The Unforgivable Sin (Mark 3.7-35)

When I was a kid, about six years old, one day at school I decided to cut my own hair. I don’t know why I made this decision, why I thought it was a good idea. But I did. I took my little scissors, got a big chunk of hair right up above my forehead, and cut it off.

This was the day before school pictures were to be taken.

My mom did her best to try to fix it, but there was no fixing it: the mess I had made was unsalvageable. (The photo was horrendous, of course.)

There is a lingering fear in the minds of a lot of Christians, and that is they are, for some reason or another, unsalvageable. They remember their past rebellion against God so vividly, or they consider the sin they still struggle with after believing in Christ, to the point that there’s always this thought in their minds that maybe, despite what they’ve always heard in church, when they die they’ll stand before God and he’ll show them their past sin and say, “Yeah, I can’t have this in my kingdom.”

So is it true?

Is it possible to do something that in the end makes us“unsaveable”?

Our passage today tells us that there is, in fact, a sin like this. That’s scary. But the rest of the passage tells us what that sin is, and in the end it’s really good news.

So let’s get into it.

We’ve just come out of a turning point for Jesus. In the passage we saw last week, Jesus is repeatedly opposed by the religious leaders in Israel, to the point where he has to take strong positions on questions that were important to them, like the Sabbath. We see the result in v. 6—for the first time, the religious leaders start plotting to have him killed.

In today’s passage, we see a different kind of turning point—we don’t see Jesus taking strong positions on different issues, but rather different groups of people taking strong positions on Jesus. And the interchange between Jesus, people’s response to him, and his response to them, is incredible.

A New People: Delegation (v. 7-19)

In v. 7, we see a basic continuation of what we’ve seen before—crowds are following Jesus to be healed by him and to see what he’ll do. But it’s as if someone turned the volume knob up three or four notches: the fervor of the crowd is becoming far more intense.

V. 7:

7 Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed, from Galilee and Judea 8 and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him. 9 And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him, 10 for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him. 11 And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” 12 And he strictly ordered them not to make him known.

Mark explains why the crowd is gaining such intensity: he’s been healing many people, and the sick are coming to him in droves, to the point where his safety is in jeopardy. Jesus has to get into a boat and cast himself out into the sea, so that they don’t crush him.

So it’s like what we’ve already seen in the gospel, but brought to a fever pitch. Jesus healing people, people coming to him to be healed, and even people possessed by “unclean spirits” (i.e. demons). And here’s the crazy thing: before Jesus casts them out, these demons recognize Jesus for who he is—as they say in v. 11, “You are the Son of God.” But Jesus tells them to be quiet.

So all this is happening, and finally, at some point, he manages to get away—we read in v. 13:

13 And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him.

So this isn’t a general call he makes to the crowd; Jesus calls out specific people. V. 14:

14 And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach 15 and have authority to cast out demons.

Essentially, Jesus is delegating. He can’t be everywhere at the same time, so he establishes these twelve men as “apostles” (the word “apostle” means “sent). These are people he is sending out kind of like ambassadors, but bigger: he gives them not only his authority, but also some of his power. He gives them the ability to preach the gospel and to cast out demons.

And the fact that Jesus names twelve of these men is no accident. There’s a good deal of mirroring here, which you’ll recognize right away if you remember the book of Exodus.

When God called the people of Israel out of Egypt and made his covenant with them, he brought them to a mountain to make that covenant. The people of Israel was comprised of twelve tribes, named after the twelve sons of Jacob. God took these twelve tribes, these descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and made them his people.

These people would be God’s people—they would be his representatives on earth, his ambassadors, the means by which he would make his glory known to the surrounding nations.

And that’s exactly what Jesus is doing here. Just like with the people of Israel, Jesus goes up on to a mountain, and when he does, just like with the twelve tribes of Israel, he calls twelve men to follow him.

When God brought his people to the mountain, he established them as the people of God. So now, when Jesus calls the twelve up to the mountain, he’s doing the same thing: he’s establishing a new people of God. These are the men—with one exception—who will represent him where he can’t go, and who will carry on his work after he is gone. Jesus’s people would be, in a much realer sense, God’s people, representing him in the world.

