What is the unforgivable sin? It doesn’t take thorough Bible knowledge to come up with the answer “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.”

Google “unforgivable sin” and you will find various explanations. They stick close to the original context and don’t compare it with other scriptures. Most of them reassure people that if they fear they have committed it, it’s a good sign they haven’t. If anyone wants God’s forgiveness, it means they have enough regard for the Holy Spirit to desire fellowship with God.

But I have been teaching my Sunday school class about the Lord’s prayer. It contains the petition, “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12 ESV)—the only petition in the prayer with a built-in condition.

It’s also the only one Jesus commented on: “If you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions” (Matthew 6:14-15).

Does that make unforgiveness unforgivable?

According to Matthew’s account of Jesus’ teaching on the unforgivable sin, he said, “Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And 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” (Matthew 12:32-32)

In chapter 12, any sin except blasphemy against the Spirit will be forgiven. In chapter 6, unforgiveness will not be forgiven. It looks at first like a contradiction. Unless refusal to forgive comes within the definition of blasphemy against the Spirit.

God’s forgiveness

Man, by nature, rebels against God and desires nothing to do with him. God, by nature, desires to redeem us and restore his relationship with us as it was before Adam fell into temptation in the garden.

That anyone can ever become reconciled to God shows that his love can overpower our rebellion. The death of Jesus on the cross demonstrates the extent to which God was willing to go in order to make that reconciliation possible.

Human original sin nailed Jesus to that cross. Hardwired defiance of God led to his murder. In human terms, murder is a crime and the murderer an offender. And the offended one cried out to God to forgive his murderers.

Godly people knew of God’s forgiveness long before the cross. In Psalm 86:5, David wrote, “For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.”

But God’s forgiveness has limits. When religious leaders declared that Jesus had cast out demons using Satan’s power, they called good evil. Jesus called it the unforgivable sin. Not that God was unwilling to offer forgiveness, but that those men had become so warped that they had become incapable of either seeking or receiving it.

Forgiveness, after all, has two parts. The offended must offer it from the heart and the offender must receive it. The fullness of forgiveness effects reconciliation and restoration of relationship.

The duty of forgiveness

Nowhere does Old Testament law demand that people forgive each other. Jesus’ teaching always demands a higher moral standard than the law did. He proclaimed forgiveness as a duty.

Jesus’ fullest teaching on forgiveness occurs in Matthew 18:15-20. First, he commands that we go privately to the offender and tell him his fault.

If the offender doesn’t repent, then take two or three other people and try again. If he still doesn’t repent, tell the whole church. If that doesn’t work, “let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (v. 18).

But remember: Jesus never hesitated to associate with Gentiles and tax collectors. He constantly called everyone to repentance.  On the other hand, he couldn’t have close fellowship with them and never insisted that anyone else should.

“Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:21-22).

Other translations say, “seventy times seven.” In any case, Jesus recognized no limit to the duty to forgive. No limit to the seriousness of the sins we must forgive and no limit to how often we must forgive someone. Jesus does not recognize anything any person can do to another as beyond forgiveness.

For us, then, the offender’s refusal to repent doesn’t remove from us the obligation to offer forgiveness from the heart. Because that’s what God does for us. Unfortunately, the first thing we receive from God is the last thing we want to extend to anyone who hurts us.

Refusal to forgive

Jesus immediately followed his words to Peter with the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18:21-25). In it, he compared the kingdom of heaven to a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants.

One servant owed the king 10,000 talents. Someone calculated that the entire wealth of the Roman empire didn’t amount to ten thousand talents! The king commanded that he and his entire family be sold to pay the debt. But when the servant begged, the king forgave it.

Forgiveness cancels a debt. Just like that, the servant no longer owed the king anything.

Then he went out and saw a fellow servant who owed him 100 denarii. A denarius was one day’s wages for a common laborer. So this debt amounted to a little more than three months of wages. And he refused to forgive it but demanded immediate payment. Compare that debt to all the wealth in the world!

When the other servants reported back to the king, the king summoned the unforgiving servant and delivered him to the jailers until he paid the king everything he owed. Notice: the king had already forgiven the debt of 10,000 talents. The servant no longer owed that back ever again. But in accepting forgiveness, he incurred a debt of forgiveness he was bound to pay forward.

This servant, in other words, could be released from jail as soon as he agreed to forgive the puny debt he had tried to collect.

The unforgivable sin

If we do not forgive, God will not forgive us. But if we decide to forgive, God immediately forgives us. He will continue to work to reconcile us to him as long as we breathe.

What does that have to do with blasphemy against the Holy Spirit?

It’s a mistake to define the unforgivable sin so narrowly that only the religious leaders’ accusation fits it. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is “constant and consummate opposition to the influence of the Holy Spirit because of a deliberate preference of darkness to light,” according to the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.

Anyone who ultimately refuses to forgive in the face of God’s offer of forgiveness essentially claims, “my offender’s offense against me is greater than my offense against God.”

The Lord’s prayer in the light of the unforgivable sin

When Jesus offered his comment on the petition in the Lord’s Prayer about forgiveness, he certainly didn’t mean that we must perfectly and completely forgive others before God will be willing to forgive us. God could never forgive anyone if he required perfection first.

I know someone who suffered severe sexual abuse as a child. After decades of bitterness and rage, she saw her need to forgive her abusers. It took a long time before she managed to do it. In the few years since then, she testifies about an abundance of joy in her life she couldn’t imagine before.

I quoted from the ESV, which says “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” What we say in church every week is, “as we forgive our debtors” (or “those who trespass against us”). When we pray it in present tense instead of perfect tense, we ask God to forgive us while we’re in the process of forgiving others.

And what about someone who adamantly refuses to forgive others as long as he lives? That person has hardened himself against the Holy Spirit as surely as those religious leaders did who attributed the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan.

Joyce Meyer has said, “I know from personal experience how damaging it can be to live with bitterness and unforgiveness. I like to say it’s like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die. And it really is that harmful to us to live this way.”

And it’s the pain in unforgiveness that urges us to repent and forgive anyway.

So if you are resisting forgiveness because the other person doesn’t deserve it, forgive anyway. The other person definitely doesn’t deserve forgiveness. But then, neither do you, and God freely offers it.

Image credit for the crucifixion mosaic: Some rights reserved by Michigan Municipal League