The Unforgivable(?) Sin

Sometimes I talk with people who believe that they or someone they love did something unforgivable and would be punished by God forever. The offenses they name are very different, both in scope and severity: lying repeatedly to one's parents; doubting the virgin birth of Jesus; being a lesbian; dodging the draft; committing adultery; failing to pay a pledged tithe; having an abortion; and showing anger toward God.

Quite a list, to be sure. About some of the items on it, the Bible offers explicit guidance; about other items, the Bible leaves us to work out inferences on our own. One thing, though, is clear about the list as a whole: there is nothing on it which our Lord counted as an unforgivable sin. When Jesus talked about the latter, he had something quite different in mind: blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Only this, he said, will never be forgiven.

In Mark's Gospel, blaspheming the Holy Spirit means attributing the effectiveness of Jesus' exorcisms to the power of Satan. (3:22, 28-30) Some scholars suggest that Mark may have meant something more general as well, that we commit blasphemy against the Holy Spirit by attributing to Satan not just the exorcisms, but the power of Jesus' ministry as a whole. The text itself suggests a carefully restricted context for Jesus' words. They seem to have been meant for certain scribes who traveled from Jerusalem to Galilee to accuse him --- in considerable confusion --- both of being possessed by Satan and of driving out other demons by Satan's own power. Jesus must have enjoyed asking them, in response, How can Satan drive out Satan? (vs. 23)

Happily, I have yet to meet scribes like these, and so I have yet to find myself in a situation which really permits introducing on my own the subject of a sin that will never be forgiven. If someday I should happen upon such scribes and hear them saying horrific things about Jesus' exorcisms, I will probably give them the full dose of Jesus' teaching on the subject, and move on to more productive conversations as quickly as possible. From the perspective of the Gospels as a whole, though, it looks as if Jesus' scribes dropped this particular subject immediately and began assaulting him in other ways.

Although I still meet people who are absolutely convinced that they have done something truly unpardonable, I do not know anyone who has actually committed the one and only unforgivable sin that Jesus warns against. Perhaps a heartfelt "Whew!" is in order. The sins that "from time to time we most grievously have committed" are serious enough to warrant close attention in their own right, without our working overtime to ferret out something even worse.

By the mid second century, Christians apparently began easing off from an earlier morbid fascination with unforgivable sin. A powerful sign of the shift in attitude is evident in the Apostles' Creed, which probably originated in the congregation at Rome before the century was out. Contained in that Creed is the familiar affirmation of belief "in the forgiveness of sins." Not some sins. Not all sins but one. But all sins, period.

This Roman congregation got it right. If there is any one thing that Christians at all times and everywhere can agree upon, it is that in the name of Jesus Christ, God forgives us our sins and calls us to forgive others as we have been forgiven. Paul put it well to an earlier Roman congregation: nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:39) Some sins are relatively minor and atoned for relatively easily, e.g.: failing to attend Sunday services regularly. Other sins are serious enough to put the very quality of our relationship with God and our neighbors in jeopardy, e.g.: failure to care for the poor and the needy. But no sin is powerful enough to overcome God's reconciling us to himself, through Christ.

Both the overly scrupulous and the spiritually mature among us are highly susceptible to despair over the terrible things we do to ourselves, to one another, and to our relationship with God. My own list of especially worrisome sins is becoming shorter, but the things on it are bothering me more and more, e.g.: denigrating other people according to their beliefs, affiliations, income, gender, ethnicity; celebrating having more while others have less; treating the created order as largesse there for the taking. But where sin is, grace also abounds. God will always love us more than we love our sins.