(upbeat music) - We get a lot of emails from listeners every month and I don't think there's a more common question in our inbox than one that we recently received from a listener who asks this, hello Pastor John, I read your article about the unforgivable sin of blaspheming against the Holy Spirit.

My questions are two. Number one, can a true believer whose salvation is eternally secure in Christ still be guilty of blasphemy? And number two, is blaspheming the Holy Spirit the same as grieving the Holy Spirit? Pastor John, what would you say to this listener and many others? - Let's put a couple of key passages in front of us about the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit so we know what we're talking about.

So here's Mark chapter three, verse 28 to 30. Truly I say to you, Jesus is talking, truly I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man. And whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.

For they were saying, he has an unclean spirit. In other words, they were attributing Jesus' deeds to the devil instead of the power of God in him. One more text, Luke 12, 10. And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven. But the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

Now, over the span of my ministry, there have been several people, not a lot, but several, probably a lot more people who don't come forward, but these came forward. Several people who came to me deeply convinced they had committed the sin against the Holy Spirit and were therefore beyond forgiveness.

And they were terrified, as you can imagine. Now, it seems to me that we need, in helping those people deal with what they're saying, we need to put alongside the statement that blaspheming the Spirit cannot be forgiven, which is there, the many statements that whosoever believes on the Lord, Jesus will be saved, not whosoever believes if they haven't done a few other things.

For example, Acts 16, 31, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. He didn't ask the jailer. Now, you ever blasphemed against the Spirit of God? He just said, "If you believe, you'll be saved." And John 6, 40, Jesus said, "For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." So it has always seemed to me that there is something about blaspheming the Spirit, as Jesus intended us to understand it, that has brought a person to the point where they are sinning in such a way that they are unwilling and unable to repent and believe.

That's why I'm putting the two together. Esau would be an example of this in Hebrews 12, 17, where it says, "You know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place of repentance." That's a literal translation. I changed the ESV, "No place of repentance," which I think means he couldn't do it.

He couldn't find a place in his heart of genuine repentance, though he sought it with tears. So the point here is not that Esau repented and could not be forgiven. He couldn't find the place of repentance. He had come to such hardness of heart against God, such love for the world, his bowl of cereal against his inheritance.

He loved the world so much, he couldn't stop loving the world. He could find no genuine repentance, and so he perished. And his tears were not tears of repentance. They were tears of remorse that he couldn't repent. So let me give a quote from one of my favorite commentators, Henry Alford, about the sin, the unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the Spirit.

Here's what he said, just one sentence. "It is not a particular species of sin which is here condemned." Like, ooh, I've done that one thing. "But," he says, "it is a definite act showing a state of sin, and that state a willful, determined opposition to the present power of the Holy Spirit.

And this as shown by its fruit, blasphemy." The declaration in substance of what the New Testament often says. So here's the key phrase there. It's a state of willful, determined opposition to the power of the Holy Spirit. And then he gives, as one of those other places in the New Testament, 1 John 5:16, which says, "If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he should ask, and God will give him life." To those who commit sin, there is sin that does not lead to death, but there is sin that leads to death, and I do not say that one should pray for that.

So this is not, there is a sin that leads to death, but there is sin. That's the way it should be translated. There is sinning. There is a kind of willful, determined, settled opposition to God and His Spirit. So here are my answers to the two questions. One, can a true believer whose salvation is eternally secure in Christ still be guilty of blaspheming the Holy Spirit?

No, because I think the meaning of the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, as Alford says, is a willful, determined opposition to the present power of the Holy Spirit, and Christians cannot commit that kind of sin. They don't settle in like that with a settled, determined, willful opposition. Christians can commit all kinds of sin, but what marks a Christian is they don't settle in long-term.

They hate it, and they repent from it. They feel bad about it. They turn to God for fresh forgiveness. So no, a Christian cannot commit what Jesus calls blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Question number two, is blaspheming the Spirit the same as grieving the Spirit? No, they are not the same, and you can see the difference in Ephesians 4, 29 to 31, where Paul says, "Let no corrupting talk "come out of your mouths, "but only such as is good for building up "as fits the occasion, "that it may give grace to those who hear." Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you with all malice. So two things. One, when we grieve the Holy Spirit, Paul says, we're grieving the one who has sealed us for the day of redemption, which means that in the very same breath of saying you can grieve him, he's saying, "You're secure, you're sealed.

"He will not break that seal. "He has got you and he's keeping you "for the day of redemption." And the other thing to notice is specifically what it is that does grieve him. What grieves him is bitterness and wrath and anger against other people. These are the things that Christians do and regret doing and have to repent of doing and ask forgiveness for doing.

And that very repentance is the work of the Holy Spirit in great mercy to awaken the children of God to repentance so that we will make it to the day of redemption. - That's so good and deeply reassuring for believers. Thank you, Pastor John. And this is such a common question that we get all the time.

And if you have a question for Pastor John, please send it in to us via email. Keep it concise and to the point. And go to our online home and click on the button that you'll find at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Well, we are all about delighting in God. There is nothing more important in the world.

But if it's so important for the Christian life and so precious to us individually, why does it seem like our joy in God is so short-lived? If the shelf life of our delight in him seems so short, what can we do to preserve it? That's the question on the table tomorrow.

I'm your host, Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime pastor and author, John Piper. We'll see you tomorrow. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)