What Is the So-Called Unpardonable Sin?

 

Answer to the Unpardonable Sin Question:

 I shall use as a text for the basis of this answer, the sixth chapter of Hebrews where we are told that, if a man falls away from God, it is impossible to renew him again to repentance.  This is essentially the same question as “is there an unpardonable sin, and since the term unpardonable is is no used in the legitimate scriptures, we shall cover this issue under this context of thought.

How Many times Can One Man Be Born Into the Kingdom Of God?

There is only one birth into the family of the first Adam (In orthodox Christianity, that is; there are loony, heretical and eastern mystic notions in the pagan doctrine of reincarnation, but no sensible Christian takes them seriously). The same is true of the family of the Last Adam.  One birth is all you get but fortunately one is all you need.  The need is not to be renewed again to repentance, it is to get up from where you have fallen and go on.  That is exactly the point of this passage in dealing with the needs of those who have fallen away.  This is true on several bases.

What This Passage Does Not Teach 

If this passage is talking about people (as some think and teach) that were never Christians, are we going to tell them, one chance to accept the Lord is all you get.  If you pass up that chance the opportunity cannot come to you again; it is impossible? Does that make any sense?  Does anybody believe that?  Did you ever hear anybody seriously argue that?  ‘You tell somebody the gospel once and they don't receive it forget them, they had their chance.’ Nonsense!  There is a principle of hardening involved there that we may warn people about but we do not believe that is a conclusive thing.  We would never tell unbeliever, “You had your chance and it is impossible that you can ever have it again.” The warning of this passage does not fit people who are not Children of God

If this passage is talking about derelict Christian, and it is, will we tell them: “If you ever serve God and then you fall back and your hearts are hardened, there is nothing that can be done for you”?  And if this is the message, then why bother. If there is nothing that can be done for them, then what is the point of telling them.  It is impossible to renew then again.  Why give people a lecture about something they cannot do?  If these are people who have fallen away and renewing then again to repentance means they cannot get on track and get back with God and go on, then this is not only a contradiction to the rest of the Bible but it is an exercise in futility.  We are wasting our time, we are spinning our wheels, we are telling them to do something and then saying, “But you cannot do it; you cannot be brought back— but you ought to be.  You ought to get up and go on but I got to tell you that you cannot because it's impossible.”  Do you see how really foolish that approach to this passage is?

What It Does Teach

So what is the answer then?  The answer is that there is something that the child of God, who has fallen away, cannot do.  But it equally obvious that there is something he can do.  What he cannot do is to repent and be born into the family of God again. He cannot be born again, again. But what he can do is get up from where he has fallen and go on.

9 But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak.

10 For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister.

And so we are told that, for those Christians who fall away from God—who fall from their steadfastness; who lapse back into immaturity—there is no solution in going back and trying to lay again the foundation.  It is impossible for them to do that.  The need is simply to get up and progress on to maturity.  It is lamentable that some have seen a frustration of the grace of God in this passage.  It is a trick of the devil when it is interpreted as a threat against Christian people that could put them in a position where God cannot reach them and that they could never get out.  What an abominable doctrine!  What a terrible thing to do to the Scriptures!  This is positively not the case!! 

Problem Passages Always Contain Vital Truth

It is no wonder that, in a great passage of encouragement and instruction such as this, Satan would try to confuse the issue.  And it is disappointing that he has seems to be able to do so handily.  By using unlearned, unskilled, and insecure teachers, he has taken one of the greatest passages on the security of the believer in all the Bible and turned in into a terror that has undermined the confidence of millions. 

It is an easy scam for the devil to pull on those who are self righteous on the one hand and insecure on the other (and, of course, these two things always go together).  Any man who thinks he is good enough to add his works to justification is doomed to live in the terror of doubt all his life.  This describes too many professing Christians.  Fear of not being good enough to go to heaven carries with it a sort of morbid attraction.  I have noticed, through the years, that God's people are always looking for a so-called unpardonable sin in the Scriptures—something someone can do that will put them out of favor with God from which they can never recover—“the unpardonable sin!”  My dear friends, I tell you with all of the power and authority of God and the Bible—there is no unpardonable sin in the Bible!  I take you to record this day before God and the Day of Judgment!  There is no unpardonable sin in the Bible!  This doctrine is the product of overworked imaginations, fearful minds, self-righteous attitudes and misunderstandings of biblical passages. 

