CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mark 3:21. His friends.—His kinsfolk or near relatives. Beside Himself.—In an ecstatic state. They thought He was carried away by His zeal and devotion beyond all self-control.
Mark 3:22. Beelzebub.—Beelzebul, meaning either “lord of the dwelling,” or “lord of filth”—the title of a heathen deity, to whom the Jews ascribed lordship over evil spirits. “He hath Beelzebul” is equivalent to saying, “He is possessed not merely by a demon, but by Satan himself.”
Mark 3:27. Spoil his goods.—Snatch and carry off his vessels, or household treasures.
Mark 3:29. Hath never forgiveness.—Hath not forgiveness unto the age or æon of Messiah’s reign. In danger of eternal damnation.—In the grip of an age-long sin. None of the agencies employed by God for the conversion of sinners up to the time of the Second Advent are powerful enough to rescue such an one from the awful state to which he has reduced himself by his own deliberate choice. Here the Saviour leaves the matter, without revealing anything as to the man’s ultimate fate or the ministries of the future world.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 3:20-30
(PARALLELS: Matthew 12:22-37; Luke 11:14-23.)
Christ misunderstood and misrepresented.—The paragraph begins properly with the last clause of Mark 3:19: “And they went into an house” [see R. V. for variations in reading and rendering]. Robert Stephens, who first divided the Bible into verses, began a verse with these words, as was right; but Beza set the fashion of adding them to Mark 3:19, which was unfortunately followed by the A.V. translators. They really begin the account of Christ’s fourth sojourn in Capernaum, some weeks after His selection of the apostles.
I. Misunderstood by friends.—They judged Him, observes Dean Chadwick, as men who profess to have learned the lesson of His life still judge, too often, all whose devotion carries them beyond the boundaries of convention and convenience. There is a curious betrayal of the popular estimate of this world and the world to come, in the honour paid to those who cast away life in battle, or sap it slowly in pursuit of wealth or honour, and the contempt expressed for those who compromise it on behalf of souls, for which Christ died. Whenever by exertion in any unselfish cause health is broken, or fortune impaired, or influential friends estranged, the follower of Christ is called an enthusiast, a fanatic, or a man of unsettled mind. He may take comfort from the thought that his Master was said to be beside Himself—and that, too, by His own friends—when zeal for God and love for souls kept Him too busy to think of bodily sustenance and rest.
II. Misrepresented by foes.—The scribes are quick to turn to their own advantage the admission of Christ’s friends that He is “beside Himself.” Unable to deny the reality, or the miraculous nature, of the cures He wrought (see Matthew 12:22), they insidiously suggest that while His own reason is dislodged Satan himself is in possession of its throne. As much as to say: “He is an incarnation of the Evil One, and by Satan’s own power He expels the subordinate demons.” No doubt that was possible. If Satan, at that particular period, was permitted to exercise, through his emissaries, a certain power over men’s bodies and minds, it is reasonable to suppose that he might still retain authority over those emissaries, and be able to recall them at any time he chose. The only question is, Would he be likely to do so? Would such a policy serve his purpose? To the elucidation of this problem Christ addresses Himself.
III. The scribes triumphantly confuted.—Whether the powers of darkness, presided over by Satan, be compared to a “kingdom,” from the wide extent of their influence, and the completeness of their organisation; or to a “house,” from the closeness of their intimacy, and the identity of their interests,—in either case division is fatal to them—subversive of their design, and destructive of their power. The kingdom is brought to desolation, the house falls to pieces, by the mutual jealousies and aggressions of their component members. Such would be the effect of Satan casting out Satan—of the chief of the devils co-operating with one who went about dispossessing and healing his victims. The conclusion was inevitable: that not Beelzebub, but God, was with Him who did these things; that the kingdom of Satan was being brought to nought, not by internal dissensions, but by external force—by the supervening of a stronger influence and more powerful Monarch.
IV. The true state of the case explained.—Still speaking under the veil of parable or allegory, Christ now draws a picture of a strong man living in the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. The illustration reminds us of the turbulent times of our own country a few centuries ago, when the knights and barons with their retainers, each in his stronghold, maintained an armed neutrality against all comers. But peace which is merely preserved by strength is liable at any moment to be disturbed and overthrown by greater strength. So here: the strong man is bound, his house invaded and plundered. In attempting to expound the inner meaning of this, it may be well to include the further details added in Luke 11:21; Luke 22:1. The “strong man armed” is Beelzebub or Satan: strong by natural endowments, a powerful spirit, who had already even dared to defy the Most High; strong also in “his armour wherein he trusted,” to enable him still to wage war, and after each defeat to reappear, if possible, stronger than before.