The Old People: Opposition (v. 20-35)

Immediately after this, we see a pretty stark contrast. V. 20:

20 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.”

When Mark says, “his family”, he means Jesus’s literal family: his mother and his brothers. They’re looking at all the fuss Jesus is stirring up, and their response is, “He’s lost his mind.”

I can’t say that I blame them. People often say, “But surely his mother Mary knew better; she was visited by an angel before Jesus’s birth, who told her who Jesus is.” True…but even the angel didn’t give her every detail of what his ministry would look like. And we sometimes forget that at this point, she had an entire life of a parent behind her. For her, Jesus wasn’t just the Messiah—he was her boy. She had changed his diapers. She’d taken care of him when he was sick. She’d taught him to walk and talk. And his brothers had grown up with him too—they didn’t see him as a figure, but as their brother.

And now, he’s making himself really visible: he’s upsetting the religious establishment, and in so doing, he’s putting himself in a very risky situation. He must be crazy to go against the religious leaders.

So it’s understandable, but even so, the fact that they are saying, “He is out of his mind” shows that they don’t quite understand what it is he’s doing.

And a little later, at the end of the chapter, we see Jesus’s very blunt response to them. Go down to v. 31:

31 And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. 32 And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.” 33 And he answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”

We saw before that Jesus is establishing a new people. What we didn’t see is how deep that bond goes. Jesus is establishing a people that supersedes even his own blood relations: Here are my mother and brothers, he says!

Clearly his actual mother and brothers are missing something.

And they’re not the only ones. In v. 22, we see a group of scribes, religious leaders from Jerusalem, who have come down to see what Jesus is doing.

22 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.”

Essentially, the religious leaders think Jesus is duping everyone. They think he’s using some kind of dark sorcery to cast out these demons, and that he’s claiming to be doing God’s work.

So in response to what they’re saying, Jesus calls them over to poke holes in their logic. Or at least that’s how it seems at first. V. 23:

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.

It’s important to see that Jesus’s parables aren’t just attacking the religious leaders’ logic. They’re getting to the heart of what he’s actually doing.When Jesus says that “if a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom will not stand,” he’s not just saying that it would be stupid of Satan to use such tactics. He’s saying that that’s not what’s going on. Satan isn’t divided against himself. Satan is waging a concerted war against God’s kingdom. Satan is trying to stand…but he’s going to lose.

And that’s what he means by the second parable, when he says, “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man.” Satan is strong—no doubt about it.

But Jesus is the plunderer.

Jesus describes himself as a sort of invader, sneaking in behind enemy lines to take them apart piece by piece. In claiming that Jesus is acting in Satan’s power, the religious leaders are showing their deep and fundamental misunderstanding of who Jesus is.

So after throwing out these parables (which no doubt went a bit over the religious leaders’ heads), Jesus gives them a very striking warning. V. 28:

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.”

I know this is the verse most of you have been waiting for, so let’s talk about it.

First, very quickly, why does Jesus bring up the Holy Spirit in the first place? No one was talking about the Holy Spirit—even Mark hasn’t mentioned the Holy Spirit since Jesus’s baptism and temptation in the wilderness in chapter 1.

But Jesus Christ is the Son of God; the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God. The Spirit and the Son are inseparable—you don’t get one without the other.

So Jesus is taking advantage of what these religious leaders are saying about him—“He has an unclean spirit”—in order to teach them something much bigger about the Spirit who actually animates him, the Holy Spirit.

But there’s still a big question remaining, and it’s the question we’ll be spending most of our remaining time on: What exactly does Jesus mean when he says, whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness?

I myself grew up hearing that “blaspheming against the Holy Spirit” means to attribute the work of the Holy Spirit to the devil, as the religious leaders do here. I also heard it means to say something negative against the Holy Spirit, as if you can say something bad about God the Father or God the Son, and that’s okay, but you’d better not say anything negative about God the Holy Spirit, or else you’re not getting into heaven.

Lots of Christians have grown up hearing things like this, so we grow up with this nagging fear: Have I blasphemed against the Holy Spirit? Did I at some point say something about the Spirit, in a way that makes me guilty of this sin? Is there a chance I’ve already said or done something that has ruined my chances of getting into heaven?

