The Unforgiveable Sin. Rom 10:9-10, Matt
We are answering the
question, is the resurrection a part of the gospel message? The answer to that
is yes, it is part of the gospel message, it is how we
see Jesus Christ proclaimed by the apostles in the book of Acts and throughout
other passages in the New Testament. The proclamation of the gospel or when you
are in a position where you are witnessing to someone entails the communication
of certain pieces of information. The way the gospel is presented in the
Scripture is that Jesus is presented as the Son of God; He is presented as
divine; He is presented as the risen savior. That may or may not entail going
into those doctrines in a certain amount of depth, depending on the age of the
person, their background, or other factors.
There are some today who say
that not just the message must entail the resurrection of Christ but that if
you don’t believe as a separate proposition in the resurrection of Christ when
you first believe then you aren’t saved. This gets a little dicey for some
people because, of course, we are believing in a risen
savior and when you are four or five or six years old as a young child you
don’t understand a lot of the intricacies and the abstractions that can be
related to understanding these things, and certainly you don’t understand resurrection.
But when you are presented with a living divine savior then if you are trusting
Him that is what you are trusting in. When you get older you may have your
thinking shaped and twisted by misunderstandings of Christianity, by cults that
have taught various things, false views of Jesus, then a person with that sort
of thinking needs to have it corrected so that they understand the who of who
Jesus is as well as the what because the two ultimately are inseparable.
Some people have come along and
said that you have to not only present Christ as a risen savior but to be saved
you have to understand that in an analyzed way and believe that Jesus rose from
the dead. Two passages that are used to support that are 1 Corinthians 15:3,4 and Romans 10:9, 10. At first glance if you think of
“saved” as getting eternal life as a synonym for justification or regeneration
then it seems that Romans 10:9, 10 is saying you not only have to confess
publicly that Jesus is Lord but you must also believe that He was raised from
the dead or you are not saved. But if Paul means something by the word “saved”
other than to be justified or regenerated then this verse really means
something else.
Where we get into a problem
here is that in the 20th century evangelical environment the word
“saved” has come to mean a technical term for moving from spiritual death to
spiritual life, from being unrighteous to righteous, from being dead in sins to
being alive in Christ or regenerate. However, that is not how this word group is
really used in the Scriptures. There are passages such as Romans 5:12 that talk
about the fact that we have been justified so we will be saved—have been
justified is a past tense concept; that we will be saved is future, so we can
be justified and not saved because he is talking about saved in a completed or
final sense in terms of that final face to face reality before the Lord, not in
terms of that initial experience of becoming born again, regenerate, and
justified. We have to understand these distinctions. Often we talk about the
fact that when we trust Christ as savior we are saved from the penalty of sin.
As we grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ we are being
saved from the power of sin. Then when we die physically and we are absent from
the body and face to face with the Lord we are saved from the presence of
sin. So whenever we see that word
“saved” or “salvation” in the Bible we need to ask if it is talking about phase
one, phase two, or phase three. In the epistle to the Romans Paul never uses
the word “saved” as a synonym for justified, he either uses it as a synonym for
phase three, glorification, or as a summary of the whole process, ending up
with our being face to face with the Lord in heaven.
Do we have to believe in the substitutionary death of Christ for our sins? Yes, we do.
Do we have to believe in the resurrection? In an analyzed way, not
necessarily—a small child cannot understand, but he can understand believing in
Jesus Christ to be saved. Resurrection isn’t part of what we must believe but
we can’t deny it. We can’t be an older individual and say we believe in a Jesus
who didn’t rise from the dead, or that we believe in a Jesus who wasn’t God. A
Jesus who wasn’t God and didn’t rise from the dead isn’t a Jesus who saved you,
so then you have the wrong who. We have to understand that we believe in the
Jesus who died and rose from the dead for our sins, the Jesus of the Bible, not
the Jesus of Mormonism, not the Jesus of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who is not
God, or the Jesus of the Hindus who is just another avatar. We believe in the
Jesus who is the Messiah of Israel, the greater son of David, the one to whom
all the prophets pointed.
