The ultimate blasphemy.

In Luke12:10 (inter al) we read some of the most chilling words of the Lord Jesus.  He speaks, there, about the "unforgivable/unpardonable sin".  That sin, He states, is "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit".

This is something that has exercised the minds of countless people down through the ages, and many genuine believers have been greatly concerned lest they be guilty of such a sin.  I always recall someone pointing out that, if one is concerned about the possibility of having committed that sin, then that alone is a fairly good pointer to the fact that it hasn't been committed!

So what is this terrible sin?  In my private devotions, this morning, I was reading that passage in Luke.  However, Matthew and Mark also make reference to those words, and do so in the context of an accusation that Jesus cast out devils by Beelzebul, the prince of demons. This was a case of calling 'good' 'evil' ? and to do so is to line up with evil itself. The corollary - calling 'evil' 'good' - is also a lining up of oneself with the evil one.

In the book that I am currently using, and that led me to that passage in Luke, Dr Leon Morris writes: "This attitude is a rejection of the Spirit's leading, a turning away from God's direction of life, and it is this that is the ultimate blasphemy.  When a man sets himself against God in this way, he cuts himself off from the possibility of forgiveness.  No mere words can do this, but the whole attitude of life can." (emphasis added).

It was the Creator, Himself Who, at the very beginning ordained that marriage should be between a man and a woman.  In the light of recent events, there are many Westminster parliamentarians and peers, from David Cameron down, who would do well to ponder those words of Dr Morris - and the words of Jesus on which he is commenting!  It is bad enough that the coalition government should bulldoze through the parliamentary procedures a bill for which it had no mandate; it is worse that it should have placed HM the Queen in the invidious position of having to give the Royal Assent to something that totally denies her Coronation Oath to "maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel".  However it is, according to the words of Jesus, unforgivable that it should so deliberately, and blatantly, oppose His design.  As the writer of the Letter to Hebrew disciples of Jesus reminds us, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." (Heb 10:31).