And clearly there is a sin that is unforgivable, that keeps us out of heaven. So what is it? What does it mean to “blaspheme against the Holy Spirit”?

This text tells us what it means, but in order to see it, we need to take a step back.

Different Groups, Different Responses

What is really happening in this passage? What do we see? We see various groups of people responding to Jesus, and Jesus responding to them.

First, we see the sick, in v. 7-10. They come to him to be healed, they come to him for what he can do for them, with little regard for who he is (they almost crush him in their haste to get close to him). Jesus does what he can for them, but eventually has to retreat.

Next, we see the unclean spirits, in v. 11-12. They see him, and cry out, “You are the Son of God.” So they recognize Jesus for who he is, and they’re right. But they don’t accept him. They don’t love him. And Jesus responds to them by telling them to keep quiet—so clearly there is no unity between them.

We also see Jesus’s family, in v. 20-21 and 31-35. What do they say about him? They say, “He’s out of his mind.” Even if it’s understandable, they clearly don’t get what’s going on. So Jesus responds to them by saying, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother”—in other words, these people sitting around me are my real family. Pretty harsh.

And lastly we have the scribes in v. 22-30, who say, “He casts out demons by the prince of demons.” So not only they don’t recognize him for who he is, but they say he’s doing Satan’s work. Jesus tells them parables to defy their logic and show what he’s actually doing, and he says, “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness.”

The sick, the unclean spirits, Jesus’s family, and the scribes. What do they all have in common?

They don’t accept Jesus for who he is. They see what he’s doing, and they either misunderstand or outright refuse to accept what the evidence is telling them about what he came to do.

So that’s one side of the coin.

On the other side, we see his disciples in v. 13-19. How do they respond to him? When he calls them, they come. They follow him. And in return, Jesus appoints them as apostles and delegates his work to them, with his authority.

We also see the crowd gathered around him in v. 31-35. Jesus looks at them and says, “Here are my mother and brothers!” Why? Because they’re doing the will of God. Of course he’s speaking broadly here—there are surely people in the crowd who aren’t following him—but he’s making his point clear, in any case: it takes something more than blood relations to make you a part of my family.

So what makes these people different from all those other examples we see?

They are doing the will of God. They’re not just coming to him to be healed, or to see him do a magic trick, or even to hear some new and interesting teaching. They recognize Jesus for who he is, they accept him for who he is, and they follow him.

Who Is Jesus?

So the real question of this text isn’t, What is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, but rather, Who is this man?! That is the deep question Mark is driving us to ask in this text. The disciples and the crowd sitting around Jesus recognize Jesus for who he is, and accept Jesus for who he is. So who is he?

Jesus is the Son of God. Yes. Absolutely—we saw that in the very first verses of this book. But there’s more.

Jesus is the One who establishes a new people for God. He’s fundamentally changing what it means to belong to “the people of God.”

Jesus is the One who has all authority over every element in this world and the spiritual world—even the demons recognize that he has authority over them.

Jesus is the One who is plundering Satan’s house—the titanic Warrior-King who has arrived to set right everything that sin has made wrong.

Jesus is the One who is empowered by the Holy Spirit to forgive sin. All sins will be forgiven the children of man, he said. It’s easy to look at v. 29 and see the one sin that can’t be forgiven, and miss the incredible openness of v. 28: all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter.

Remember what we saw a couple weeks ago? Who are the people flocking to Jesus, not for healing, but to listen to him? Who are the ones who are actually listening? Not those who are well, but those who are sick.

Not the righteous, but sinners—people who know they are sinners.

These are the ones he came for. These are the ones to whom he points and says, “These are my mother and my brothers!”

Do we see how astounding this is? It would have been so easy and obvious for Jesus to point to his apostles—these men to whom he gave the authority and power to preach and to cast out demons—and say, “These guys here are my people.” That would make sense—they’re the ones who are going out and doing extraordinary things.

But that’s not what Jesus does. He points to perfectly ordinary—and even “unsavory”—people, and says, “These are my people.” Not because they are doing extraordinary things—they’re not!—but because they have come to the extraordinary Savior, who forgives their sin.

