Earlier, I mentioned that, although I’m all for orthodoxy and its various terminologies, the one term that I’m not fond of is “unpardonable sin”. It’s not because I don’t believe Jesus’ words about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit never being forgiven. It’s just that I think the word “unpardonable” makes it sound like God is limited.
The idea of limited atonement is a debated subject. If you’re not familiar with the term, the basic idea of limited atonement is that Jesus’ death atoned only for the sins of those whom God had predestined for salvation. So in Sunday-school kid language, you wouldn’t sing, “Jesus died for all the children of the world” - you’d sing, “Jesus died for all the Christians in the world”.
Now, to be fair, it’s not that the Calvinist theology denies that all the children of the world need to hear about Jesus. I’ve heard some people in Armenian circles single out some Calvinist churches and say that they are not evangelistic. They point out certain reformed denominations as inward focused and complacent about the Great Commission.
But I greatly disagree! If I could have my closest five friends in one room, they would be an interesting bunch. One would be my friend who married a man whom she called a “missionary-pastor-farmer-carpenter”, and pregnant with their first child, she and her husband want to someday reach the Muslim people for Christ. Another woman in that dear group is my friend who left her family, and as a single woman, went to India without much of a plan, married an Indian pastor, and now lives in the north in a persecuted area where she just had her first child at the mercy of rural Indian healthcare. There are many others too. The two dear sisters I mentioned are specifically a direct product of the Reformed church. If you study WW2 and the occupation of the Netherlands, you’ll read about a whole bunch of very brave and evangelistic Christians who risked their lives for the salvation of others, especially of God’s chosen people who were being persecuted by the Nazis!
Believing in limited atonement does not make someone complacent about the Great Commission - not by a long shot! So I have absolutely nothing against those who hold to it, but I really just can’t believe in it myself. The main reason is because of 1 John 2:1-2 which says, “My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.”
So why does the concept of limited atonement even matter when it comes to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? Well, I think it comes back to that term “unpardonable sin”, which is not a direct quote from Scripture. I don’t think the term is an appropriate description of the situation. I absolutely believe that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. I just don’t believe it is technically unpardonable. Semantics? Maybe….but let me try to explain.
A wise teenager, a missionary kid with a lot of Bible study for his sixteen years, once asked me a question, not because he didn’t know the answer, but because he wondered what I would say to such a question. And at first, I didn’t really know. “What is atonement and how does it work?” Oh, I knew what atonement is and how it works, but I had never had to concretely describe the whole thing. So I chose a not-always-so-great strategy. I opened my mouth and started rambling until some sense seemed to be emerging. But the Lord picked up where my fuzzy mind left off, and He began to remind me through His Holy Spirit, just what a miracle atonement is.
The real reason for my hope that I am saved by Jesus lies in that young man’s beautiful, excellent question: “What is atonement, and how does it work?” he asked.
When the young person asked me that question, he also gave me a helpful hint from his prior gleanings on the subject. He told me that to atone means to cover. And then, presto! The blurriness of swirling thoughts came into clear focus. This was not an abstract musing - this was the truth that had broken my chains of depression. This was what proved to me that there is a place for me in heaven and convinced me that the Holy Spirit is willing to dwell within me.
As a girl, I knew the stories from the Old Testament about sacrificial lambs. They were slaughtered as an atonement for sin - to cover over the sins of the Israelites. God saw the blood of the lambs as a substitution for the punishment that His people deserved. But as a young girl, I thought that the blood of those animals was really the thing that cleansed God’s people.
In my mind, it was lambs back then for people like Moses and David, and it is Jesus’ blood for anybody born after the time of Christ. But that was before I had truly deep-dived into the book of Hebrews. The book of Hebrews is what God used to shatter my fears that I was unforgivable. I could say a lot about that, but right now, I just want to focus on a signal phrase: “we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10 b).
“Once for all”… What does the word all mean? It means all who trust in the God of the Bible for atonement, for a covering over of their sin. It means all sin for all time. It means all iniquity of the past, back to the very first sin of Adam and Eve. It means all evil that has been committed ever since Jesus died. It means all trespasses that will unfold from now until the end of time as we know it. All means all.
All means that when God’s people offered up those lambs, they weren’t saved by the blood of the lambs. The lambs were a shadow, a symbol, the path to repentance and obedience. But it was Jesus’ blood that truly justified them. How does that work if Jesus hadn’t died yet? Was it an eventual imputation of atonement? I don’t have all the answers, but I do know that Hebrews 10:10 says “once for all”. And all means all.
