Unpardonable Sin?

You have heard that saying, “he cut off his nose to spite his face,” right? It is a way of speaking of the folly of that person who grows angry or bitter enough to strike out in revenge or retaliation but in the process ends up hurting himself more than anyone else. That man who becomes offended by a parent and says, “I’ll never speak to you again,” does damage to himself and his own family by isolating them. People get hurt at work, quit on the spot, and regret their reaction a week later.

Ever heard of the unpardonable sin, a choice to persistently resist the work of the Spirit with the result of separating one’s self from the source of their salvation?

Jesus was doing God’s work, shaking up the establishment in the process. Some of the leaders angrily accused Him of using demonic power, being a tool of the Devil. The accusation was absurd as He says in His response. "If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand?”  Evil does not fight evil. The Devil does not send his own demons packing, letting the oppressed find freedom. He goes on “But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you." (Matthew 12:26-28, NIV) The implied question is "Will you perceive the work of God or cut yourself off?"

The signs and wonders that Jesus did were evidence of the dawn of the New Era in God’s work, which would find completion at the Cross and in the evidence of the Empty Tomb. Freedom from guilt, abundant life in the Spirit, was now a possibility to those who entered the Kingdom by faith. But, Jesus points out a tragedy. 

He said that some of those listening to Him, seeing His work, would miss their salvation because they were shutting out the Person of the Spirit who was sent to change their hearts. Read Jesus’ words with understanding. “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come." (Matthew 12:30-32, NIV)

My Christian friend, let’s always seek to remain open to the Spirit, tenderhearted before the Lord. Willful rebellion against God’s Word, ongoing resistance to the conviction of the Spirit, holding onto offenses when we know we should pray to forgive, giving bitterness against the family of God a place in our mind – these are things that separate us from the renewal of the Spirit. 

If we continue to ignore His voice, if we attribute His work to things other than Himself, we slip deeper into deception by the day. The counsel of Hebrews is this -  "So we must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may drift away from it. The message God delivered through angels has always proved true, and the people were punished for every violation of the law and every act of disobedience. What makes us think that we can escape if we are indifferent to this great salvation that was announced by the Lord Jesus himself?" (Hebrews 2:1-3, NLT)

The so-called “unpardonable” sin is not some gross act that is beyond the reach of the redemptive grace of God. It is the often subtle choice to ignore the Spirit’s voice. Jesus said that the Word seed can be choked out and die IF we allow the “the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in (to grow in us) making it unfruitful.” (Mark 4:19)  That is, however, of no concern to that person who is walking with God, responding to the Spirit, renewed day by day in worship and spiritual disciplines. Why? Because they are saving themselves?  Not at all! That person is experiencing the work of the Spirit who makes us alive and aware before the God of our hope.

As we make our way through the 40 Days of Lent, one of the ways we use this time of preparation, is to pray for a heart more responsive to the Spirit. What a joy is found in the life of the one who responds to God with an attitude of child-like faith and ready obedience. “What’s next, Abba?”

Here is our core passage again, this time from the paraphrase of the Gospel, The Message. "This is war, and there is no neutral ground. If you’re not on my side, you’re the enemy; if you’re not helping, you’re making things worse. “There’s nothing done or said that can’t be forgiven. But if you deliberately persist in your slanders against God’s Spirit, you are repudiating the very One who forgives. If you reject the Son of Man out of some misunderstanding, the Holy Spirit can forgive you, but when you reject the Holy Spirit, you’re sawing off the branch on which you’re sitting, severing by your own perversity all connection with the One who forgives." (Matthew 12:30-32, The Message)

__________

Spirit Of God Descend Upon My Heart (Morecambe)

Spirit of God descend upon my heart

Wean it from earth thro' all its pulses move

Stoop to my weakness mighty as Thou art

And make me love Thee as I ought to love

Hast Thou not bid us love Thee God and King

All Thine own soul heart and strength and mind

I see Thy cross there teach my heart to cling

O let me seek Thee and O let me find

Teach me to love Thee as Thine angels love

One holy passion filling all my frame

The baptism of the heav'n descended dove

My heart an altar and Thy love the flame

Frederick Cook Atkinson | George Croly

© Words: Public Domain

Living in the Glory way

I am a father to four wonderful people. When they were little, my desire for their lives had little to do with getting an Ivy League education or aiming for the executive suite in some corporation. More than anything, I prayed that they would become spiritually and emotionally whole people, capable of deep love, knowing God, and productive in their place in this world. 