2. By “his armour” we may understand his agents, other wicked spirits, who, like himself, kept not their first estate; but, not being so strong and ambitious as he, naturally fell into a sort of dependence on him.
3. With the aid of these his active instruments Satan is enabled to “keep his palace,” i.e. to maintain his dominion over the souls and bodies of those unhappy men who have once been “taken captive by him at his will.” Every sinner may truly be said to be “possessed with a demon,” and sometimes with more than one, as Mary Magdalene (Luke 8:2) and the Gadarene (Mark 8:30). So some are possessed by many sins, “serving divers lusts and passions”—divers, as directed towards different objects, but all having a common source and parentage—all “of their father the devil,” and ever ready to “do the lusts of their father,” as well as to co-operate with and inflame each other.
4. And who is he who proves himself stronger than this strong man, able to bind him and spoil his house? Not one of the same kind, another passion, a stronger devil; but an antagonist in nature and principle, as well as in act. Such was He who spoke these words. His great mission was to “destroy the works of the devil”; and His nature was Divine (see Isaiah 49:24-25; Isaiah 63:5). Throughout His ministry Christ invariably acted as a Victor in His dealings with the demons: commanding them with authority; rebuking them; not suffering them to speak; permitting them, as an indulgence, to enter into the lower animals, and wreak their impotent spite on those who had no souls to be destroyed or saved. He also enabled His servants to do the same (Mark 3:15; Luke 10:17). And ever since, though Satan is still permitted to “go about seeking whom he may devour,” he has been restrained from exercising his power in the way of bodily possession; and with respect to the influence which he may still exert over the spiritual part of us, he finds that he has to deal with One stronger than himself—even with Him who, having grappled with and overcome him once for all upon the Cross, is ever ready to renew on behalf of every individual soul the battle that He then fought for the whole human race. By virtue of that victory we are now His “goods,” His lawful “spoil,” His purchased possession; and so long as we fight under His banner we are secure. Satan cannot lay a finger on the man who is alive to the responsibilities of his Christian calling, who is diligent in the use of the means of grace, who lives in the atmosphere of prayer, who “takes unto him the whole armour of God,” “and fights the good fight of faith.”
V. The scribes solemnly warned.—Christ has submitted His claim, in an argument full of sweet reasonableness and touching forbearance, to the better judgment of His foes; but now He declares, with solemn emphasis, as being in possession of the secrets of the Almighty, the principles upon which the world of spirits is administered. He asserts that sin has its scale, its climax. There are sins of instinct, and of passion, and of ignorance. Where there is little light to be guided by, there is little light to sin against. The next step is where there is deliberation before the sin is committed. The last and worse stage is where not only the deliberate judgment is gone against, but the attempt is made to deny the principle of judgment in the soul itself. The hands of the watch move backwards; the lamp flags with the very abundance of oil; the man’s soul dies. Over against the words, “Repent! Be ye forgiven!” stand these—“Irreclaimable! Unforgivable!” These scribes had now wrought themselves up to such a pitch of hatred against Jesus, that they were standing, as it were, on the very brink of the precipice; and in the extremity of His love the Saviour utters this tremendous warning, to keep them from taking the fatal plunge. [In the Homilies that follow, this difficult subject is discussed from various points of view.]
The sin against the Holy Ghost.—
I. The dignity of the person of the Holy Ghost.—This is implied in the assertion, that whoso speaketh against the Son of Man may be forgiven, while he that speaketh against the Holy Ghost cannot. The power of Deity was inherent in the Incarnate Saviour; and He told the Jews expressly that it was by the Spirit of God that He cast out devils. Had He been a created Intelligence, would our Saviour have spoken as He does in the text? Had the Holy Spirit been inferior, in essential dignity, to the Father and the Son, would He have been joined with them in one name in the sacred form of Christian baptism? And would the new creation, the spiritual resurrection in the sinner’s soul, have been ascribed to His sacred agency?
II. The nature and design of the Spirit’s influence.—The Pharisees had sufficient light to remove their errors; and they had conviction enough to lead to a change of heart; but unhappily they resisted both light and conviction: pride and sensuality combined to close their eyes, and led them to spurn the offered grace of the Holy Ghost. Their dreadful sin lay in the act of not being convinced, when a heavenly influence was offered them, and in the blasphemy of attributing the works of Christ to diabolical agency.
