Psalm 130
Genesis 3.1-21
2 Corinthians 4.13-18
Mark 3.20-35
"Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin." MARK 3:28-29
This morning's text from Mark's gospel chapter 3 is one of those biblical passages that should not be read in the Church without commentary and explanation. At face value, Jesus seems to say that there's something a person can do that even Jesus' coming death cannot make right, that we could, after all, find ourselves beyond the reach of the saving power of his cross and resurrection because of our bad behavior. The idea that there might be something we could do or say that would put us beyond all hope of God's love and forgiveness is bad news. These verses have made a lot of people miserable, people, equipped with overactive superegos, who are prone to think, fatalistically, that if there's an unforgivable sin, they're sure to commit it sooner or later, and probably have already.
There's a famous old movie scene of W.C. Fields leafing through the Bible. Someone asks him what he's doing. He says "I'm looking for loopholes." The humor takes off from the popular idea of the Bible as expressing a list of rules -- just the sort of rules Fields had a great time breaking -- where God says: "Do this and don't do that or else...!" So that an old sinner like W.C. Fields can scrutinize the fine print, seeing if there's some way to break the rules and still escape the penalties.
Obviously, that's a totally misleading picture: God doesn't accept us because we do good things, and he doesn't reject us for doing bad things. If there's one thing we can say for sure it's that the whole point of the Bible is nothing like that. Our relation to God depends not on how good or bad we manage to be, but on his grace. Salvation is by grace, through faith. In the shadow of Jesus on the cross all our goodness and badness becomes like nothing; nothing finally matters but the goodness of Jesus, and God graciously counting that goodness as though it were ours. When God looks at you and me what matters is not what's weak, foolish, proud and fearful, dishonest, selfish and plain bad. What counts in his sight -- counts as though it was us there -- is Jesus, perfectly obedient, perfectly trusting his Father.
All the world's religions tell us what we have to do to be o.k. in God's sight, to be at peace and reconciled with the ultimate reality. What's unique about Christianity, what makes it not fit in very well with the other things people call religions is just this: it's simply not about what we have to do to make ourselves worthy of God, to get on God's good side; it's about how God accepts us as we are. Conventionally conceived, religion is basically for people who hold out some hope of being good, all things considered even good enough to satisfy God. There's a well-known scenario in which God weighs the good things we've done against the bad things and rewards or punishes us depending on which way the scale of divine justice tilts. That makes sense from the normal human religious perspective, but it's utterly alien to the Christian faith. Jesus is for those who have given up on being good enough, who have nowhere to turn but to God's grace. We see ourselves as accepted unconditionally, or not at all. Either Jesus' righteousness is enough or there's no hope for me. God's way of doing things isn't about weighing sins against good deeds, about keeping score, getting even. It's about God's steadfast love, about God the redeemer putting himself in our place, doing for us precisely the one thing we cannot do for ourselves; it's about God in Jesus Christ "stretching out his arms on the hard wood of the cross so that everyone might come within the reach of his saving embrace."
So this text from Mark's gospel is difficult: it sounds as though not W.C. Fields, but God, has found a loophole. As though the crucified Christ is almost, but not quite, good enough, as though there's a loophole, there in the small print of the New Testament. The sort of thing you discover in your insurance policy only after the disaster. Sorry, this sort of thing isn't covered!
Once we have heard and experienced the good news of God's grace it's obvious that this can't be what Jesus is saying here: there are no loopholes in the gospel. Jesus utters this warning to people Mark identifies as the scribes from Jerusalem (v. 22). He warns them in this dire way in response to their contention that he, Jesus, is not from God, not God's agent and representative among them, but that he is evil, acting on behalf of Satan. The point here is not merely that they did not believe that Jesus is God among us, nor even that they disbelieved this -- after all, what people believe isn't in their control; we can't choose to believe or disbelieve -- it is, I think, that they rejected the very idea of such a person as this being God's annointed. This scruffy Galilean is obviously lacking in religious credentials, clearly not righteous in the way these religious authorities from Jerusalem prided themselves on being righteous, as being the people God counted as good enough. He represents a God they would gladly kill, if that's what it takes to safeguard their righteousness, their religious power and moral authority.
Recall that it is Jesus' healing people and delivering them from the demonic powers that triggers the debate. Jesus argues with them about this, but his reasoning merely reveals that their position is not a matter of honest skepticism or intellectual error. They reject the very possibility of God rescuing, redeeming, healing all these people, irrespective of their merit, without preconditions and without questions, simply as they come, in need, to Jesus. For them, to accuse Jesus of being allied with evil personified, to claim that "by the ruler of demons he casts out demons" (v. 22) is to confess, in the least ambiguous way possible, that they will have nothing to do with this sort of God. God, they think, can't be like that. That God would not be holy enough for them. They want nothing to do with this idea of a God of grace. They reject and condemn any God who would act the way this disreputable man from Galilee acts, for it's painfully and dangerously clear that such a God would not judge by human standards of who's worthy and who isn't. This is a God ready to accept all who come to him, however ill-informed, unprepared, and unworthy. This is a God they could accept only at the cost of abandoning their faith in their own righteousness, and putting themselves under the care of his mercy.
The "unforgivable sin" is simply the attitude, the decision, that refuses God's grace and insists upon the adequacy of one's own goodness. No wrongdoing, however horrendous, can separate us from the love of God we encounter in Jesus Christ. Nothing can keep us from the love of God but the persistent choice to be, as we read in the third chapter of Genesis, like God, knowing good and evil, in no need of God in virtue of being good enough on one's own, the source of one's own life and goodness, to be, self-justifying, ultimately inclined to get rid of God and take his place.
Forgiving is a two-way reality, a personal relationship between the forgiver and the person being forgiven. It can't happen unless the person being forgiven acknowledges his neediness. It's impossible to forgive someone who is convinced he does not need to be forgiven; not even God can do it.
The unforgivable sin is simply, but awfully, to regard oneself as not needing God's grace, as rejecting God's grace made flesh in Jesus. The biblical witness has left us pretty much in the dark as to what, precisely, counts as rejecting Jesus. We don't really know where the line might be between rejecting Jesus and just not accepting him. Jesus says that those who are not for him are against him, and he also says that those who are not against him are for him. Nor do we really know the time frame: some passages indicate that everything is decided in this life; others tell us that in the end, every knee will bow to Jesus. It really is a good thing that we don't know these things. It's not our job to be saying who is saved and who isn't, who's in and who's out. Our job is to bear witness that everyone, without exception, stands in need of God's grace; there are no loopholes; God must in the end be trusted as the God of Grace we meet in Jesus, not a God we can satisfy by being good enough. There is a real and terrible possibility for each human being of rejecting that grace and losing God forever. And it's our job to be bearing witness that God can in the end be trusted; he will not allow us to be lost to him if it's possible for him to prevent it. He has shown he will go to any extent to redeem us and make reconciliation. There are no loopholes in his way of salvation. Amen