We have seen that as we
approach Romans 9-11 we have to understand the context in the epistle to the
Romans. The epistle to the Romans deals with the topic of how a person is
justified in chapters 3, 4 and 5. That is, how do we get eternal life? How do
we move from being spiritually dead to being spiritually alive? How do we move
from being dead in Adam to being alive in Christ? How are we born again? That
happens by faith alone in Christ alone. But then starting in chapter six
through chapter eight the apostle Paul shifts to now that he is justified how
does a person live? How is he to live in this new life that he has in Christ?
We call that sanctification, experiential or progressive sanctification. It is
the growth that we have in our spiritual life. At the conclusion of chapter
eight Paul says that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, and
someone might say well what about the Jews, it seems that they have been
separated from the love of God. Chapters 9-11 focus on vindicating God’s
righteousness in relationship to
We need to look at what Paul
says in Romans chapter nine. First, we see that he makes the point that God
chose Abraham and his descendants as a corporate group through which He would
do four things. We are looking at them as a group, as a whole, not in terms of
individual parts. The first thing God promised Abraham was that through him all
nations would be blessed. Genesis 12:2, all nations would be blessed through
the coming of the savior, i.e. the seed promised to Abraham—also repeated in
Galatians 3:16. Secondly, Paul points out in this chapter that
As we come to a passage like
this we have to focus on context and not only the immediate context of Romans
9-11 and understanding this context of corporate Israel, that God is dealing
with them as a whole as well as in terms of being individuals. That means that
We also have to look at a
biblical context, which means that we understand these two verses (Romans 10:9,
10) but they are surrounded by Old Testament references. To really understand
these two verses which at the surface looks like a “salvation” verse—it is
often used that way in many churches, and that ignores the context of Romans
9-11, the context of Romans, and ignores the context of the Bible—we have to
look at some background passages that are used and quoted in this section:
Deuteronomy 30; Joel 2. We must also understand Matthew 12:24, 31-32;
Romans 10:6-8 loosely
paraphrases Deuteronomy 30:11-14, the context of which is important. Deut
30:1-3 “So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the
blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call {them} to mind
in all nations where the LORD your God has banished you,
The focus here is on
Romans
10:9 NASB “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus {as} Lord, and
believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be
saved”—from what? In order to
answer that question we have to go to another passage for background, Matthew
chapter twelve which is a pivotal chapter in the Gospel covering the pivotal
event in Christ’s ministry; because He came to offer the kingdom to Israel. He
came to
There is an interesting
parallel in the Old Testament in passages such as 2 Kings 23 and Ezekiel 14
which indicate that the nation could reach a point of no return. The fifth
cycle of discipline is going to come into effect and they will be taken out of
the land even if they turn to God before that. There is a point of cumulative
consequences that could occur because of continuous sin where God is going to
have to bring about the fifth cycle of discipline no matter what. The same
thing can be true in our own lives. God may in grace overlook sin in our life
to a certain point and then if there is no change or growth God is going to
bring about the discipline necessary to get our attention.
We see an example of this
in 2 Kings 23:24 NASB “Moreover, Josiah removed the mediums and the spiritists and the teraphim and
the idols and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in
Jerusalem, that he might confirm the words of the law which were written in the
book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of
the LORD.” Josiah was a good king, he had instituted a tremendous spiritual revival in
the nation. He was the son of Manasseh the most wicked, evil king the northern
kingdom had, and the nation was so apostate and had been for so long that no
matter how spiritual they became under Josiah the die was cast and God was
going to take them out under divine discipline. [25] “Before him there was no
king like him who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul
and with all his might, according to all the law of
Moses; nor did any like him arise after him.” Next to David he was the most
spiritual king that
In Matthew chapter twelve
we have the unpardonable sin. It is important to understand what is meant by
the unpardonable sin. This chapter brings the confrontation between Jesus and
the Pharisees to a head. As He has continued to teach and to correctly
interpret the law of Moses it has challenged the
teaching of the Pharisees—their legalism, their whole traditional set-up, and
their authority over the people. The first thing that happens in Jesus is
walking with His disciples, they go through a field where the wheat has grown
and they began to pull off grains of wheat to eat, and it is on the Sabbath. According to Pharisaical tradition that violated the Sabbath law.