III. The precise nature, and the accompanying evidences of the sin against the Holy Ghost.—Some have imagined that the words of blasphemy to which our Saviour refers constitute the essence of the unpardonable sin. But words, considered abstractedly, possess no moral quality whatsoever: it is only as symbols or indices of the mind that our expressions are criminal or otherwise. Again—It has been supposed that the sin against the Holy Ghost was confined to the period of our Saviour’s miracles; and that when the direct evidence arising from these was withdrawn, this sin could no longer be committed. The reverse, however, of this would rather appear to be the case: for our Lord does not tell the Pharisees that they were already involved in the guilt and doom attaching to the commission of the unpardonable sin: He rather cautions them to beware of plunging themselves into so dreadful a situation. In order, then, to guide us in endeavouring to ascertain in what cases the sin against the Holy Ghost may have been committed, we may lay down the two following positions: first, that the sin itself is a wilful resistance offered to the Spirit’s invitations and influence; and, secondly, that its tendency is to shut up the soul in judicial hardness and final impenitence. Both these positions are recognised in Hebrews 6:4-6, a memorable passage, bearing, I apprehend, upon the subject.
1. The Spirit offers to draw men, but they will not follow Him: He repeats His friendly solicitations again and again; but sensual passions or earthly affections absorb the accents of His monitory voice, until at length it dies away and is heard no more! It is not, I apprehend, because a man is too slothful, or too negligent, or even, in a certain sense, too earthly-minded, that he is in danger of fatally sinning against the Holy Ghost. It is because he hates the renovating power of that Divine Agent. It is because he rebels against the reign of grace and holiness in the heart. It is because he cannot endure the unrivalled supremacy of a spiritual principle bearing down the carnal propensities of the soul, and bringing into subjection every thought to the obedience of Christ.
2. I now go on to remark on that judicial hardness and final impenitence, the latter of which invariably, and the former with few if any exceptions, follows the commission of it. There is only one way in which a sinner can effectually close the avenues of reconciliation against himself, and secure his place beforehand in the regions of eternal woe: that way is by putting himself out of the reach of repentance—by resisting the motions of the Spirit, till they are finally withdrawn—by tampering with conscience, till her energies are paralysed, and he sinks, under a load of unpardoned guilt, into a profound lethargy.
Conclusion.—
1. Every sin is fatal in its tendency. If you are grasping the wages of unrighteousness—if you are the slaves of lust or intemperance—if the world, with its winning allurements, is enthroned in your hearts—or, in short, if you are neglecting the great salvation of Christ,—you are in danger of perishing everlastingly. Let your self-examination, then, be general, and not confined to one point.
2. This subject is replete with salutary caution. Many judicious persons have supposed that a degree of obscurity is permitted to hang around it, in order to put Christians upon their guard, and to lead them to beware of everything which might appear, in the slightest degree, to savour of the unpardonable sin.
3. Lastly, I speak to you in the language of encouragement. The darkest clouds are sometimes tinged with a bright and beautiful radiance. The contemplation of a sin which is pronounced to be unpardonable is certainly solemn, peculiarly solemn; but still, when taken in its proper connexions, it needs to alarm none but the wilful and determined transgressor. On the contrary, the subject forms an occasion of exhibiting, in the strongest light, the rich and abounding mercy of God. It shews us an Almighty Sovereign holding out a sceptre of peace, till the revolting rebel will no longer deign even to cast a look upon it. It discloses to us a Parent pleading with His undutiful children, till His voice dies away in the distance of their determined and fatal wanderings. What inexpressible consolation, then, the subject, rightly understood, affords to every anxious inquirer after mercy!—Wm. Knight.
Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost.—I. What the sin or blasphemy against the Holy Ghost means, and wherein precisely it consists.—I said sin or blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, because some call it the sin against the Holy Ghost, though Scripture itself never calls it anything else but blasphemy, which is worth the observing. It lies in words, is committed by speaking, and particularly by evil-speaking, by reviling and defaming the Holy Spirit of God. There may be, and there have been, several offences committed against the Holy Ghost which yet do not amount to the blasphemy against Him specified in the text. There is such a thing as grieving the Holy Spirit, and quenching the Spirit, when men refuse to hearken to His counsels, to follow His motions, or to obey His calls. But this is not blaspheming Him. There is also what St. Stephen calls resisting the Holy Ghost, which is opposing Him with a high hand and rebelling against Him, and is a very heinous sin; and yet neither is that the same with blaspheming and slandering Him, which is what those Pharisees were guilty of. Ananias and Sapphira grievously affronted the Holy Ghost in telling Him a lie, either presuming upon His ignorance as not knowing it, or upon His patience as if He should have connived at it. But yet that was not so bad as what the Pharisees did in ascribing His works to the devil. The malicious telling a lie of Him, to defame and slander Him, was a more heinous offence than the telling a lie to Him under a weak and foolish persuasion. There is also another way of affronting the Holy Ghost, by vilifying His operations, which yet comes not up to the sin of the text. Upon the day of Pentecost, when the disciples, full of the Holy Ghost, began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance, there were some standing by who mocking said, “These men are full of new wine,” vilifying the operations of the Spirit as the effects of drunkenness. But the men who said it, said it perhaps wantonly or ignorantly, rather than spitefully or maliciously. But the Pharisees who are charged with being guilty of blaspheming the Holy Ghost, they very well knew that what they had seen done could not be accounted for in a natural way; and yet such was their spleen and rage against the gospel, that they chose rather to impute the miracles of our Lord to the devil than to acknowledge the Divine hand, which was so visible in them that they themselves could not but see it, had they been at all disposed to it. I may here also mention Simon Magus as a person who very highly affronted the Holy Ghost, when he offered money for the purchasing His miraculous gifts. But neither was that any such direct blasphemy against the Holy Ghost as what the text mentions; for he had some respect and veneration for the miracles he saw wrought and for the author of them, and was very far from imputing them to the assistance of the devil. The blasphemy against the Holy Ghost was something worse still than anything I have yet mentioned: it was defaming the Holy Spirit of God, and God Himself, under the execrable name of Beelzebub; it was reviling, and that knowingly and desperately, the Divine works as diabolical operations.
II. The heinousness of that sin.—It was a most wicked and impudent lie and slander upon the Holy Spirit, and was flying, as it were, in the face of God. One would think, when God Himself interposes, giving the Divine signal in plain uncontested miracles, that it might become all men to be mute, and to lay aside their otherwise unconquerable rancour and prejudice. But the Pharisees were so resolute and so outrageous in reviling everything that gave any countenance to Christ and His gospel, that they would not spare even God Himself, but called Him Beelzebub, spitefully defaming His most Divine works as being nothing else but diabolical impostures. They saw the miracles of our Blessed Lord, and were very sensible that they were real and true miracles: they knew also that they were wrought in direct opposition to the devil and his kingdom, having all the fair appearances possible of being Divine: nor would they have scrupled to have received them as Divine, had they been wrought by any one else excepting Christ or His disciples. But such was their envenomed hatred and inveteracy against Him and His, that, at all adventures, contrary to all candour or equity, and in contradiction to reason and common sense, they resolved to say, however scarce to believe (for they hardly could be so stupid), that He was in league with the devil, and that all His mighty works which He wrought in the name of God were the works only of Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. There could not be a more insolent slander, or a more provoking outrage against the Divine Majesty, than this. It was sacrificing the honour of Almighty God, and both the present and future happines of men, to their own private humours and party passions; being resolved to take up with any wretched cavil, any improbable and self-contradictory lies and slanders against God, rather than permit the honest and well-meaning people to believe in Christ Jesus upon the brightest evidence of His miracles.
III. Whether any sins committed at this day are the same thing with it, or which of them come the nearest to it.—
1. For the sake of the overtender and scrupulous consciences, I would observe, that roving, and which some call blasphemous thoughts, which rise up accidentally, and as accidentally go off again, are nothing akin to the sin which I have been speaking of, which consisted in premeditated lies and slanders against God, formed with design to obstruct or darken the evidences of the true religion, and to prevent others from looking into them or being convinced by them.
2. Even the atheists or infidels of these times can scarce come up to the same degree of guilt with the Pharisees of old, because they have not seen the miracles of Christ with their own eyes. Rational and historical evidence may be as convincing as the other, when duly considered; but as it strikes not upon the senses, it does not awaken the attention, and alarm every passion of the soul, in such a degree as the other does. For which reason the unbelievers of our times, though abandoned and profligate men, are not altogether so blamable in the opposition they make to Christianity as the unbelievers of old time were. Nevertheless, it must be said, that the obstinate rejecting the miracles of our Lord and of His disciples (which have been so fully attested), and much more the ridiculing and bantering them, and the endeavouring to run them down by lies and slander, is a very high and heinous crime, as well as horrid blasphemy; especially if committed in a Christian country, and in a knowing age, and where men have all desirable opportunities of learning the truth, as well as the strongest motives offered for submitting to it.—Archdeacon Waterland.
Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost.—I. The blasphemy of speaking against the Holy Ghost appears to have been the sin which those scribes and Pharisees committed; for St. Mark expressly tells us that our Lord pronounced these words, “because they said, He hath an unclean spirit”; and He Himself declared (Matthew 12:28) that He had “cast out the devil by the Spirit of God,” i.e. by the Holy Ghost; so that if He exercised the power of the Holy Ghost in this miracle which He wrought on the blind and dumb man, the scribes and the Pharisees, who spake against this miracle, by ascribing it to an unclean spirit, or to the prince of the devils, did most certainly blaspheme or speak against the Holy Ghost.
