, verse 26, “If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, he is telos
ekka(??), it's over. He's just brought an end to himself. He just brought the whole thing down on his
own head.
So he says, “You've got to be kidding. I mean, that is a logical absurdity. Satan is not going to do that. Satan wants to destroy the work of God, he doesn't want to destroy his own work.” From that logical
absurdity He goes to a positive reality that they can't deny in verse 27. Let's go positive on this one.
“On the other hand, no one can enter the strong man's house and plunder his property unless he first
binds the strong man and then he will plunder his house.’
“Is that obvious? That's another truism. That's axiomatic. That's a positive kind of axiom. Look, if you want to go in and get the property of someone, you have to overpower the guy. You've got to be
stronger than he is to get his property. So Jesus is saying the only logical conclusion here is that I am
stronger than Satan and there is only one who is stronger than Satan and who is that? It's God. You
can't enter the strong man's house. The strong man is Satan.”
I suppose that I have read this passage many, many times and did not understand it as well as I do now that I have listened to John MacArthur’s sermon along with Warren Wiersbe’s writing on it.
The sin that the Pharisees committed that would not be forgive was that they came to the wrong conclusion about who Jesus was and therefore would not be able to repent of that sin because they said that Jesus was demonic.
There is a question that comes up when thinking about this unforgivable sin and that is “Does this mean that God the Son is less important than the Holy Spirit? Why would a sin against God the Son be forgivable and yet a sin against the Holy Spirit be unforgivable?” (Warren Wiersbe)
We see the patience that God has with the nation of Israel as He first sent John the Baptist and the “religious” people did not come to see John, but the common people did and repented, and then no one came to the rescue of John the Baptist and he was killed. The same was true with Jesus Christ. Then we see the Holy Spirit coming at Pentecost and demonstrated God’s power in many convincing ways. The religious leaders responded in the same way by arresting the apostles. We read that after the Apostle James was killed that because it pleased the Jews Herod had Peter arrested too and would have killed him if it were not for an angel of the Lord letting him out of jail. Now let’s look at what Steven said right before the Jews killed him “"You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did.’”
Can people today commit the unforgivable sin? “People today cannot commit the ‘Unpardonable sin’ in the same way the Jewish religious leaders did when Jesus was ministering on earth. The oly sin today that God cannot forgive is rejection of His Son (John 2:16-21, 31). When the Spirit of God convicts the sinner and reveals the Savior, the sinner may resist the Spirit and resist the witness of the Word of God, but that does not mean he has forfeited all his opportunities to be saved. If he will repent and believe, God can still forgive him. Even if the sinner so hardens his heart that he seems to be insensitive to the pleadings of God, so long as there is life, there is hope. Only God knows if and when any ‘deadline’ has been crossed. You and I must never despair of any sinner (1Tim. 2:4; 2Peter 3:9).” (Warren Wiersbe)
It is my prayer that those who read this will better understand what exactly the unpardonable sin is and that if any think that they have committed it they will now realize that they have not, and if there are any who read this that have not heard of this sin that they will confess their sins and invite Jesus Christ into their lives and become born from above.
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