It did not violate what the Mosaic law said, it only
violated their tradition, and so they confront Jesus and challenge Him.
Then in vv. 9-14 there is
another conflict because Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath. This intensifies the
conflict. In verse 14 NASB “But the Pharisees went out and conspired
against Him, {as to} how they might destroy Him.” Luke tells us that they were
filled with rage. This is the beginning of the end, we might say, the great
turning point. Jesus has offered the kingdom to the nation and now we are going
to see that the nation rejects it.
Matthew
That leads up to another
miracle in v. 22 where He is going to cast out a demon. NASB “Then a
demon-possessed man {who was} blind and mute was brought to Jesus, and He
healed him, so that the mute man spoke and saw.” Why is it important that we
are told that he is blind and mute? It is because the procedure that the Jews
used for casting out a demon was that they would enter into a conversation with
the demon, ask the demon what his name was, and then use the name to cast the
demon out. Jesus followed that procedure with the Gadarene
demoniac, but here He is not. Why? If you ask a mute demon what his name is he
can’t tell you! The Jews had a tradition that when the Messiah came He would
cast out a mute demon. The rabbis couldn’t do that. This is a unique messianic
sign. See the response of the multitude, v. 23 NASB “All the crowds
were amazed, and were saying, ‘This man cannot be the Son of David, can he?’”
Is this the Messiah? Nobody had ever done this before!
Matthew
Matthew 12:28 NASB
“But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has
come upon you.” If He has been doing these things by the Spirit of God then
that confirms he is the Messiah and that His offer of the kingdom is
legitimate.
After Jesus talks to them
in vv. 25-30 He is then going to make His point in v. 31 NASB
“Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but
blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven.” Then He defines what that
is. [32] “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven
him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him,
either in this age or in the {age} to come.”
What does He mean by
“Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man”? If we look at the first eight
verses where Jesus is talking His disciples through the grain field, the last
verse, verse 8, says, “For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” That is the
point He makes, he identifies Himself with the Son of Man. Did the Pharisees
challenge Him there? Yes, they challenge Him and His identity as the Son of
Man. Jesus says they can speak a word against the Son of Man but it is not the
determinative sin, it will be forgiven. But whoever sins against the Holy
Spirit … when the nation gets to that point where the leaders reject completely
the evidence of the Holy Spirit and say it is not the Holy Spirit, it is the
devil, that is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and it won’t be forgiven
them.
The question is, what kind of forgiveness is this? We have identified
four different types of forgiveness in Scripture: judicial forgiveness,
positional forgiveness in Christ, experiential forgiveness in time, and the
forgiveness that we have relationally one to another. This is the third kind of
forgiveness. He is not talking about it being unforgivable in the sense that
they can’t or won’t pay for, He is saying that this is
the same kind of sin that the Jews had in the Old Testament. This cuts it, they are going out under divine discipline because they
rejected Him as the Messiah. It is not talking about the fact that they can’t
be justified and get into heaven now because they have blasphemed against the
Holy Spirit, He is saying by rejecting Him things have come to a head, this is
the final spot; they have rejected Him and His offer of the kingdom and so He
was withdrawing it. From this point on He will not go to
Summary:
·
Jesus announces
that this is a judgment of divine discipline on the nation at this time. Only
that generation could commit the unforgivable sin. This is a unique sin in
history, related to
·
Jesus announced
this judgment and it came in AD 70 when the Romans armies took the nation out under divine
discipline, and they are still under divine discipline. But Paul says in Romans
chapter eleven that they will have a future deliverance, not justification.
When does this occur? When the deliverer comes out of
·
·
Just before Jesus
went to the cross He said: Matthew 23:39 NASB “For I say to you,
from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!’” The Jews don’t say that until the end of the
Tribulation period, and when they do Jesus Christ will return. He will give
them victory over the armies of the Antichrist, He will physically deliver
them, and He will then lead them on a march of Triumph back to
·
The point that we
need to understand is the significance that Matthew chapter twelve plays, that