False Choices
You see, the moral supercategory, if that’s your priority, should frame Jim’s actions, not your own priorities at the moment. The prophetic supercategory should be controlling the conversation about sin but is instead done by the theological concept, among which there is no power for any revelation except more theological concepts.
There are all kinds of things that we can think of that are about giving the power of Christ to the Devil, ergo all our views on what the Unpardonable Sin is ultimately all about.
It’s about refusing the Holy Spirit’s call.
It’s about saying Jesus is not God.
Being obstinate to the Truth, “impious speaking against the Holy Spirit” or, as Gill put it, “despiteful usage of the Spirit of grace, an opposing, contradicting, and denying the operations wrought, or doctrines revealed by him, against a man’s own light and conscience, out of willful and obstinate malice, on purpose to lessen the glory of God, and gratify his own lusts.”
These have no more specificity than “ascribing the Work of Christ to those of Satan.” Those are not the greatest of sins at all, but they are only capable of raising the question.
This kind of sin is obviously addressing something about us in a place that is original to who we are that expresses not only our hatred of a revealed and perspicuous truth but our visceral refusal to change it. The depth that holds the thing within us that is being judged must match the depth and thing of importance to Christ, without such depth which no one could be charged with an unredeemable sin. Something which speaks inclusively and falsely not only about Christ’s ontology, morality, origin, and demonstration of divine messiahship, but speaks of ourselves falsely about our self-will in being who we are instead of who we must be after knowing these truths. It’s about something that cant be changed even by God because in order to remove certain corrupt choices would also be the removal of the very thing that makes us human instead of an animal.
This greatest of all sins is a sin is against the greatest of all religious categories, which, if it was allowed, would make all religion and Man subject to something greater than it is. Without it, religion would make be dependent on mere speculation and personal will. We don’t want this. Its a sin against God through his Work and Word, the scriptural phenomenon and evidence of a revelation of a God in history, namely, messianic prophecy itself and Jesus as its Subject, Author and Agent.
We have the clues right within the text.
The subject of dispute here is Jesus Messiah from the prophets, as it always is.
Focusing just on Matthew 12:17-21, in the preface to all this, the writer explains the “Messianic secret” by the prophecies of Isaiah 11:10; 49:5-6; 52:13; 42:2-4. Please do not overlook this. This is not some aside, its everything. The question which sets the tone is Matthew 12:23: “And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of David?” The subject is not the miracle, but the miracle is a symbol, an integral component, of the fulfillment of Jesus by the Prophets. The sin is not “sin against the Holy Spirit,” but “the sin of refusing the revelation of the Father by the Word, the Messianic Prophecy of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God.” This is the sin essentially of not motivating religion exclusively upon this kind of revelation and this Truth.
The claim is that He is the Son of David, from the prophecies of Isaiah 11:1, Jeremiah 23:5 and 2 Samuel 7:12-13, et al. Messianic prophecy is the subject context. We must remember that this Son of David is not just someone that will perform miracles but will perform prophesied miracles. The “miracle” is subsumed under or a dependency of the fulfilled prophecy of the miracle, which is the container miracle. It’s a small linguistic distinction that has huge ramifications.
I said this but it’s worth repeating. If He was performing miracles that were not prophesied (Isa 35:5), you can believe He was performing real miracles, but He stands on much thinner Messianic foundations. You would be free to believe that this precious use of God’s sovereign power was more for His own personal pleasure, or just to impress people with some impossible feat. But this is not how it works, this is not who God is, That it was prophesied, however, means that He was carrying out the will of the Father, and already predicted hundreds of years, even millennia, in the past.
Again, in v. 24 and 25, the Pharisees ascribe Messiah’s healing miracles to Satan. I remind the reader that the casting out of demons is another messianic sign and prophesied as well, as part of his healing ministry ( Isaiah 35:5–6, Isaiah 35, Isaiah 29:18, Isaiah 61:1). Therefore, this is a flat-out denial not mainly that He was casting out devils, but that He was the prophesied Messiah. If they believed the Prophets (the certainly knew them) they would have no trouble believing the Messianic credentials when they are proven, but they did not because they did not want to lording over them.
Jesus then makes a crucial distinction between two kinds of sins: one pertains to the sin of misinterpretation of the Prophets (uses his favorite messianic title, the Son of Man), and the second the sin of outright denial of the Prophets.
Matthew 12:31-32 (KJV) Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.
Another way to say this is that there is a motivational sin where too many other things are allowed to compete for first place, and a motivational sin where Messianic prophecy is entirely crowded out by such as the Law, the Temple, emotional attachment and tradition, religious conclusions and creeds instead of scriptural premises, self-benefit, and all the others.
The Pharisees are guilty of the sin of an outright denial, of a certain kind.
This is what denial looks like.
Matthew 12:25-28: “And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand: And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand? And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? therefore they shall be your judges.”
Jesus is not simply saying that he is not casting out devils as Satan because that would be the destruction of his own kingdom. This is not him being defensive, but putting forth a counter charge by the Pharisee’s own words.