But although the aspect of Jesus’ atonement covering past sins is amazing, what truly fascinates me is that His atonement covers all future sins. That’s the part that shattered my terror. If all means all, then there is no sin that has not potentially been atoned. I say potentially because not all sin will be forgiven. The only forgiven people will be the ones who have asked Jesus to forgive them, who have repented of their sins and asked God specifically for the atonement of the cross through Jesus, believing that Jesus is the Messiah.
So “once for all” means all those who believe in the God of the Bible. I knew I believed in Jesus. I just thought that He couldn’t forgive me. How did “once for all” work since Jesus said that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit would never be forgiven? As a child, I used to think that there was just one sin that had not been included in atonement. That sin made God so angry that when Jesus died, it wasn’t included in the ugliness that was imputed onto Jesus.
But the whole book of Hebrews explains that such thinking is actually a terrible insult to Jesus and the blood He shed for humanity. If I believe His blood has power to forgive all sin except one kind of sin, then I’m not really honoring the full power of His sacrifice - not if Hebrews 10:10 says “once for all”. Jesus said that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit would not be forgiven. He did not say that it could not be forgiven.
I am a literacy tutor. There was a season of my life during which I had the privilege of working with some beautiful immigrants who were in the process of learning English. I recall a lovely woman who was totally confounded by the concept of could and would. What do those words even mean? How does one use them? What is the difference between them? And I got onto a could and would kick, so to speak. I had several students at the time, and I began to incorporate would and could into more and more of their lessons. I was so fascinated by those two words that I wanted to show them to as many folks as I could. I had to break those words down into simple concepts. There’s no use explaining that “could means that I could do it”. That’s no help to a poor soul who is bewildered by the very English idea of could and would.
And so, I began to teach that could means can and would means will. Can and could start with the letter c and are related. Will and would start with the letter w and are related.
So bring this back to the verse about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Jesus said that this specific sin will not be forgiven - that’s a would kind of thing. He did not say that the sin cannot be forgiven - if He had, that would have been a could kind of thing. I used to think there was no difference between could and would, until I started teaching English. But now, those two words have changed my theology forever.
So blasphemy against the Holy Spirit can be forgiven, but it will never be forgiven. Why? Because no one who has blasphemed the Holy Spirit will ever approach God to ask for that potentially available atonement. In effect, Jesus could have just as well said that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven, because if it will not be, then technically it cannot be. But, the Bible specifically says that the sin will not be forgiven because the differentiation between could and would is so important.
It’s not that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit would be forgiven if God could atone for it. That makes it sound like God can’t atone. The truth is that this blasphemy could be forgiven if God would atone for it. God will not atone for it though. That’s scary, but only until John 6:37 comes into play. This is where Jesus said: “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.”
“By no means” rules out the means of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit as a means for being unforgiven. There is absolutely no means by which God will refuse someone who comes to Him asking for atonement - a covering over all sin. So how does this apparent contradiction resolve? God will not forgive blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, but there is no means by which He will turn someone away who asks for atonement. I think the answer is actually so simple. God could forgive that blasphemy because Jesus’ sacrifice was “once for all”. He could forgive that blasphemy because there is “no means” by which He will turn someone away. But, He will not forgive that blasphemy because nobody who has truly committed that specific sin will ever ask Him for atonement.
At that point, the heart of such a person is hard and doesn’t want God’s salvation. So why is this important? Because if you are afraid that you can’t be forgiven, you can rest assured that Jesus died once for all. And if you are afraid that you won’t be forgiven, Jesus said that He will cast you out by no means. So the only reason you won’t be forgiven is that you become afraid and don’t ask God to forgive you because you think that He can’t.
The Holy Spirit is the one who has given you the desire to be forgiven, the hunger to repent and ask for the atonement of Christ. Blaspheming Him cuts off His work in your life, and if you had truly done that, you would not feel this desire for God. If you are worried about having blasphemed the Holy Spirit, then you haven’t actually done it!
So what is atonement? - It is once for all.
How does it work? - It works once for all.
In other words - the atonement of Christ was for you, if you will receive it. If you desire to ask God to atone for your sins, then God is already working in your heart, drawing you to Himself through the power of His Holy Spirit.
He can forgive you and will not cast you away.
That’s the power of atonement.
Create Your Own Website With Webador