Very early in Jesus’ ministry, He stayed mostly in Galilee. People came from all over that part of the world to see Him. With all the crowds constantly following Him around, it must have been at times quite maddening. While the Twelve got enough of it very early on, even Jesus found He, too, had to escape once in awhile. On the day after selecting the Twelve and giving them His power over sickness and demons, followed by their ecstatic report later, they all went back to their headquarters in Capernaum. But the crowd followed them, even into the house where they were staying.
Jesus’ family decided He had quite lost His mind, and were trying to rescue Him from the mob of needy folks. As these relatives made their way toward the house, they crossed paths with a deputation of scribes, sent from Jerusalem to investigate Jesus and His activities. This deputation, upon hearing this talk Jesus was perhaps not in His right mind, chimed in:
“He has Beelzebub,” and “By the ruler of the demons He casts out demons.”
So He called them to Himself and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself, and is divided he cannot stand, but has an end. No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man. And then he will plunder his house.” (Mark 3:22-27)
The rabbis had it all figured out. They had studied the Hebrew Scriptures to death, and were absolutely certain they had it all nailed down. They knew precisely what the Messiah would be like, where he would come from, what sorts of things he would say, what he would do — the Messianic Expectations. They were equally certain he would include them into his new kingdom on earth as the leaders of The People of God, and that all the Gentiles would be made slaves. They had quite a large body of work demonstrating how these things simply must be.
Most Rabbis were members of the Pharisees, as were most scribes. The scribes were men who trained for their status as lawyers by engaging in several years of copying the Scriptures, particularly the Torah. Make enough copies, and a man could memorize a great deal of it. In the process, they would rely on established word counts, letter counts, etc. It was all down to a fine science; it produced a steady stream of educated men, as well as insuring replacements when a scroll of Scripture aged to the point of falling apart. This system of copying offered a tremendous degree of accuracy and fidelity to the original sacred texts.
For these men, it was a passion to guard the body of truth from any attack, no matter how subtle. Every teaching rabbi, especially if he was popular, was investigated by scribes. Those who didn’t pass muster were at the very least publicly discredited. Preliminary attempts to do that to Jesus had failed, because this was not just a popular teacher — this one did real miracles. To the average working-class Jew, such was pretty persuasive proof God Almighty was behind His teaching, and typically raised some anticipation this could be the Messiah. While the Pharisees wanted as much as anybody to see the Messiah appear, they were always on a hair trigger because such talk might get Roman attention.
A significant portion of Jesus’ miracles were in the form of delivering folks from the oppression of demons. We know little of that today, but the scribes sent to investigate weren’t arguing it was fake, only that they were certain this rabbi was not from God. He didn’t follow the prescribed lesson plans of the rabbinical colleges, and He dared to speak without referring to some established expert. Worst of all, He rejected their well-established interpretations. For all their memorization of Moses, they gave precedence to the Talmud, a body of Hellenistic analysis applied to Hebrew Scripture. It closed their minds to what Moses actually had to say. Their twisted understanding forced them to look for some other explanation of His power.
So they declared He was using the power of demons to control the demons and that He was operating from within the demonic chain of command. His personal demon was Beelzebub — a nickname for Satan, taken from a Canaanite deity. Thus, Jesus was possessed of Satan himself.
Jesus wasted no time in responding to this. He called the scribes into the house and asked them how they could suggest such a thing. Their own brand of Hellenistic logic alone was enough to make it false. Satan was not in the business of setting people free from his power by ordering his demons out of people. The very idea was silly. The only way a demon could be dispatched was for someone to have a higher authority than even Satan. That could only be God. Thus, Jesus was asserting once again He was from God, and used God’s power. The proof was in the results of that power.
Satan can do no good thing. He might well at times appear to do something which might be called “good” by most people, but only if he can gain an even greater evil by it. The purpose would be deception. And even then, what “good” he brought would certainly turn out to be evil soon enough. Satan can only pervert what God does. It might be accurate enough to say Satan has no authority to do good.
Of course, the scribes may have had another motive in all this: Jesus’ teaching of Moses was a threat to the system which made life so pleasant for them. If what Jesus taught was true, and if He was the Messiah, they were in big trouble. The whole structure of Jewish society at that time was at risk of being destroyed, and their comfortable situation was about to disappear. All the more so was there a threat to the Temple bureaucracy which employed these scribes.
Either way, their suggestion Jesus worked from Satan’s power, and not from God’s, was crossing way over the line. It wasn’t just a matter of them making fools of themselves in front of a man who could argue circles around them any time and every time, whether by their own logical rules or by Hebraic symbolic logic. They were at risk of finding themselves under God’s wrath permanently, with no opportunity of repentance.
Here they were, witnessing the very hand of God at work in the lives of people for whom the Temple hierarchy cared nothing. Folks were set free from the terror of living with evil powers which used them like cheap toys; they were relieved of debilitating infirmities. Best of all, they were hearing the Word of God. If the scribes were so far from God they could look at His handiwork and declare it the product of demons, there was no hope for them. Jesus warned them:
“Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter, but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation” — because they said, “He has an unclean spirit.” (Mark 3:28-30)
What the scribes had said was blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, which was the Spirit in Jesus. It was the literal presence of this Holy Spirit which made the miracles possible. To declare His work evil was an expression of contempt which was unforgivable. It takes a really hardened heart to do that. These men were not defending the God of their fathers, Jehovah. They were fighting for some other god.
This is the “Unpardonable Sin” or “Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit”. To “blaspheme” is to express contempt for God, either by talking bad about Him, or by claiming His attributes for yourself. You can talk bad about the Father; He will forgive you. You can bad-mouth Jesus, and if you change your mind later, He’ll still embrace you. But you can’t show contempt for the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. If you can declare His good as satanic, you can never go back.
I’ve heard and read no end of speculation on what the Unpardonable Sin is, and heard folks express worries about it. The best answer is this: If you are worried about it, you didn’t do it. If you can fear God’s wrath, you are still safe. If you are already a believer, you most certainly haven’t, and won’t, commit that sin. The Holy Spirit living inside you will prevent that level of bitterness.
