Today's passage on the Sacred Space was the one where Jesus tells us about the 'unforgiveable sin'. The one sin every Christian is desperately afraid of committing: blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. I've always wondered what exactly that sin entailed. Did it include swearing? Taking the Lord's name in vain? The site has a link called 'Need inspiration?' that you can click to get a little more insight on the passage. Here, I discovered that this sin, as the Jews would have understood it back then, was ignoring the promptings of the Lord that indicated whether a thing was good or not. Basically, calling goodness and truth evil and calling evil good.
That's the sin of the devil, isn't it? In the garden, with Adam & Eve, did Satan not decieve them into thinking that which was good for them (not eating from the tree) was really holding them back? That the good was really just God being evil and malicious towards them? Curious.
But then, did Adam and Eve not participate in that sin? Did they not blaspheme the Holy Spirit when they agreed with the devil? And yet, God still used them to create all humanity.
I still don't know where I stand on this passage. It's definitely a hard one to get your mind around. I wonder if the unforgiveable sin is refusing to acknowledge that we sin at all. I wonder if the unforgiveable sin is refusing the Holy Spirit's promptings that we need Jesus. Because I think in the context of that passage, that's exactly what Jesus was trying to tell the Pharisees: They didn't believe they were sinners and they certainly didn't believe that they needed Jesus and the forgiveness he offered.
Curious.
What do you think about this passage (Mark 3:22-30)? What is God saying to you when you read it?
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1 comment:
Yeah, some of Jesus' teachings sure are harder to understand than others. I mean, lover your neighbor I get, but some of his harder teachings - man. It's tough. But I think its important for us to think about stuff like that or we'd only get half the picture of what Jesus wants to teach us.
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