Hopefully, even in our imperfection, their Mom and I loved them, taught them, and modeled a kind of life for them that helped to shape their character and values. Today, they are people who are making the corners of the world where they live better and brighter. It makes a Dad glad!

Did you know that your Heavenly Father desires a rich life for you? He wants to bring all of His children to the potential placed in them by His design. In Hebrews there is a short phrase tucked into the 2^nd chapter about His efforts through Christ on our behalf:  He is “bringing many sons to glory.”  After discussing the potential of humanity, made lower than the angels, but given the stewardship of Creation, the writer points out that men and women who are broken by sin, frustrated by the Fall, have not yet fulfilled the destiny, not yet becoming who their Creator made them to be.   

Then, there is this:  "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. In bringing many sons (and daughters) to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering." (Hebrews 2:9-10, NIV)

When Jesus came, His mission went beyond making it possible for us to hope for Heaven, in the sweet by and by! to think that the Christian life is just about eternal insurance falls so far short of the truth. God’s Son came to walk with us, to suffer alongside of us, to offer Himself a sacrifice for sin, so that we enter the Kingdom of God and reclaim our destiny as children of the Father. When we are filled with Spirit, a new quality of life overtakes us and there is a kind of ‘glory’ that comes from us that makes us noble, loving, whole people in whom the goodness of God is revealed.

That chapter includes these lines about the spiritual freedom of the Christian. "Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." (Hebrews 2:14-15, NIV) The mystery and wonder of the Incarnation, Christ Jesus becoming fully Man, speaks to the fact that God did not stand aloof and urge us to reach up to Him. He came to us, suffered with us, and now leads us to freedom because we have no fear of the Evil One or even of death itself! "Therefore, it was necessary for Jesus to be in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters, so that he could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God." (Hebrews 2:17, NLT)

Today, I want to encourage you to pray, “Lord, lead me to a life that reveals Your glory.” That does not mean becoming famous, rich, or successful in the usual ways. We aspire to live like Jesus, to love, to show compassion, to be a person of excellence in the use of the gifts we are given. He is leading the way. He is working in us, for us.  Believe, receive, live!

Here is a word from the Word. "But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." (2 Corinthians 3:16-18, NIV)

_______

Let the beauty of Jesus

Be seen in me;

All His wonderful passion

And purity.

O Thou Spirit divine,

All my nature refine,

‘Till the beauty of Jesus

Be seen in me.

-        Albert Orsborn

Don’t you cross that line!

Has your Christianity devolved into a set of rules, keeping of traditions that are disconnected from the Person of Jesus? It is not a silly question. Today, I want to go back to Matthew’s Gospel and read about a day when Jesus incurred the wrath of some important leaders by challenging their understanding of what it meant to know and serve God.

Jesus met some religious leaders of His day who had lost sight of God’s Presence, who had made law more important that God and people. They hid their true motives behind an external conformity to the traditions that they had wrapped around the Law of Moses. To use a modern metaphor, they couldn’t see the forest for the trees. At the outset of Lent, Jesus’ words to them can help us to use this traditional time of reflection for truly good and holy purposes.

"At about that time Jesus was walking through some grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, so they began breaking off heads of wheat and eating the grain. Some Pharisees saw them do it and protested, “Your disciples shouldn’t be doing that! It’s against the law to work by harvesting grain on the Sabbath.” But Jesus said to them, “Haven’t you ever read in the Scriptures what King David did when he and his companions were hungry? He went into the house of God, and they ate the special bread reserved for the priests alone. That was breaking the law, too. And haven’t you ever read in the law of Moses that the priests on duty in the Temple may work on the Sabbath? I tell you, there is one here who is even greater than the Temple! But you would not have condemned those who aren’t guilty if you knew the meaning of this Scripture: ‘I want you to be merciful; I don’t want your sacrifices.’ For I, the Son of Man, am master even of the Sabbath.”

