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THE UNPARDONABLE SIN
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 1, 2023 – The thought of committing the unpardonable sin scares the you-know-what out of some people.
And so it should.
If it doesn’t scare the you-know-what out of you, you’re not paying close enough attention. You don’t fully understand the consequences of committing it.
So just what is the unpardonable sin?
It differs for everyone, which is why it’s not fully defined in scripture. The unpardonable nature of the sin depends on the circumstances in which its committed and on the individual committing it. But for us born-again believers, the common features of the circumstances around the unpardonable sin are the same, which are:
1) having a close relationship with God through genuine spiritual rebirth, which means you have God’s Holy Spirit with you 24/7.
2) sinning (or constantly thinking about sinning).
3) refusing to back down from the sin or from thinking about committing the sin, even after God warns you about what will happen if you refuse to back down.
God loves us unconditionally, which is why he gives us plenty of warning and time to repent. But if even after his clear and unmistakable warnings you still choose not to repent, he has no choice but to follow through. “Following through” means he removes his grace and his Holy Spirit leaves you. You become from that point onward prey for demons and other unholy beings. You no longer have any godly protection – not from your guardian angels, who watched over you prior to your conversion, nor from God’s Holy Spirit, who was with you night and day from the instant of your rebirth. There is no chance, once you lose God’s grace, to get it back: It’s a one-time deal, and once it’s gone, that’s the end of it for you spiritually and physically.
This is what happened to all the fallen entities who were removed from Heaven permanently. No matter how much they petitioned God for mercy after the fact, there was no going back to Heaven for them. This is also what happened to Judas Iscariot, who, as a disciple of Jesus, had been protected by God’s Holy Spirit and enabled to preach the Word and perform miracles. Judas’s betrayal of Jesus was his unpardonable sin. There was no second chance at redemption for Judas, no matter how hard he repented or prayed to God after the fact.
Those who once claim to know God but then turn from him to sign on with the devil or other fallen entities also commit the unpardonable sin. These contracts, sadly, are very real and are made every day all over the world. Once the contract is enacted, there is no coming back from it. The person is under Satan’s protection for the rest of their time on Earth, but after death, he/she ends up first in Hell and then in the lake of fire, like Satan and all the fallen beings.
Some sign on with the devil thinking it’s a joke; these people are still salvageable. Signing on with the devil isn’t the unpardonable sin for these people because they don’t (yet) know God and so they sign on with the devil without having full knowledge of the consequences. God knows the difference between those who consciously and with full intent turn against him and throw their lot in with Satan, and those who don’t really believe in anything and just sign the devil’s contract for a lark. By “salvageable”, I mean that these people, even after signing the devil’s contract, still have a chance at rebirth and salvation. But if they are eventually reborn, they will lose everything (except their soul) in the process. That is, they will lose whatever Satan had given them, which is usually power, wealth, fame, and fortune.
The book of Revelation mentions the mark of the beast and plainly states that those who receive it are beyond redemption. In other words, bearing the beast’s mark is a sign that you have committed the unforgiveable sin and are under the protection of the devil.
In the Gospel, Jesus tells the parable of the man who was “swept clean” of demons, but who then starts to sin again and so all his former demons and then some come back to torment him. Jesus tells us that this man’s end was worse than his beginning, meaning he has no chance of being swept clean again. To die after losing God’s grace is far worse than to die never having received it. The eternal punishment for such a backslider is much more severe.
You can see from the above that the unpardonable sin differs according to circumstances and to individuals. Even so, the common element is ignoring God’s warnings before willingly and with full intent choosing sin.
There’s a common belief among some Christians that God, being “all-merciful”, will ultimately forgive Judas and those like him, including the fallen angels. We must never allow ourselves to believe such a diabolical lie. Yes, God is all-merciful, but he’s also all-just. What Judas did to Jesus was the worst possible thing he could have done as his disciple, short of hammering the nails into Jesus himself.
Judas ignored the very pointed, very clear, and unmistakeable warning given to him by Jesus during the Passover meal. Jesus stated that his betrayer was among them, and that it would be better for his betrayer if he had not been born. When Judas asked Jesus if he (Judas) was the betrayer, Jesus responded with “thou has said”. It’s like they were speaking between the lines, sub rosa, having a private conversation that only they two could understand. Again, Jesus couldn’t have made his warning more explicit to Judas, but Judas still went on to betray him. Consciously, and with full knowledge of the consequences, Judas chose to sin. Even after being pointedly and repeatedly warned, he chose sin.
So again, the unforgivable sin is as varied as there are sinners, but the core of the sin is willful, intentional, and conscious disobedience to God by someone in a state of grace, even after being pointedly and repeatedly warned of the unavoidable consequence of eternal damnation that is the reward for such disobedience. This is the unforgiveable and unpardonable sin that no sacrifice can atone for and that blasphemes the Holy Spirit that is protecting the reborn soul.
I know this from personal experience, because I received such a warning from God years ago, when I was a relatively young believer (young in spiritual age, not earthly years). I was about to do something I actually thought was a good thing, not a sin at all. (Just like, I suspect, Judas thought that what he was doing was a good thing for the Jewish religion.) God’s warning stopped me in my tracks and I backed off from doing what I’d planned. Thank God for God’s warning. I would be in hell now without it.
