The Unforgivable Sin
Bavinck, Hodge, Edwards, and Calvin on the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit
When Jesus said every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven except one (Matt. 12:31-32; Mark 3:28-29; Luke 12:10), He had just opened the eyes of a blind man and loosed the tongue of a mute by casting out a demon (Matt. 12:22-23). The crowd was stunned: “Could this be the Son of David?” (Matt. 12:23). But the Pharisees said, “This fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzebul, the prince of demons” (Matt. 12:24; cf. Mark 3:22; Luke 11:15).
That deliberate, public, hate-filled attribution of the Holy Spirit’s plainly obvious work to Satan Himself is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. It is the one sin Jesus calls unforgivable, “an eternal sin” (Mark 3:29).
The unpardonable sin is not ordinary unbelief, doubt, or even a lifetime of hardened rebellion. It is the moment when the Holy Spirit has so clearly, so powerfully, so undeniably revealed the glory of Christ that the conscience cannot possibly deny it (Matt. 12:28), and yet the heart, in cold malice, turns around and calls that sacred light the deepest darkness. The Pharisees saw the finger of God and called it the finger of the devil.
Herman Bavinck1 describes it as “a conscious, deliberate, intentional blasphemy of the—clearly recognized yet hatefully misattributed to the devil—revelation of God’s grace in Christ by the Holy Spirit.”
Charles Hodge2 says it is the ultimate wrong judgment: seeing Christ’s works, knowing they are good, and pronouncing them evil.
John Calvin3 calls it maliciously turning “the perfections of God, which have been revealed to him by the Spirit, in which His glory ought to be celebrated” into an occasion for dishonor.
Jonathan Edwards4 adds that it happens only “against conviction,” when someone has tasted the powers of the age to come (Heb. 6:5) and then, with eyes wide open, spits in the face of the Spirit of grace.
Why is this sin beyond forgiveness? Reformed theologians give slightly different emphases, but they land in the same place.
Bavinck and Calvin say the unpardonable sin destroys the very faculties that could receive pardon. It “scorches the conscience shut,” kills all remorse, and leaves the soul incurable like a man who burns out his own eyes and then complains he cannot see the doctor.
Jonathan Edwards insists the unpardonableness is not finally a matter of the sin’s heinousness (otherwise a lifetime of other blasphemies might accumulate greater guilt), but of God’s sovereign decree: the Lord has drawn a boundary that shall not be crossed.
Either way, the result is identical: the true blasphemer of the Spirit feels no guilt, no fear, no longing for mercy. He glories in his rebellion.
You see the same sin described in Hebrews 6:4-6 and 10:26-29. People once enlightened, who tasted the heavenly gift, who shared in the Holy Spirit, and then publicly “crucify again the Son of God…and hold him up to contempt,” thereby “outraging the Spirit of grace” (Heb. 10:29). You see it alluded to in 1 John 5:16 as “a sin that leads to death.” You see the same spirit in the scribes who watched Jesus forgive sins and accused Him of blasphemy (Mark 2:7).
I have talked to many Christians who live in terror that they have committed the unforgivable sin. I always tell them the very fact that you are afraid is clear evidence you have not committed it. The person who has blasphemed the Holy Spirit does not lie awake at night wondering if he has gone too far. He sleeps like the dead. He boasts. He sneers. His conscience is cauterized, his heart is granite, and he feels triumph, not terror. Jonathan Edwards repeatedly teaches that the presence of distress and longing for Christ is “proof positive” that the Spirit has not been finally outraged. Herman Bavinck observes that the unpardonable sin “excludes all remorse” and “scorches the conscience shut.” John Calvin warns that only those who, like Satan himself, are “avowed enemies of the glory of God” commit this sin, and they do not weep over it; they celebrate it.
So if Jesus’ warning makes you tremble, if you hate your remaining sin, if you are fleeing to the cross and pleading the blood of the Son, that trembling, that hatred of sin, that flight to Christ is the Holy Spirit’s own signature upon your soul. The door of mercy stands wide open.
Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: Sin and Salvation in Christ, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 155–157.
Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), 255–256.
John Calvin and William Pringle, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 2 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 76.
Jonathan Edwards, The “Miscellanies”: (Entry Nos. 501–832), ed. Ava Chamberlain and Harry S. Stout, vol. 18, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2000), 309–314.