The Unforgivable Sin (Mark 3:22-30) | 8/4/19
Mark 3:22-30 8/4/19 | Will DuVal
We are in the middle of a study together as a church through the Gospel of Mark, one of 4 biographies of Jesus in the NT. At West Hills, we believe that what we need even more than topical messages on the most relevant issues of our day, are the timeless truths of SCRIPTURE that transcend whatever current events happen to dominate today’s news cycle. So even though this morning’s passage from Mark 3 - THE UNFORGIVABLE SIN - isn’t exactly the lightest and breeziest for our first-time visitors, I’m gonna trust that the Lord has you here for a reason, that someone here needs to hear THIS message, on THIS text. So let’s dive right in. Would you stand with me as you’re able for the reading of God’s word, from Mark ch3, and let’s actually back up to v20 - v30. If you don’t have a Bible, no worries; it’ll be on the screen up front.
MARK 3:22-30
Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. 21 And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”
And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.” 23 And he called them to him and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan?24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. 27 But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.
28 “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— 30 for they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.” This is the word of God. Thanks...
OVERVIEW: I’ve got 3 overarching points this morning:
1) Jesus is LORD.
2) He FORGIVES sin.
3) But NOT B.A.T.H.S. “BATHS” of course does not refer to Jesus’ condemnation of a nice soak in the tub at the end of a long day, but rather, serves as my short-hand designation for “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit”.
Point #1: Jesus is LORD. (vv20-27).
Many think that this passage from Mark 3 was the catalyst for C.S. Lewis’s now-famous apologetic for the Christian faith known as the “Trilemma”. Here’s how Lewis stated it:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Jesus: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (Mere Christianity, 54-56)
So according to Lewis, the Trilemma, the THREE options Jesus HAS left open to us, are that he is 1) a lunatic, 2) a liar, or 3) that he is actually the LORD God of all the universe. And those are the 3 EXACT approaches to Jesus we see evidenced in this morning’s passage. Let’s start in vv20-21:
“he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. 21 And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.””
Jesus’ own FAMILY thought he was a lunatic. John 7:5 and Acts 1:14 inform us that until his resurrection, “not even his brothers believed in him.” They thought “He was out of his mind”. The Greek word for “seize” in v21 literally means to KIDNAP, to take by force. Jesus’ family wanted to have him locked up in a padded room. They thought he was a danger to himself and others. He was so obsessed with his “mission”, he wouldn’t even stop to EAT, and they were worried Jesus was gonna starve himself to death. Not unlike my OWN mother, when she comes to visit; and gives my poor wife such grief – “Don’t you ever FEED him anything?” Anyone else have a Mom like that?
But they’re concerned with more than just Jesus’ physical health; I think they’re worried about his teaching as well. “Jesus, we love you, but this has gone far enough, we all LAUGHED when you claimed to be the Messiah while you were a kid growing up; it was CUTE, pretending to be a superhero, like all the other kids, but now you’re THIRTY. It’s not CUTE anymore.
Next, we hear from the scribes, who postulate ““He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.”” Interestingly, the religious leaders don’t DENY Jesus’ supernatural power. In Matthew’s parallel account from HIS Gospel, this interaction occurs just after Jesus has healed a blind, mute, demon-oppressed man in front of their very eyes. So they can’t deny his power. Rather, they attribute it to a different source: he’s Satanic. He’s not out of his mind; he knows EXACTLY what he’s doing, and he is a LIAR. He claims to have power from God, but his power is ACTUALLY from Beelzebul, the Lord of the Flies, the prince of demons, the devil himself.
Here is Matthew’s version of Jesus’ response: “Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. 26 And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? 27 And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. 28 But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.29 Or how can someone enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house. 30 Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” And in those SIX verses, we find six CLAIMS from Jesus, to His own divine Lordship.
First, Matthew tells us in v25 that Jesus “KNOWS their thoughts”: and only GOD can read minds. Jesus is Lord.
Second, Jesus reasons, “every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste”: The scribes’ theory doesn’t make any sense. The Blues weren’t winning any Stanley Cups back in JANUARY when they were fighting each OTHER in the clubhouse. A team divided against itself isn’t even a team you have to worry much about; just let them beat themselves. Jesus says, If Satan was fighting himself, he wouldn’t still be alive and well in the world, wreaking havoc. No, Satan’s house isn’t divided. I am from a DIFFERENT house. I’m playing on a DIFFERENT team. GOD’S team.