1. It was a wilful and presumptuous sin; for though those scribes and Pharisees had not seen the miracle wrought by our Blessed Lord, yet they allowed and acknowledged it to have been wrought by Him, and not withstanding this they perversely ascribed it to the power of Beelzebub.
2. It was committed against God Himself, whether we consider the Holy Ghost as one person in the Divine Trinity, or even if we consider the Spirit of God as that whereby God the Father acted in such wonderful operations (Matthew 12:28).
3. It consisted in despising the word of God, and rejecting His gracious message of peace and pardon to mankind: for this miracle was performed, and wrought in evidence of our Blessed Lord’s Divine mission, in proof that the doctrine which He taught was from God, and that He Himself was the Messias who was to appear amongst the Jews, and was to make an atonement for the sins of all such as believed in Him, and qualified themselves for pardon by faith and repentance.
II. Why, and in what sense, this sin hath never forgiveness.—
1. For the explaining of this aright let it be considered that our Saviour spake this to Jews, and therefore probably suited His expressions to their law, and to the opinions then prevailing among them. And we find that the law of Moses appointed sacrifices for legal defilements, and for sins of ignorance against God, and appointed sacrifices in some cases and penalties in others for wilful sins against men (Leviticus 4:5,, Leviticus 4:6); but for the greater sins against God, such as wilful and presumptuous ones, the sentence of death was pronounced by God against all offenders of this sort, and there was no sacrifice or other means by which the punishment incurred might be taken off or suspended (Numbers 15:30-31; Numbers 15:35; Leviticus 20:10). And this is the very thing which St. Paul means when he says to the Jews, that by Christ all that believe are justified from all things, from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses. Where he plainly asserts that under the Jewish law there were crimes which could not be atoned for and forgiven; and if not under the Jewish law, then not under natural religion, because the Jewish law had that and all its advantages included in it. As to the first sort of sins taken notice of by Moses in his body of laws, viz. those of ignorance committed against God, and those of wilfulness against men, when the sacrifices appointed in such cases are commanded to be offered by an offender, the usual phrase is, “The priest shall make an atonement for him, and it shall be forgiven him.” So that such sins might well be called pardonable ones, there being a method prescribed for the atonement of them. But as to the other sort, that of wilful and presumptuous sins against God, by which His word was despised, such sins were properly unpardonable ones, because the Jewish laws had provided no sacrifice by way of atonement for them. And that the unpardonableness of this heinous sort of sins against God depends upon their having no sacrifice appointed for them appears from Hebrews 10:28. Now, to bring these observations home to the case before us, the blaspheming or speaking against the Son of Man, or against the Holy Jesus, in His personal capacity, and as man only, might be forgiven to these scribes and Pharisees, because by the Jewish law a provision was made for its expiation. But the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, or the Spirit of God, when it was a presumptuous sin, as this of the scribes and Pharisees was, had no pardon under the Jewish law. God was reproached, and His word was despised, and therefore the soul that thus offended was to be cut off from among His people. Nor was there any pardon provided for it under the gospel dispensation, because, when they thus blasphemed the Holy Spirit of God, by which Christ wrought His miracles, the only means which could redeem the adversaries of the truth from the Divine vengeance was the merit of Christ’s death applied to them by faith; and that benefit they wholly excluded themselves from in the very act of their sinning, which consisted in their rejecting the evidence which the Spirit of God gave of Christ being the Messias and Saviour of mankind. This was, as things then stood with them, an unpardonable sin, either in this age, the age of the Jewish law, or in the age to come, that is, the age of the gospel. But were the gates of mercy for ever shut against these blasphemers of the Holy Ghost? Was the sentence here passed upon them unalterable and irreversible in all cases? No, surely: for, as Athanasius observes, “Our Blessed Lord does not say that it shall not be forgiven to him that blasphemeth and repenteth, but only to him that blasphemeth; and therefore He must have meant this of one that continued in a state of impenitence; for with God no sin is unpardonable.” If such blasphemers could repent of that their heinous sin, no doubt but they might be forgiven it under the Christian covenant: and who can say of any man that all means of repentance are cut off from him? Our Lord said in as strong words as these are, “Whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father”; and yet but a little while afterwards, when Peter denied Him before men three times, and in the most obstinate manner, Christ was so far from rejecting him, that upon his weeping bitterly and repenting he was continued even in his apostleship, and was ever after one of the leaders in that blessed work of propagating the Christian faith. And it is highly probable that some of the three thousand whom St. Peter at his first preaching converted to the Christian faith had thus blasphemed the Holy Ghost in our Saviour’s days; for he describes them as those who “knew the miracles and signs” which God wrought by His Son, and notwithstanding this “with wicked hands had crucified Him.” And yet he calls upon them to “repent and be baptised for the remission of their sins,” and even encourages them to hope that upon so doing they “should receive that Holy Ghost” whom they had so often blasphemed in our Saviour’s miracles. We are certain, likewise, that among those who reviled Christ while He was hanging upon the Cross there were scribes who said, “He saved others, Himself He cannot save”; thereby acknowledging that He had wrought miracles in healing diseases, this perhaps before us in particular, and yet denying that He could “save Himself,” and consequently denying that what He wrought was by a Divine power. And yet we find that our Saviour prayed even for these scribes, saying, “Father, forgive them.” And surely that sin of theirs was not unpardonable upon their repentance, when Christ with His dying breath prayed for their forgiveness.—Bishop Zachary Pearce.
