Ruin Without Remedy Series

A certain seer warned Caesar to be on guard against a great peril on the day of March which the

Romans called Ides. When the day came and Caesar was on his way to the senate house he greeted

the seer with a jest, and said, "Well, the Ides of March are come." "Aye," said the seer. "They are

come, but they are not gone." In other words, the warning would not be proven false until the day

ended, and as we know, the Ides of March prove to be the last of Caesar.

Jesus gave His critics a very serious warning; in fact, the danger was so great that there is nothing

else to equal it. He warned them concerning the unforgivable sin. It is such a terrible thing to

consider that many prefer to ignore it, and others just dismiss it as a sin that could only be committed

by people in the day of Christ, and it does not concern us now. They would dismiss the warning

with a Caesar-like, "Well, that danger is past and gone." But the Sovereign Seer, our Savior, I fear

would reply, "Aye, that danger is past, but it is not over. It is also present. It has come, but it has

not gone."

It is unreasonable to think that Jesus would declare a sin to be unforgivable, and mean by it, it is

only unforgivable if you do it now rather than later. If blasphemy of the Holy Spirit was

unforgivable before the Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost, then by what logic can it be maintained

that it is not now unforgivable sense the Holy Spirit has more prominence then ever in God's plan?

If Jesus meant to limit the danger just to those Pharisees who criticized Him that day; who said He

was filled with the devil, He did not make it clear, and if this was the case, there would be some

weight behind Bertrand Russell's criticism of Christ in giving this warning. Russell, the well known

atheist writes in his book, Why I Am Not A Christian, concerning this passage:

"That text has caused an unspeakable amount of misery in the world

for all sorts of people have imagined that they have committed the sin

against the Holy Ghost, and thought it would not be forgiven them either in this life or in the world

to come. I really do not think that a person with a proper degree of kindliness in his nature would

have put fears and terrors of that sort into the world."

The facts of history will back him up as to the misery this warning has caused. Doctors,

psychiatrists, and preachers can testify to the fact that many people have gone insane over worry

about this sin. D. L. Moody said in his wide experience, "We have not been in a place in this

country-and I think we were not in more than one or two places while we were abroad-but we found

some people who thought they had committed the unpardonable sin." We could quote from ancient

history and modern days from men who find this same thing to be true. This means that if Jesus

meant only to say that this sin applied just to those who criticized Him, and to no others, but did not

make it clear, he would be guilty for all this history of unnecessary agony.

This leads us to the obvious conclusion that the warning was not just for them, but for all time.

Men can blaspheme the Holy Spirit today just as they could then. This being so, it was not unkind

for Jesus to give the warning as Russell charges, but was an act of marvelous mercy. Jesus could

have let these cold-hearted cruel critics go on in their evil to a ruin without remedy, but as verse 23

makes clear, He called them aside purposely to show them their folly, and to warn them less they go

beyond the point of no return. Where can one find an act of kindness to match this? Warning men

who have just maliciously slandered you by calling you an agent of the god of flies and dung, in the

hope that they might stop short of a sin beyond hope. The vast majority of commentators agree that

the Pharisees were not yet guilty of this sin, but would be if they persisted in their accusation after

this warning.

We have established then that the unforgivable sin is still possible, and will be to the end of

history. And also that to be warned of it was an act of kindness on the part of Christ, there being

nothing kind about letting men plunge to their doom without warning because you didn't want to

make them nervous by telling them the bridge was gone. Any sane person would prefer the kindness