CHARLO, New Brunswick, December 21, 2023 – I know a minister who’s been a professional preacher of the Word for over 40 years and yet who’s terrified that he might have committed the unforgiveable sin without knowing it.

It’s impossible to have committed the unforgiveable sin without knowing it. You not only would know that you’ve done it when you’ve done it, you’d know well in advance before doing it, because God would warn you in no uncertain terms. There would be bright red warning signs frantically flashing all over your conscience, and God would personally confront you, one-on-one, in a last-ditch effort to stop you. There is no way you can stumble inadvertently into committing the unforgiveable sin. Let that spiritual fact sink in and comfort whomever it will.

It amuses me and at times exasperates me to read or hear statements by those who claim to have been Christians but who’ve since “left the faith” and lived to tell the tale. No genuine Christian would live to tell the tale once outside the protection of God’s Holy Spirit. Such a person would live about as long as Judas Iscariot lived or as long as Ananias and Sapphira lived, which is to say anywhere from less than a day to less than an hour after the betrayal. Anyone who claims to be a “former Christian” was never a Christian to begin with, unless he or she made a deal with the devil and has come under diabolical protection for a time. I’m not saying post-rebirth deals aren’t made, but they’re rare. And like committing the unforgiveable sin, you’d definitely know if you’d made a deal with the devil: Neither can be done without your full and conscious approval.

The process of spiritual rebirth is first the exorcism of demonic spirits from a soul, followed by the inrush of God’s Holy Spirit. God claims the newly reborn soul as his spiritual turf over which the devil has no authority. In the world, the devil has full authority over all souls not belonging to God (an authority given to him by God), but the devil has no authority over born-again believers any more than he had authority over Jesus during his time on Earth. Only from the time of Jesus’ arrest to his execution did God permit the devil to have limited authority over Jesus physically, and that only to fulfill prophecy and “pay the sin debt”, with Jesus’ full approval. Nothing was imposed on Jesus that Jesus didn’t first agree to, and the devil could only inflict the exact measure of torment as was permitted by God. Jesus stated during his trial that his executioners only had power over him because God gave them power; otherwise, in and of themselves they had nothing on him.

That the devil has no authority over born-again believers doesn’t mean he doesn’t have permission from God to tempt us. God permits him to tempt us in order to see where our loyalties lie. Just like the people who claim to be Christian but are not, many also claim to be God’s people. Martyrdom is the greatest of all tests to determine whether or not someone is indeed a child of God. The history of born-again believers is a history of martyrdom.

The unforgiveable sin is not something you can commit without first being warned by God himself. Certainly, you can commit the unforgiveable sin after God warns you (may you never do that), but you can’t accidentally commit the sin and only afterwards realize what you’ve done, any more than you can accidentally take the so-called mark of the beast and only afterwards realize what you’ve done. God would never permit that to happen. If God did permit such a situation, he would not be God. But we know that our God is God, and being God, he is perfectly just. He also loves us unconditionally and wants us to be with him forever in Paradise. And so, being perfectly just and loving us unconditionally, God would never trick us (or allow us to be tricked) into committing the unforgiveable sin or be remiss about warning us against committing it.

This spiritual fact should be a great comfort to you.

It is to me.