The sin against the Holy Ghost.—I shall never forget the chill that struck into my childish heart so often as I heard of this mysterious sin which carried men, and for aught I knew might have carried even me, beyond all reach of pardon; or the wonder and perplexity with which I used to ask myself why, if this sin were possible—if, as the words of our Lord seem to imply, it was probable even and by no means infrequent—it was not clearly defined, so that we might at least know, and know beyond all doubt, whether it had been committed or had not.
I. The two phrases “this [present] age” and “the coming age,” which our Lord here adopts, were perfectly familiar to the Jews, and had a clear and definite meaning on their lips. “This present age,” or “the age that now is,” was the age in which they lived, with all its apparatus of religious teaching and worship, the age of the Law and the Temple; while “the coming age,” or “the age to come,” was that happier time of which the advent of the long-promised Messiah was to be the sign and the commencement, although it could not fully come until Jesus the Christ ascended into heaven and poured out His Spirit from on high. So that what He really affirmed was, that there is a sin which is just as unpardonable under the Christian dispensation as it was under the Mosaic dispensation.
II. But what is this sin for which, at least in the present world, there is no forgiveness, or no provision for forgiveness? It is that wilful and invincible ignorance which refuses to be taught, that love of darkness which refuses to admit the light even when the sun is shining in the sky. They saw the light, and knew that it was light; and yet they loved darkness more than light, because their deeds were evil. Like the servants in the parable, they said, “This is the Heir,” only to add, “Let us kill Him, that the inheritance may be ours”—ours, and not His. Jesus “knowing their thoughts,” knowing too the desperate moral condition from which their thoughts sprang, simply warned them that it was desperate. They were deliberately sinning against light, against conscience, against all that was true and right and good; in a word, they were “speaking against the Holy Ghost,” the Spirit of all truth and goodness; and so long as they did that there was no hope for them.
III. So far, then, from giving us a dark mystical saying in which our thoughts are lost, our Lord simply states a moral truism, as we might have inferred from the casual and unemphatic manner of His speech. And the truism is that, since salvation is necessarily of the will, if men will not be saved, they cannot be saved; if they will not yield to the Divine Spirit when it moves and stirs within them, they cannot be redeemed and renewed by that gracious Spirit. Under whatever dispensation they live, they are self-excluded from the kingdom of heaven, by the one sin which is therefore called an “eternal” or “æonial” sin.
IV. That this unpardonable sin might be pardoned, that it was the sin, and not the men who committed it, which could never be forgiven, is clear: for many of the Pharisees who had long resisted the Spirit of God in Christ—and be it remembered that even Saul of Tarsus had long “kicked against the goads” which urged him toward the kingdom—afterwards repented of their sin, received His words, believed His works, and were welcomed into the fellowship of the Church. And even of those who never knew an earthly repentance, and of their doom in “the world to come,” this passage says absolutely nothing. It leaves us to our own conjectures, our own hopes; and neither approves nor condemns those who trust that in the world to come even those who leave this world impenitent may be taught “even against their will, and by means of a larger experience, the lessons they would not learn here; and so be brought to confess their guilt and folly, and be taken at last—so as by fire—into the arms” of the Divine Compassion and Love.