Then he went over to the synagogue, where he noticed a man with a deformed hand. The Pharisees asked Jesus, “Is it legal to work by healing on the Sabbath day?” (They were, of course, hoping he would say yes, so they could bring charges against him.) And he answered, “If you had one sheep, and it fell into a well on the Sabbath, wouldn’t you get to work and pull it out? Of course you would. And how much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Yes, it is right to do good on the Sabbath.” Then he said to the man, “Reach out your hand.” The man reached out his hand, and it became normal, just like the other one." (Matthew 12:1-13, NLT)

The Sabbath, a command of the Law, was a gift to the people of God, one day in seven when they were called from the routines of life to remember the Lord they served. Pause, remember, worship! The focus of the Sabbath was not to be the  prohibitions of the day. They were to use the time to renew their relationship with God. But the Pharisees had turned the Sabbath observation into a rigid set of rules that made the day a burden, so that people were more concerned with making sure they did not break the rules than finding God’s Presence. Sabbath law had become burdened with layers of a combination of inconsequential, restrictive, and harmful traditions. “Keeping the Sabbath” had become a key issue of Jewish identity obscuring the real reasons for the celebration of the Sabbath. Since Christians are not defined by that tradition, we can nod our heads in agreement with Jesus about the Pharisee’s rigidity while forgetting that we have our own ‘sacred’ traditions and woe be the person who treads on them!

Let’s not lose the lesson Jesus is trying to teach with an argument over modern “Sabbath” rules.  He condemns their rigid observance that would keep hungry men from eating, a suffering man from being healed. Jesus does not throw away God’s call to living holy and obedient lives that honor Him. He asks us to show some compassion, to understand that we can slip into a place where we love our traditions more than people, even more than the Lord Himself. We can, and many Christians do, become slaves of our rules that keep us from being compassionate, humble servants of Christ.

I am aware that some will twist these words into a  justification for doing whatever they please, for ignoring the call to holiness that is part of the Gospel. But I am willing to risk that abuse to keep Jesus front and center in the Gospel. When we love and worship Him – wholeheartedly and with integrity – He will lead us to please His Father. We are not saved by keeping up appearances and careful conformity to the rules, both written and unwritten, of our Church. We are transformed by daily intimacy with the Spirit that is made possible by the grace of Jesus Christ. When we seek Him first, He will lead us from darkness into Light, and the old things will pass away. We will become fruitful in the evidence of that life – “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  (Galatians 5)

Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of a traditional season of sacrifice for many Christians. Don’t allow your choice to observe the fast to become more important than your desire to know the love of God. Use the disciplines of the Spirit to open your heart to Him, to invite the Spirit to make you alive.

Here is a word from the Word. Meditate on it for a few minutes and then, go bless your world with the love of Jesus!
"You take no delight in sacrifices or offerings.
Now that you have made me listen, I finally understand—
you don’t require burnt offerings or sin offerings.
Then I said, “Look, I have come.
And this has been written about me in your scroll:
I take joy in doing your will, my God,
for your law is written on my heart.” (Psalm 40:6-8, NLT)

____________

Lord I Need You

(A prayer in song.)

Lord I come I confess

Bowing here I find my rest

And without You I fall apart

You're the one that guides my heart

Lord I need You oh I need You

Ev'ry hour I need You

My one defense my righteousness

Oh God how I need You

Where sin runs deep Your grace is more

Where grace is found is where You are

And where You are Lord I am free

Holiness is Christ in me

Where You are Lord I am free

Holiness is Christ in me

So teach my song to rise to You

When temptation comes my way

And when I cannot stand I'll fall on You

Jesus You're my hope and stay

And when I cannot stand I'll fall on You

Jesus You're my hope and stay

Lord I need You oh I need You

Ev'ry hour I need You

My one defense my righteousness

Oh God how I need You

My one defense my righteousness

Oh God how I need You

Christy Nockels | Daniel Carson | Jesse Reeves | Kristian Stanfill | Matt Maher

© 2011 sixsteps Music (Admin. by Capitol CMG Publishing)

Sweater Weather Music (Admin. by Capitol CMG Publishing)

Thankyou Music (Admin. by Capitol CMG Publishing)

Valley Of Songs Music (Admin. by Capitol CMG Publishing)

worshiptogether.com songs (Admin. by Capitol CMG Publishing)

CCLI License # 810055