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NASB | Matthew 12:31 ¶ "Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Matthew 12:31 ¶ "Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy [every evil, abusive, injurious speaking, or indignity against sacred things] will be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the [Holy] Spirit will not be forgiven. |
Subject: Why is it not relevant today? |
Bible Note: Psalm, I was really asking you to clarify your position; sorry I wasn't clear. For reference I will copy and paste your post (186832 ). You wrote: “If we keep Matt. 12:31 in context the pharisees refused to acknowledge Jesus as "the Son of God," and were therfore attributing His miracles as originating from Satan rather than from God. They only had two choices, either Jesus was "from God the Father" or He was not. If He was not then He got His power from the devil. The reason it is not relevant today is it was directly addressed to the pharisees as "they were the ones blaspheming the Holy Spirit giving credit for the miracles to Satan." The reason it was unforgivable is they did not believe in Jesus as being the Son of God. The one and only unforgivable sin is refusing to believe in Jesus.” In the effort to be clear I will keep it simple. I don’t agree that the argument that Jesus “addressed the Pharisees directly as they were the ones blaspheming the Holy Spirit…” supports that the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit is not relevant for today. I did offer an alternative that I have heard others argue, put simply, it was not that Jesus addressed them directly, but rather that they addressed Him directly. In other words, the argument offers that because Jesus the man as ascended and is no longer doing miracles in person for us to witness, it is impossible for us to witness it first hand and attribute it to Satan. After rereading your post several times, it may be that the later is what you were trying to say (maybe not- not wanting to put words in your mouth so to speak :) I may have said that this argument carries some logic, but I also said, and want to reiterate, that I don’t claim to know the answer; I don’t know the answer. Another thing that stood out and lead me to seek clarification was that you seemed to be contradicting yourself; and of course I may be simply misunderstanding you, thus the need for clarification. In either case, you seem to be saying that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit does not/can not occur today while at the same time ending your post with “The one and only unforgivable sin is refusing to believe in Jesus”. It is still possible to, and many do, live a life-time and die having refused to believe in Jesus. So based on your post, as I understand it, you either do believe in at least two unforgivable sins, OR, you believe blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is still relevant for today (and refusing to believe in Christ is that sin), OR, you don’t believe people refuse to believe in Jesus (and I'm not saying that either is true, just left unsure which). Some might argue that this whole issue is irrelevant and not worthy of serious time and consideration. My response to that would be that if there is such thing as a sin that is UNFORGIVABLE by God (and Jesus clearly said there is) it ranks way up there. Whether or not we can answer if the sin is committable today begs the question, why is the warning found in Scripture? God bless, Jeff |