Third, Jesus turns the tables on them in v27. He says “Speaking of teams, “by whom do your sons cast out demons”? If we’re gonna start stoning all the exorcists around here, then we better round up all YOUR rabbis and prophets as well. Exorcism was a fairly common practice in 1st c. Judaism. In fact, we hear in Mark 6 that some people, like King Herod, when they heard about Jesus’ miracles, believed that John the Baptist or Elijah had been raised from the dead. So Jesus in effect asks them, “Was John the Baptist possessed by Satan too? Was ELIJAH?”
Fourth, Jesus says: “the kingdom of God has come upon you”. When asked in ch.11 whether he was in fact the long-awaited Messiah, Jesus responded: “the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers[a] are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up.”” In other words, the proof’s in the pudding. Look around you – obviously the kingdom of God is upon you. You just WATCHED me heal a blind, mute, demon-possessed man; I’ve PROVED to you that I am Lord.
Fifth, he argues that in order to defeat Satan, you’ve got to “first bind the strong man”: if I am successfully casting OUT demons, then my power must be greater than Satan’s, and the only one with power greater than Satan is...? GOD.
Lastly, Jesus claims, “Whoever is not with me is against me”: And this is perhaps his BOLDEST pronouncement of his own Lordship. Can you imagine if I stood up here and said, “Unless you follow MY preaching, we’re enemies. You’re either with me or you’re against me. Everyone who attends a church OTHER than West Hills be DAMNED.” This is the kind of EXCLUSIVE claim that only GOD has the right to make. And yet it’s the kind of claim we see Jesus make time and time again throughout the Gospels:
John 14:6 “Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Not A way, not “one truth amongst many”; THE way, THE truth, THE life. Exclusive, absolute, universal claims.
Matthew 10:37 “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” “It’s my way or the highway; I’m either your LORD, or I’m nothing at ALL to you. If you love yourself more than me, your way more than mine, if you won’t repent and take up your cross to follow ME instead, then find a different Messiah. Let your parents be your Lord and Savior; see how that works for you. Let your SPOUSE; how’s that working for you? Your KIDS. Find your meaning and purpose and self-worth and identity and validation and HOPE and JOY in anyone or anything BUT ME, and let me know how that works out for you. And friends, on a personal note, from someone who tried it, who for the first 27 ½ years of my life, looked to my parents, to my own self-achievement - intellectual accomplishment, athletic performance, social status – to hedonism, to friendships, to romantic relationships, to philosophical exploration, to career and success, BACK to family AGAIN... as someone who lived most of my life desperately TRYING to find my worth everywhere and with everyone BUT Jesus, I would love to save you a lot of the time, and a lot of the heartache, and convince you this morning that you WILL. NOT. FIND IT. anywhere. But in Jesus.
And the question facing you this morning, was the same question facing Jesus’ family, facing the scribes, facing C.S. Lewis, and every other person who has ever or will ever live, the most important question in all of HISTORY: What will you do with Jesus of Nazareth? Will you, like his family, shut him up for a fool; will you, like the scribes, regard him as a demonic liar, or will you fall at his feet and call him Lord and God? Those really are the only 3 options.
And if you’ve been dodging that all-important question for too long now, trying to delay your answer, let me gently but adamantly PLEAD with you this morning: do not wait another MINUTE. Because you are not guaranteed it. Polly and I sang at the funeral of a 20-year old girl this past week. Friends, you and I are not guaranteed a single day... our next breath around this place. Do not wait. Why would you WANT to?! If Jesus really IS Lord, and our lives really are gifts FROM Him FOR the purpose of bringing glory TO Him, then it only makes sense to go all in for Him as soon as possible! He is WORTH following.
Because Point #2 - Jesus forgives SIN. v28: ““Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter”. ALL sins, friends. ALL! You cannot out-sin God’s grace.
What love could remember NO wrongs we have done?
Omniscient, all-knowing, He counts not their sum.
Thrown into a sea without bottom or shore,
Our sins they are many, his MERCY, is more.
Listen, we haven’t even defined what the “unforgiveable sin” is yet, but let me tell you what it’s NOT. It’s not MURDER. It’s not genocide. Adolf Hitler MIGHT be in Heaven, for all we know. Can you believe that? There’s not another religion in the WORLD whose God is THAT forgiving. Remember what Jesus prayed for even his OWN crucifiers? “Father FORGIVE THEM, for they know NOT what they do”. What could be worse than killing JESUS?! But even they, even Hitler isn’t beyond the pale of God’s possible forgiveness. What’s the worst sin you can think of? What’s the worst sin you’ve COMMITTED?! Hear the good news this morning, friends: ALL SINS. WILL BE. FORGIVEN.
