Misused Scriptures 3: The Unforgivable Sin

If you grew up in church, you've probably heard about the unpardonable sin—that terrifying idea that you could blaspheme the Holy Spirit and become forever beyond God's forgiveness. It's a spiritual trapdoor with no escape hatch.

That's not actually what Jesus was saying, though.

When you look at the passages where Jesus mentions this concept—Matthew 12, Mark 3, and Luke 12—there's something remarkable we tend to gloss over in our rush to the scary part. Jesus explicitly says that everything will be forgiven. Whatever you say against the Son of Man will be forgiven. All sins will be forgiven humanity.

That's incredibly good news. Yet somehow we've turned these passages into sources of anxiety rather than comfort. When was the last time you heard a sermon celebrating the fact that Jesus said all sins would be forgiven?

It's Not About God's Inability—It's About Our Refusal

The real issue Jesus addresses isn't about God's capacity to forgive. God isn't sitting in heaven saying, "Well, I'd love to forgive you, but my hands are tied." The problem is about what a person will or won't accept.

You could translate these verses as: "Whoever blasphemes the Holy Spirit will not allow themselves to be forgiven, cannot let themselves be forgiven."

Jesus is describing a form of self-deception. Imagine God has thrown you a life preserver while you're drowning, but you've been convinced—either by lies or your own deception—that the life preserver will actually kill you or drag you to the bottom of the sea. So you refuse it. You won't let yourself be rescued.

The issue isn't God's unwillingness or inability to forgive. It's about being in a state where you cannot accept that forgiveness.

This isn't a permanent, irreversible condition.

If you're someone who doesn't believe God will forgive you, you can change your mind. In fact, in Mark's version of this teaching, Jesus includes a time-limited element. He uses the word aion which roughly means "to the end of the age." The implication? At some point, you can change your mind. You can allow yourself to be forgiven.

The late Wesleyan theologian Thomas Oden explained it well:

"Blasphemy against the Spirit is not unforgivable in the sense that God is powerless or unwilling to forgive, but in the sense that the sinner is militantly unwilling to receive forgiveness."

Here's the simplest way to know you haven't committed the unforgivable sin: if you're worried you have, you haven't.

The very fact that you're concerned about being forgiven, that you want God's forgiveness, means you're not in that state of militant refusal. You're not the person who has completely hardened themselves against God's Spirit. You're the person reaching for the life preserver, not pushing it away.

If you want God's forgiveness, it's already yours. There's nothing that can separate you from the love or forgiveness of God—not even this misunderstood teaching about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

The passages that have been weaponized to create fear were actually meant to communicate something far more hopeful: that forgiveness is radically available, that God's mercy is bigger than we imagine, and that the only real barrier to experiencing that forgiveness is our own refusal to accept it.

And even that barrier isn't permanent.

So if these scriptures have scared you in the past, let them comfort you instead. Jesus wasn't setting up a theological tripwire to damn the unwary. He was describing the tragic situation of people who convince themselves they're beyond help—and even then, leaving the door open for them to change their minds.

The unforgivable sin isn't something you accidentally commit. It's a state of deliberate, sustained refusal that, by its very nature, excludes the kind of person who worries they might have committed it.

Rest easy. The life preserver is there. All you have to do is take it.