Those Who Never Had Forgiveness

But someone will bring up the passage in the third chapter of Mark that says he who blasphemes against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness and is in danger of hell fire.  The historic Christian practice of interpreting the Bible by context rather than by single words is most important here.  To get a proper interpretation of such Scriptures, we must ask what is being said, who is it being said to, and what is the bottom line.  In the early verses of that chapter we find Jesus having an on-going controversy with the scribes who were religious leaders of the Jewish nation.  Jesus had frustrated these people by many of the things he had done.  The scribes said, ‘this man casts out devils by Beelzebub the prince of devils.’  Jesus told those religious hypocrites that they had never had forgiveness and were in danger of hellfire. 

A Blasphemy God’s Children Can Commit

He told them that one can be a Child of God and be forgiven of many things.  You may sit around at lunch, laugh at dirty jokes, and maybe even use bad language.  You might even blaspheme the Father by taking the Lord's name in vain.  As sad as it is to have to admit, many Christian men have done that.  This certainly should not be done but one may do it out of fear or intimidation.  An example is Peter denying Christ around the devil's fire because he was afraid.  God will understand that.  He does not sanction it, He does not warrant it, He does not like it, but He can understand why some of His children can get themselves in that unhappy condition. 

Blasphemy God’s Children Cannot Commit

But there is something that no child of God can do.  He cannot coldly and calculatedly make the accusation that Jesus Christ was operating in league with and in the power of the devil.  Anybody who does that is not a child of God and has never been. 

Those Who Think They Are Children of God But Are Not

There is a distinct context to what Jesus told the Scribes.  I will use the actual wording of the Textus Receptus in order to help you get the lesson.  “You have not forgiveness unto eternity.”  A word study would show this means to say that they had never been in the area of forgiveness, or that they had not been eternally forgiven.  In other words, they had never been children of God.  Because of that, they were in danger of eternal judgment.  Jesus did not tell those Pharisees that they were going to hell.  He told they were in danger of it.  One of the reasons for Him telling them that was because they thought they were children of God due to their religious heritage.  Jesus wanted them to know that they were wrong and that it was they, not He, who were children of the Devil (As He told them in so many words in John 8:39-44).  He wanted them to see their fallen spiritual condition and to realize where they were.  The bottom line was to get them to repent; not to tell them that they could not do so.

A Live Dog is Better Than a Dead Lion—Where There is Life, There is Hope

Every passage that would tend to tell people that there is something one can do in this world for which he can never be forgiven is not in fact saying that at all when it is examined in the true light of the context and the biblical meaning.  There is no unpardonable sin in the Bible!

In my thirty-seven years in the Christian ministry, I know Christian people who have carried with them the fear that maybe—just maybe—somewhere along the line they committed the sin against the Holy Ghost and can now never be forgiven.  It is the devil's lie, my friend; the DEVIL’S LIE!

A Marvelous and Comforting Truth

          This passage is telling the child of God who has fallen away from God that He cannot repent and be converted again.  That is impossible.  Happily, he does not need to do that.  The supposition of many is that he needs to be renewed again to repentance and lay again the foundation, but he does not.  He does not need to go back; he needs to go on—move ahead.  Like any child who is not growing and maturing mentally or physically, he needs to put his mind and his body to some good use.  He needs to quit sucking on the bottle or the tit and get some solid food.  He needs to get healthy and start moving ahead.  And he has to get it in his head before he can get it in his hands and feet. 

The All-Important Question—What is the Context?

Is this not in fact the context of this passage?  That is why the writer uses the illustration of the land.  It is only going to grow briars, thorns, and things to be gathered up and burned if it is not plowed, planted, and cultivated.  So it is with the life of a child of God, if it is not attended to.  However, the writer said in verse nine, “we are persuaded better things of you.” Does this sound like counsel to people for whom there is no hope? 

          The unpardonable sin, so-called, is an invention of the religious mind that sees only the letter and not the spirit.  The is no sin for which Christ did to die and no sin for which man cannot be forgiven if he comes to God in repentance and asks for it.