Luke 12:8-12 :

“I tell you, everyone who confesses me before men, him will the Son of Man also confess before the angels of God; but he who denies me in the presence of men will be denied in the presence of the angels of God. Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but those who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, don’t be anxious how or what you will answer, or what you will say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that same hour what you must say.”

Here is another place where we see that our faith cannot remain internal but in order to be real must be visible on the outside. If we claim that Jesus is our savior and when asked we deny it, how real do we believe our salvation is? How could we deny what saves our soul from hell. Some have tried to say that confessing saves you. It doesn’t save you either because actions without faith are just as worthless as “faith” without actions. It is only belief that saves you, but God knows that true belief is demonstrated by our actions. We cannot say that we wish to be saved from our sin and then go on sinning as if it doesn’t matter. That is not a real faith because our actions don’t show that we really believe in a Hell or that we need salvation from it or that Jesus actually did the saving. When a person is really saved, they are grateful and protective of their savior, not embarrassed of him.

Now we get to what is sometimes called “the un-forgivable sin.” Jesus clearly says that when people speak bad of Him they can be forgiven but not when they speak bad of the Holy Spirit. Mark tells us that when this was said it was in a specific context. It happened when Jesus was accused of having an evil spirit by which He did miracles.

In other words, Jesus was clearly doing miracles by some spirit and these people were witnesses of it, but even though they clearly could see that Jesus was doing good, they chose to attribute it to evil. I don’t believe we are able to do this today. We cannot see Jesus in the way that these people were seeing Him. He was healing huge numbers of people right in front of them, even raising the dead. These were not fake healings but clearly people who had sometimes been born with problems that everyone knew of. The people that Jesus was talking to were right there with Him watching these things take place were aware that God had declared from Heaven with a real voice that He was the Messiah.

There is a way that we can fail to be saved, and that is to reject Jesus when the Holy Spirit makes Him clear. I don’t believe that this is the un-forgivable sin, but it may be the last chance you will get to believe. Once we are saved, we cannot speak against the Spirit of Jesus because we love Him and the Holy Spirit Himself is guiding us.

It is interesting that after talking about “those who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit” it says: “When they bring you before the synagogues… don’t be anxious how or what you will answer.” This is a strong indication that Jesus was talking about those Pharisees when He was talking about the the un-forgivable sin. It’s good to keep these things in perspective. I don’t believe there are any sins that are not forgivable to us right now according to the word of God.

Note that when we are brought before evil men, we are to not worry about what we should say. It is even more wonderful that the Holy Spirit can help a person know what to say. We know that as believers, the Holy Spirit is to help us at all times, teaching us every moment of the day. This reminds me of when Martin Luther stood before the inquisition and stated: “Here I stand, I can do no other.” I believe those were words He spoke by the Holy Spirit and I believe that God does the same for us when we face each day in this evil world system.