Can a Born-Again Believer Commit the Single Unforgivable Sin?
The defining element of Christianity rests within God’s omnipotent ability to forgive the sins of the entire world. Every person, every sin—save one: blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
“And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven,” Luke 12:10 reads.
But what does that mean? And can born-again believers lose their forgiveness for this sin?
A listener asked John Piper this very question on the pastor’s podcast:
We get a lot of emails from you listeners every month, and I don’t think there’s a more common question that we get over the years than over this one recently sent in from a listener: “Hello Pastor John, I read your article about the unforgivable sin of blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. My questions are two: (1) Can a true believer, whose salvation is eternally secure in Christ, still be guilty of blasphemy? And: (2) Is blaspheming the Holy Spirit the same as grieving the Holy Spirit?”
Piper says the short answer is no, a true Christian cannot blaspheme the Holy Spirit. Rather, to blaspheme the Holy Spirit means to see Christ in all His glory but refuse to repent.
Believers, on the other hand, openly repent so they may renew their minds and become a new creation.
To prove his points, Piper turns to Acts 16:31 and John 6:40.
It has always seemed to me that there is something about blaspheming the Spirit as Jesus intended us to understand it that has brought a person to the point where they are sinning in such a way that they are unwilling and unable to repent and believe. That is the way I am putting the two together. Esau would be an example of this. In Hebrews 12:17, it says, “You know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place of repentance.” That is a literal translation. I changed what the ESV says. “No place of repentance,” which I think means, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t find a place in his heart of genuine repentance, “though he sought it with tears.”
So, the point here is not that Esau repented and could not be forgiven, but that he couldn’t find the place of repentance. He had come to such hardness of heart against God, such love for the world: his bowl of cereal against his inheritance. He loved the world so much, he couldn’t stop loving the world. He could find no genuine repentance. And so he perished. And his tears were not tears of repentance. They were tears of remorse that he couldn’t repent.
If we exchange the world for Jesus as prescribed in His word, we will inherit the Kingdom. Thus, a true, repentant believer cannot blaspheme the Holy Spirit, Piper surmises.
Do you agree? Sound off!