V. But where lies our danger of committing this sin against the Holy Ghost, our need therefore of the warning that, so long as we persist in this sin, pardon and salvation are impossible to us? We fall into this sin, must be my reply, whenever we consciously and wilfully resist the Spirit of truth and goodness—whenever, i.e., we see a truth and do not accept it, because it cuts our prejudices against the grain—whenever we know what is good, and yet do it not, because we love some evil way too well to leave it. To speak against any form of truth or any form of goodness which we inwardly recognise as good and true, or even suspect to be true and good, is “to speak against the Holy Ghost”: and, be it remembered, “deeds speak louder than words.” In our religious life we sin against the Holy Ghost if, as we read the gospel, we learn that in Christ Jesus we have precisely such a Saviour from all sin and uncleanness as we need—if, as we read, I say, conscience leaps up in approval of what we read and urges us to accept the offered salvation, and we refuse to listen because we are too engrossed with the outward affairs of life, or too attached to some of the forms of sin from which Christ would save us to part with them yet, we commit the sin which cannot be pardoned, and from which we cannot be saved so long as we cleave to it. Or, again, if after we have accepted, or professed to accept, His salvation, we catch glimpses of new and higher truths, and shut our eyes against them because we do not want to be at the trouble of revising and recasting our theological formulas—or if we are inwardly called to new and difficult duties, and turn away from them because they would impose a strain upon us or a sacrifice which we are not willing to bear,—in thus sinning against conscience we sin against the Holy Ghost. Nor is there any one respect in which we refuse to recognise truth as true or duty as binding upon us, whether in the formation of our political views or the discharge of our political functions, or in the principles on which we conduct our business, or even in the spirit in which we conduct our literary or scientific investigations, in which we do not or may not fall into this very sin. For the Holy Spirit is the Spirit from whom all true thoughts and all forms of goodness do proceed. To close our eyes to any truth, to neglect any duty, is not only to shut that truth out of our minds, and not only to lower and impoverish the tone of our life; it is also to grieve and resist that pure and gracious Spirit by whom we are made one with the Father and the Son; it is to impair the very organ by which truth comes to us, and to cripple the very faculty by which we are enabled for all dutiful and noble enterprise.
VI. There is still, however, one difficulty which must be met, and which I meet the more cheerfully because it will give an opportunity of noticing what is peculiar in St. Mark’s report of this great saying, viz. the phrase, “Whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of eternal sin.” The difficulty I am told is this: “When we read of a sin that cannot be forgiven whether in the Mosaic age or the Christian, we naturally assume our Lord to mean that it cannot be forgiven even when it is repented of; for no sin can be forgiven men until they repent; and our Lord is here drawing a distinction between one sin and all others. What, then, can this distinction be but this: that, though all other sins may be forgiven when men repent of them, this sin cannot be forgiven, let them repent of it how they may?” But we may ask those who urge this objection: How do you know that there are no sins which God will not forgive men even before they repent, and even though they should never repent, at least in this present life? We may suggest that our Lord is here drawing a distinction between outward overt transgressions which may be forgiven us on, or even perhaps apart from, repentance, and the inward sinful principle which can never be forgiven, but must be renounced and cast out. What is the sin which our Lord Himself compares, or contrasts, with the unpardonable sin? It is the sin of speaking against Himself, the gracious Son of Man. It is to deny that there was any manifestation of God in the God manifest in the flesh; in more modern phraseology, it is to deny that there is anything Divine in the Christian dispensation and faith. That, alas! is a sin only too common in our own days. There are intelligent and learned men only too many, and men whom, judged by any other standard, we should all pronounce to be honest and good men, who deny that God has ever given any immediate revelation of His will to mankind, who even doubt both whether any such revelation be possible and whether there be any God to make it. They may have been blinded by intellectual prepossessions or an inherited bent of mind: but are we to blame blind men because they do not see, and to accuse them of a wilful rejection of the light that shines from heaven? And if we do not, will God? The fault may be ours, rather than theirs. We may have turned the very light into a darkness. We may so have misrepresented our Master to them, that, instead of seeing Him as He is, they may have seen only that imperfect and misleading image of Him which we have made in our own likeness. If a man has honestly doubted, if he has followed the inward light and been true to the inward voice, and he should die before discovering that Christ is other and better than he knew, that He is indeed the true light of every man and the very brightness of the Father’s glory—if, that is, he should never repent in this world of his sin in speaking against and rejecting the Son of Man,—will his sin never be forgiven him, or will it not, rather, never be counted against him, however heavily he may reckon it against himself? On the other hand, if a man has not been honest in his doubts and denials—if, besides sinning against the God without him who sought to reveal Himself to him, he has also sinned against the God within him; if when reason or conscience said, That is true and you ought to believe it, or, That is duty and you ought to do it, he has refused to accept the truth, or do the duty which he felt to be clothed with Divine sanctions; if he has consciously shut out the light and refused to walk in it; if, in the language of our passage, he has added the sin against the Holy Ghost to the sin against the Son of Man, and if he should leave the world without repenting of his sin,—how can we deny that he has put himself outside the pale of forgiveness by making forgiveness impossible? What may become of him in that other, future, world we cannot say, we are not told, though we are still allowed to cherish the hope that new moral forces may be brought to bear upon him and may take effect upon him; all we can be sure of is that so long as he deliberately shuts out the light, the light cannot reach him—that so long as he refuses to part with his sin, he cannot be saved from his sin.—S. Cox, D.D.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 3:20. The strain of constant publicity.—In the crowd there is no moderation. They can go to a pitch of enthusiasm in one direction, or of animosity in another; but in the presence of Christ they cannot act with calmness. Nothing is so wearing as the excitement of constant publicity. Unless quiet alternate with the excitement of great gatherings, the body wastes, the nerve frets, the mind is jaded, and the soul itself goes stale and flat. Popularity has, accordingly, often a cruel kindness, which claims untimely and exhausting service from him whom it flatters with its approbation.—R. Glover.
