From Matthew 12:
“31Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”
So I called it grieving of the Holy
Spirit, which is drawn from Paul, not from Matthew 12 as this is. Yet there is a connection. Grieving the Holy Spirit, doing things against
what the Holy Spirit would incline our hearts to do, if we truly allowed for
the indwelling of the Spirit. There is a
linkage to yesterday’s post, when someone has done something so sinful, they
feel they have lost their salvation. Perhaps
the background of such a feeling is that they have so enraged God, or so
grieved God, that there is no way back.
I called this grieving of the Holy
Spirit when the actual charge is blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, speaking
against the Holy Spirit. A charge not
forgiven in this age or the age to come.
It is one absolute that may be placed alongside another absolute. We have the assurance of salvation, except in
this case, where we have the assurance of condemnation.
What does it mean? Well, there is a powerful distinction in the
passage. Speaking a word against,
blaspheming against Jesus is forgivable, but not against the Spirit. As a driver in New Jersey, I thank the Lord
for the first.
What is the Holy Spirit? It is the person of the Trinity sent to us,
as at Pentecost, to indwell us as Jesus, as another sent by Jesus. This is described in John 14. So, Jesus makes and lives the promise of the assurance
of our salvation that we read of in God’s Holy Word. It enters as knowledge, head knowledge. The Holy Spirit, indwelling us as Christ,
carries the conviction of the assurance of our salvation to our hearts, to our
faith, and to its outworking.
When it comes to performing a task,
there is what is termed ‘muscle memory’.
Practice the task enough and it can be done by rote, without active
thought. Such is the need of emergency
responders, for example, in times of crisis.
It is something passive, developed through discipline and repetition.
I would suggest that the role of the Holy
Spirit might be described as actively providing us ‘heart memory’. This is not simply remembering that our
salvation is assured, it is living in the daily joy and wonder of that promise
of God.
Why is there this ‘division of labor’ that is the Trinity? That is a sidebar, but for me, God’s
revelation as a Trinity is to let us limited mortals begin to wrap our minds
around the immortal perfection of God.
So we know the assurance of salvation
as a promise from Scripture, something we can recollect. We live the assurance of salvation by the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
To blaspheme Jesus is to reject the
information of the divine in Him. But to
blaspheme the Holy Spirit, to speak against the Holy Spirit, that is to reject
the Spirit of God that indwells us, that is to reject the very choice of Jesus
as our way, our truth, and our life. To
throw God, the Holy Spirit, out of our hearts, that is to reject and turn away
from all that God promises, including (maybe especially) the assurance of salvation.
I do something sinful and I care about
what happened, about the consequences, about what God will do, God will work
with that. The assurance of faith
underlies my own doubts and weakness. I
do something sinful and I do not care what God thinks, I do it in defiance of
God, I systematically reject the promises of God in the walk of my life’s
journey, I am not worried about the question of salvation, I have openly
rejected it.
A wise preacher said in a sermon at
one time in my youth, “If you are afraid that you have committed this
unforgivable sin, know that you have not.”
So, to blaspheme the Holy Spirit is to reject God’s intent, love, and
purpose for our lives. Such is the unforgivable
sin. What I miscalled it, the grieving
of the Holy Spirit, that will certainly happen as a result of such rejection.
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