So in the context of this passage, what can we deduce is the meaning of “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit”? What is the only sin which God will not forgive?

We see clearly in this passage that it’s much more than a matter of words. Usually “blasphemy” refers to an act of contempt against God, either by insulting his name or falsely claiming his authority. But everything in this passage points us to people who do more than just speak—they adopt a position that dictates the course of their lives. That position is expressed in their words, perhaps, but it’s not the words themselves that are the problem.

The problem, with each of these groups—with the demons, with the scribes, with Jesus’s own family—is their refusal to accept Jesus for who he is. And Jesus calls this “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” because there is no greater act of contempt against God than to reject the Savior he sent, whom the Holy Spirit empowered, to save sinners.

Only One Choice

When you get right down to it, even though we see a myriad of different responses to Jesus in this text, there really is only one choice: either we accept Jesus for who he is, or we blaspheme against the Holy Spirit of God.

Whether we realize it or not, and however we may try to turn the problem in our hands to see it from a different angle, that is the choice before each of us: either we accept Jesus for who he is, or we blaspheme against the Holy Spirit of God.

Realizing this truth is incredibly freeing, because it does away with a lot of the fears we may have in coming to Christ.

What we see here shows us that no sin is “too bad” for Jesus to forgive. If we recognize Jesus for who he is, and accept him for who he is, his arms are wide open. Among those who are clearly shown to be forgiven in the Bible are tax collectors (commonly known to be traitors to their own people), prostitutes, a persecutor of Christians, murderers, adulterers, and many other people who have done far worse things than most of us. No one is too far gone, no one is “too bad” to be forgiven.

What we see here also shows us that it’s never too late. If you’re still alive, you still have time. We saw the harsh answer Jesus gave to his family when they were looking for him. But even they eventually accept Jesus for who he is. His mother later realizes and accepts what he’s doing, and follows him as well. And we know of at least one of his half-brothers, James, who does the same. (He’s the one who later wrote the book of James, which we find towards the end of the Bible.)

At this point in their story, they are not accepting Christ for who he is. But that can change. As long as you’re alive, there’s still time.

Conclusion

So what do we do?

First we see ourselves for who we are: very imperfect people who are in need of a perfect forgiveness.

We see Christ for who he is: the sinless Son of God who lived a perfect life in our place, who took our sin on himself, and who was punished in our place in order that we might be forgiven. The powerful Warrior-King who came to defeat Satan and sin and all of its effects. The loving Savior who came to the most miserable among us, and who said, “Here are my brothers and sisters.”

And finally, we accept Christ for who he is. This is not a one-time decision. It’s a decision for every minute of every day. If we find ourselves constantly returning to the same sins over and over again, and committing them with no hesitation and little regret, it’s worth asking ourselves if we’ve really accepted Christ at all. Because accepting Christ means not only accepting what he did for us, but who we are in him.

Those who accept Christ are really and truly the people of God. And the people of God are people who are growing to be like Christ.

I know that can be scary, because all of us can look at ourselves and see all the reasons why we’re not changing like we’d hope, as quickly as we’d hope. But remember Jesus’s mother and brothers: it’s never too late.

Maybe you’ve been claiming to be a Christian for years, and you’re only just realizing that you haven’t ever really followed him.

Maybe you’ve never accepted Christ and are only just realizing you should.

Or maybe you have accepted Christ, but you’re worried about what’s coming around the bend tomorrow, what might test your faith.

In every case, it’s the same choice before us: the choice to admit that we are sinners in need of a Savior, to see Christ for the Savior he is, to accept him, and to follow him. That is the Christian life: day after day after day. That is what it means to “do the will of God.”

Do you see how freeing that is? That Jesus doesn’t ask us to pass a morality test to belong to him? That all he asks of us is that we accept what he has done, and that we walk hand-in-hand with him until he brings us home?

Whatever weight you feel like you’re carrying, you can put it down. There is only one unforgivable sin, and as long as you are still alive, you haven’t committed it. If you’re alive, it’s not too late.

See him. Accept him. Follow him.