Scripture says that God wants us all to come to knowledge of him and of his salvation. He doesn’t want to lose any of us. But he also wants us to come to him of our own free will and to stay with him of our own free will. He doesn’t want slaves or robots; he wants loving children. So if we wander too close to the edge of a spiritual cliff, God will warn us loud and clear. And he won’t just warn us once, he’ll warn us repeatedly, ever louder and more urgently, until we either retreat to spiritual safety, or unequivocally with full intent and knowing the consequences choose sin.
May you never choose sin. May you always, upon first warning, immediately and with open arms run straight back to God.
THE UNFORGIVABLE SIN
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 21, 2021 – Scripture gives us an example of the unforgivable sin in the expulsion of Satan and his followers from Heaven. We don’t (yet) know the exact story of what happened to Satan to turn him away from God, but we do know the consequences of that turning – the loss of Heaven, the fall to Earth, and the guarantee of eternal hellfire. We also know that these disembodied fallen beings are beyond redemption and that no intervention can save them. This is the darkest of all sentences: the place of no hope. In the moment before I was reborn, I was on the doorstep of that place (not inside the door, but just outside it), and I never want to be there again. Nor would I wish that on anyone.
But the fact remains that the unforgivable sin is one that Jesus tells us we still have the capacity to commit, which means we too may end up in the same place as Satan. Much has been written about the unforgivable sin, about what it might be and whether or not the writer speculating on it may already have committed it.
I admittedly don’t know much about anything, but I do know this: if you had committed the unforgivable sin, you would not be wondering whether or not you had committed it. You would know, and you would also know the end that awaits you. These facts would not be hidden from you: You would know them just as surely as I know that I’m born-again, because God himself would tell you in person, clearly and unequivocally. There would be no mystery and no doubt, any more than there is mystery and doubt when a judge renders a verdict to the accused in a court of law: The accusation and evidence are summarized, the judgement is stated, and the sentence is passed. Your judgement will be just as clear to you if you commit the unforgivable sin.
But what is that sin? We know the consequences of it, but what exactly is the sin itself? We want to know what it is for no other reason than to avoid committing it, and by avoiding committing it, avoid its consequences.
Jesus tells us that to speak against him or against God is not unforgivable. We also know that God is merciful and patient beyond anything we can imagine, and that spiritual rebirth is God extending to us a second chance to go home. These are all good things and show how much God loves us and takes into consideration our weaknesses. He does everything he can to mitigate them while still allowing us free will.
And yet even this good and patient and merciful and loving Father has a no-go zone that we dare not pass. I know, because I was at its border, and it stopped me (thank God) in my tracks. It happened a few years after my rebirth, when I was old enough spiritually to know better, but just couldn’t help myself. I’d fallen into a series of temptations that in my mind I kept dressing up as a chance to witness. The temptations continued over a span of months, dragging me deeper and deeper into its quicksand. But it wasn’t the temptation that was the unforgivable sin – it was something that happened afterwards in relation to it.
I am not at liberty to reveal what it was (that is between me and God), but I can say this much: if I had crossed over the border into the no-go zone, I would have lost my grace, like Satan, grace being the presence of God’s Spirit with you and the promise of eternal life in Heaven. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would have lost my grace, because as I was riding along on my bike that day, heading for an afternoon of skating at the local arena and thinking about that thing I would do (which in my mind at the time was an honest thing to do), God said to me very clearly: “If you do it, you will lose your grace.”
I slammed on my brakes and came to a hard stop. It had not occurred to me that doing this what I thought was an honest thing could have lost me my grace. How could honesty be a bad thing? Which is when God showed me that the pain I would cause by doing what I thought was an honest thing would come back to me amplified with such ferocity that it would equate to lost grace. I could still do that thing (I still had free will), but in doing it, my grace would be irretrievably lost – irretrievable, as in lost forever. No chance of getting it back. The same state as Satan. I would have knowingly sinned against God’s Holy Spirit by purposefully doing what I had been explicitly warned by God – in person – was wrong to do, and in the process purposely causing unimaginable pain to others.
And that was the crux of it – the pain that my “honest” gesture would have caused to others and my knowingly inflicting that pain. If I had proceeded knowing the measure of pain I would have caused, God would have had no choice but to return that pain to me in the measure that I, as a reborn soul, had earned, which would have been sufficient for me to lose grace.
Even today, I shiver at how close I came to this final fallen state.
God will not let you, as his born-again child, wander unknowingly across the border into the no-go zone of the unforgivable sin. You will be warned not by vague signs or third-party notices, but by an in-person cameo appearance by God. It will be just as memorable to you as God speaking from the burning bush was for Moses. It will stop you in your tracks. And it will remain with you for the rest of your days.
The unforgivable sin is different for each of us. There is no one unforgivable sin, but all of them are premised on the same thing: purposefully and unremorsefully doing what we have been explicitly warned by God – one-on-one – not to do, with an equally explicit warning of the consequences that will follow if we proceed. The warning comes not through a third party, but directly from God through his Holy Spirit. To blaspheme and speak against God’s Holy Spirit is to do that one thing you have been warned by God explicitly and in-person and beyond a shadow of a doubt not to do.
There is no remedy for this level of informed disobedience. There is no course of appeal. Satan and his condemned followers know that.
May you never join them.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 