Both Satan and Jesus are not in the business of destroying their own kingdoms, of course. but the casting out of demons is a miracle that belongs exclusively to the people of the Messiah’s kingdom. Jesus is not saying that the children of these people are also casting out devils, but that they claim to be casting them out, who then deny that Jesus is actually doing it in fulfillment of the Prophetic Word. Its an insinuation, not an affirmation of their righteousness. It means that they like we do today, ascribe miracles to themselves but who are frauds, where Jesus is doing the real thing. But don’t forget that the real thing is not the miracle if not a miracle of the fulfillment of messianic prophecy.
Jesus says that the Pharisees do not believe the prophets and this is their great sin, since there cant be any casting out of demons unless Messiah comes. Their Kingdom is a false one because it was never prophesied. Only the Kingdom Jesus preaches was, and regardless of both King’s efforts to not divide their kingdoms less they fall, only the kingdom of Satan, the Pharisaical kingdom, will fall because it is not a Kingdom that God willed through the words of the prophets.
Let me restate all this so its well understood. What is most important is that “Kingdom” is ultimately an eschatological, prophetic word, and as such represents at its highest application a real, promised, scriptural, prophesied Kingdom that proves itself as being at the doors of fulfillment by the ministry of Christ. There is no scriptural basis for the Satanic Kingdom that he prophesies to take over the world, although there is a Satanic Kingdom of a corrupt kind of belief working against the real one.
Again, we see the dichotomy, which looks a lot like the difference between the Pharisaical religion and the religion of Christ, the latter being strictly, prophetically motivated and the other kind only so through its own authority. This has everything to do with the motivations of false religion and faith against the real thing. Jesus says that Pharisaical religion implies effectively that Satan, the false messiah and god, and false prophecy, is not divided against himself/itself. That a false Word in that Kingdom is not working to defeat itself and push another motivational center other than itself. So by placing yourself against messiah the logic they are operating under is that a real prophesied miracle of Messiah, and therefore the real Messiah himself, are working, like Satan, for its/His own destruction and shame. The judges of the Pharisees will face eternal judgment by their own “children,” or the people who they taught their false, anti-revelational faith and believed it.
This is what denial looks like. Matthew 12:30: “He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.” Whenever Jesus refers to Himself, particularly when He uses “Son of Man”, we transpose His scriptural equivalent, the Messianic, prophetic Word. Jesus is gathering believers by the preaching of that Word. The Pharisees are scattering, dissipating, essentially preaching against it by denying Jesus is that person of the prophetic Word by replacing it with doctrines, religious ideas, tradition, the Temple, the ordinances and the Law, and anything else they can put into service for their own self-interests.
Matthew 12:31-32: “Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.”
Speaking against the Holy Spirit in all the above ways shall not be forgiven. In order to really understand how this sin can be committed, we are not authorized to knowingly insert our own pet motivational centers for the Holy Spirit any more than for ourselves as Christians. A look at all the places where we find the Holy Spirit showing up tells us a lot about what He is all about:
Speaking against the Son of Man, both Jesus and the prophetic Word, is unknowingly, perhaps in ignorance, misidentifying/interpreting Him/it. This can be forgiven because it can be corrected since we are dealing with a heart that is perhaps still willing to accept the truth if properly taught or presented. Speaking against the Holy Spirit/the Prophetic Word is a heart problem. It can’t be forgiven.
Jesus ends with this:
Matthew 12:33-37: “Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit. O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”
The tree is the Person. The fruit is a person’s works. Jesus’ works are stipulated in John 4:34: “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.” That is the will of the Father through the Prophets. If you want to say the Person and the works are corrupt, then the alternative is only that the Tree and the fruit are good. The cause must equal effect. Don’t say that the Tree (Jesus) is corrupt but not that the fruit of the prophets which he miraculously fulfills is not good. It certainly is, by both His direct miracles and messianic, scriptural miracles.
The upshot is that the Pharisees loved the forms of religion but not its power (2Ti 3:5). Again, real “power” is not any kind of power, but its something very specific coming from a certain scriptural stream.
The real unpardonable sin?
Just one more statement to clarify all this. What is Jesus casting out? “Devils?” “The Prince of Devils?” Jesus is casting out not primarily beings, persons, but a kind of evil belief, an evil faith, an evil form of thought against Messiah and his revelation.
Ironically, the ways that we fool ourselves doctrinally are myriad, but the errors we accept as essentially forgivable are those that pertain mostly to the way we downgrade Jesus through the practice of generalizing and blurring the meaning and importance of the Bibles greatest idea and evidence, the greatest one being the Prophetic revelation of Jesus.
Those are the sins that kill and kill without remedy. The demons are us.
A few more articles:
Matthew 5 and the Adultery of the Heart: Passing by Nehushtan
When I Survey the Wondrous Nace, part 1: Passing by Nehushtan
Christ and the Noun Norming of Transcendence: Passing by Nehushtan
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