God is holy. You are sinful and deserving of eternal condemnation. But Jesus died as an atoning sacrifice for EVERY sin you have EVER and WILL ever commit against a perfect, righteous, holy God, and if you will but call on HIM, Romans 10:9, and put your faith and hope and trust in HIM, Ephesians 2:8, your sins will be forgiven and YOU WILL BE SAVED.
All sins will be forgiven, but ONE. And point #3 is this: YES, Jesus is Lord. And YES, He forgives us our sins. But NOT “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit”. THAT, is the “unforgivable sin”. If that sounds SERIOUS, that’s because it IS. And if BATHS is really that HEINOUS, that egregious, you and I better make sure we know what the heck it IS!
I want to leave you with THREE things to chew on with our final point here: 1) a definition for BATHS, 2) supporting evidence from Scripture, and 3) 2 personal application points: an ASSURANCE, as well as a WARNING. So:
A definition for B.A.T.H.S: One way of beginning to identify the sin that CANNOT be forgiven, is to recognize that there’s at least one sin which IS NOT forgiven. I’ve already shared the good news with you, straight from Scripture: that “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9), that “by grace you are saved through faith” (Eph 2:8). But that means failing to confess with your mouth, FAILING to believe in your heart, failing to accept Christ’s grace through faith, leaves one WITHOUT salvation. That means there’s at least ONE sin that is NOT forgiven: the sin of UNBELIEF. But not JUST unbelief. Listen to what Jesus says in our very passage: “Whoever 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.” (12:32) You can even reject Jesus, and still be forgiven. What you CANNOT do, is reject the Holy Spirit. Here’s how John Piper explains it:
“Why only blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? I think it’s because of the unique and decisive role the Holy Spirit plays in our salvation. If we look to God the Father and then turn from his glory to embrace sin, that is bad. If we look to his Son Jesus Christ whom he sent into the world and then turn away from his glory to embrace sin, that is doubly bad.
But in either case there is hope. The Father has planned redemption and the Son has accomplished redemption. This wonderful redemption is outside ourselves and available to us if we repent of our sin and turn back to Christ in faith. But it is the unique and special role of the Holy Spirit to apply the Father’s plan and the Son’s accomplishment of it to our hearts. It is the Spirit’s work to open our eyes, to grant repentance, and to make us beneficiaries of all that the Father has planned and all that Christ has done for us.
If we... see and taste the power of the Holy Spirit and reject his work... we shut ourselves off from the only one who could ever bring us to repentance. And so we shut ourselves off from forgiveness.” (Piper, “Beyond Forgiveness”, Apr 1, 1984)
So here’s my definition for BATHS: “Having your spiritual eyes opened by the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit to behold the beauty and truth of Jesus and His gospel – the depths of your sin, the heights of God’s holiness, and the lengths to which Jesus went to reconcile you back to God – and YET, refusing to repent and trust in Him for salvation. It is looking Jesus square in the eyes, and saying, “No thank you.” BATHS is not just unbelief, it is a conscious, informed, Holy-Spirit-illuminated rejection of Christ. As Kent Hughes explains, “B.A.T.H.S. is a sin which requires knowledge” (92). It is significant that the SCRIBES are the target of Jesus’ warning here – because they of ALL people should have KNOWN better. They knew the Law and the prophets and the messianic promises better than ANYONE. The scribes of ALL people should have known better than to reject Christ.
Here’s how OTHERS define BATHS:
Piper: “The unforgivable sin of BATHS is an act of resistance which belittles the Holy Spirit so grievously that he withdraws forever with his convicting power so that we are never able to repent and be forgiven” (Piper, “Beyond Forgiveness”, Apr 1, 1984)
Kent Hughes: “the ongoing, continual rejection of the witness of the Holy Spirit to the Divinity and Saviorhood of Christ... It is continuing rejection of the witness of the Holy Spirit, whether that witness be a quiet witness in the conscience, the rational witness of the Word, or even miracles and wonders.” (Mark, 92)
Mark Strauss: “A defiant, willful, and final rejection of the Spirit’s work in a person’s life. If that person intentionally turns to darkness at the moment of greatest light, by definition no greater opportunity for salvation will ever take place. There is no greater source of revelation than the Holy Spirit and no other means through which people respond to God.” (Mark, 173)
John MacArthur: “[Being] fully exposed to the truth of the gospel and yet walking away from Christ in spite of the overwhelming evidence you have been given. At its heart, apostasy is a willful repudiation of the Holy Spirit’s testimony to the person and work of Jesus Christ. BATHS, then, describes the apostate heart that with full knowledge has irrevocably rejected the One to whom the Spirit points. That is why it is “an eternal sin” – because no forgiveness is possible for those who refuse to stop rejecting Christ.” (Mark, 185)
Andrew Le Peau: “The sin against the Holy Spirit is the sin of unbelief, of apostasy, of utter rejection of God, of defiant sin.” (Mark, 81)
Let’s quickly examine 4 passages that CORROBORATE this understanding of the unforgivable sin of BATHS:
First, Numbers 15:27-31 – we won’t read it, but jot it down and you can read it on your own later. Numbers 15 makes an explicit distinction between 2 types of sin: unintentional sin, vs. sin “with a high hand”, that is, conscious, defiant sin. And it is TELLING that God outlines NO sacrifice or means of atonement for the latter category of sin. Looking God square in the face and saying “No thanks” cannot be forgiven.
