What is the unforgivable sin?

Blaspheming the Holy Spirit, also known as the unforgivable or unpardonable sin, is a topic that it seems a lot of people are concerned about. If you’re asking this question I can put your mind at ease, if you are still alive you haven’t committed the unforgivable sin. Yet.

The unforgivable sin is interpreted by Christian theologians in slightly different ways, but they generally agree that one who has committed the sin is no longer able to repent. So if you are fearful that you have committed it, it means you have not done so.

Essentially, blaspheming the Holy Spirit has to do with wilful and unrepentant refusal of salvation through Jesus.

The most well known scripture passage where blaspheming the Holy Spirit comes up is in Matthew 12:30–32 and the parallel account in Mark 3:28–30 where the Pharisees attribute the work of the Holy Spirit to evil spirits. Seeing Jesus expel demons should have draw them to him, realizing he is the Christ, instead they stubbornly rejected him. And rejecting salvation through Jesus is the only thing that can’t be forgiven since repentance and faith in him is the only way to be forgiven.

Orthodox Christian Serafim Alexivich Slobodskoy writes in his catechism “The Christian Faith”:

“Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” is conscious and hardened opposition to the truth, “because the Spirit is truth”. Conscious and hardened resistance to the truth leads man away from humility and repentance, and without repentance there can be no forgiveness. That is why the sin of blasphemy against the Spirit cannot be forgiven, since one who does not acknowledge his sin does not seek to have it forgiven.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that, while no sin is absolutely “unforgivable”, some sins represent a deliberate refusal to repent and accept the infinite mercy of God; a person committing such a sin refuses God’s forgiveness, which can lead to self-condemnation to hell. In other words, one damns oneself by refusal to repent.

John Calvin wrote:

I say, therefore, that he sins against the Holy Spirit who, while so constrained by the power of divine truth that he cannot plead ignorance, yet deliberately resists, and that merely for the sake of resisting.

Jacob Arminius defined the unforgivable sin as “the rejection and refusing of Jesus Christ through determined malice and hatred against Christ”

So in conclusion, if you fear you have committed the unpardonable sin, it shows you haven’t. The unpardonable sin is simply to refuse to repent of your sins.