Next: 1 John 5:16, where John instructs us “If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God[a] will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that.” John says, “Don’t even bother PRAYING for someone who commits the unforgivable sin!” If someone has TRULY beheld the beauty and truth of the gospel, and hardened his heart and REJECTED Jesus anyway, there can be no forgiveness for that sin. Don’t even bother praying.
Third, Hebrews 2:1-2: “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it... how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?”. In other words, it’s one thing to die never having even heard about Jesus, it’s another thing to have not only heard of Him, but personally experienced His goodness, and to fall away from the faith.
Similarly, Hebrews 6:4-6 “For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.”
So I want to conclude with 2 personal application points:
First: a word of ASSURANCE. If you are here this morning, and you have ever LOST sleep over this passage, about the unforgivable sin, and wondered if it’s possible that perhaps at some point in your wild, rebellious, pre-Jesus former life, or even SINCE then, that you have committed the “unforgivable sin”, and this passage TERRIFIES you, let me ASSURE you this morning, from the lips of Jesus himself: “All sins WILL BE FORGIVEN.” And if you’ve lost sleep over this, that means by definition you are not hard-heartedly rejecting the work of the Holy Spirit in your life; you have not committed blasphemy against Him. You can leave here today in FULL assurance of Christ’s ABSOLUTE, UNCONDITIONAL pardon for your sin. In fact, to continue to question your complete forgiveness after today is to doubt the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice for you. Don’t do it! You need not lose another WINK of sleep. And in regard to the 1 John 5 passage, let me just encourage you not to give up praying for and pleading with your lost loved ones, either. You may think they’ve heard the gospel and are looking Jesus square in the eyes and spitting in his face. But YOU DO NOT KNOW. Only GOD knows their heart. I am SURE by the time I was 27 years old, having grown up in evangelical Christianity, that I had heard the gospel a thousand times already, but after God finally opened MY eyes, I had moments of genuinely wondering if anyone had ever truly shared the gospel with me. That’s how NEW it felt to me. That’s how LOST I was without the Holy Spirit’s illuminating work, drawing my heart to Christ. You don’t know for sure what God has or hasn’t done in anyone else’s heart. So don’t EVER quit praying and preaching.
And finally, I end with a word of CAUTION. If you are here this morning, and you have NEVER lost sleep over this passage, I want to gently, but FIRMLY warn you. Perhaps you truly are a believer, and God’s given you the spiritual gift of faith in spades, such that ever since your spiritual rebirth, you have never for a moment doubted your salvation, or Christ’s full pardon for your sins. That’s possible. But MOST of those who never lose a wink of sleep over their sin simply don’t think it’s a big DEAL. They think God must grade on a CURVE, and they’re somewhere between Hitler and Mother Theresa, so they just ASSUME they’re good ENOUGH. Whatever THAT means! Or that God’s mercy must somehow TRUMP His justice. Friends: the Bible makes it abundantly clear that Hitler is not the standard, your next door neighbor is not the standard, PERFECTION is the standard, and Romans 3:23 “ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” and Romans 6:23 “the WAGES of that sin, of YOUR sin, is DEATH”. You rightly deserve eternal death. All sins will be, CAN BE, forgiven. All but one. Hebrews 3:7-8 “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice 8 do not harden your hearts” Friends: Do NOT blaspheme the Holy Spirit, what He’s doing in your heart, even right NOW. TODAY could be the day of YOUR salvation. Don’t wait: Repent, turn from your sin, and trust in Jesus, the One who forgives EVERY sin. Every sin, but one. Let’s pray.