Mark 3:21. The taunts of unbelievers.—It is very hard for the Christian to bear the taunts of unbelievers. It is difficult to work bravely on, without the sympathy of one’s fellows; it requires great grace not utterly to lose heart, to bear being called a fanatic, to be sneered at and scorned. To human nature such treatment gives keenest pain; yet God’s grace is sufficient to triumph in us. When we are sorely tried, let us not think of the discouragements, but of Jesus, who bore a shame and obloquy for us far deeper than we can ever bear for Him.
Opposition from friends is very common in the career of reformers and of those who depart from the ordinary course. History is full of instances. It is very frequent, too, in the case of those who, in irreligious families or societies, seek to become Christians. (See Matthew 10:24; Matthew 10:35-37.) Here is a severe test. But the only way in which this world can be improved and saved is by that faith, and character, and truth which will do right, no matter who opposes. They who when “at Rome do as the Romans do” in matters of conscience, will never change Rome into the city of God.
Friendship’s shortcomings.—
1. Unable to follow the highest moods of the soul.
2. Unable to see the spiritual meaning of outward circumstances.
3. Seeking to interfere with spiritual usefulness.
4. Seeking to reduce life to commonplace order. The sincere servant of Jesus Christ will take his law from the Master and not from public opinion.—J. Parker, D.D.
The zealous spirit.—A zealous spirit is essential to eminent success in anything. Perhaps there is the more need to insist upon this because enthusiasm is out of fashion. It is bad form nowadays to admire anything very warmly. To be strenuously in earnest is almost vulgar. Especially is this so in regard to religion. “Our Joe is a very good young man,” said an old nurse the other day; “but he do go so mad on religion.” That was the fly in the ointment—which spoilt all. Did not Pope say long ago, “The worst of madness is a saint run mad”? And he only put in terse and pithy speech what other people say more clumsily.
1. And yet how can one be a Christian without being an enthusiast? Indifferent, half-hearted Christians are not true Christians at all. The author of Ecce Homo cannot be said to exaggerate in his declaration that “Christianity is an enthusiasm, or it is nothing.”
2. And what good work has ever been wrought without enthusiasm? Said a great preacher: “If you want to drive a pointed piece of iron through a thick board, the surest way is to heat your skewer. It is always easier to burn our way than to bore it.” Only “a soul all flame” is likely to accomplish much in the teeth of the difficulties which beset every lofty enterprise.—G. H. James.
Mark 3:22. Zeal in opposing Christ.—These scribes came all the way from Jerusalem to oppose Christ. Had there been as much earnestness in propagating the truth as there has been in trying to check it, the whole world might by this time have been regenerated.
Satan versus Satan.—Would God that we might hear of strife and contentions in the ranks of the kingdom of darkness! If the public-house keepers might rise up against the gamblers; if thieves and swindlers might but take each other by the throat; if the managers of the horse-races might but begin to make war upon the organisers of the lottery schemes; if drunkards and seducers would but fall out; if only Satan might fight against Satan, and his kingdom fall into bitter, relentless, and uncompromising internecine strife, asking and giving no quarter,—then would it be a good day for this poor devil-ridden world. But no such good thing as this is happening, or ever will happen.—G. F. Pentecost, D.D.
Lessons.—
1. Every argument of truth and evidence of Divinity can be explained away, if only you are bad enough to do it.
2. Falsehood, if indulged, may lead you to lie in the most sacred matters, and utter the most depraved blasphemy.
3. Man has ultimately only the single alternative—to be devout or superstitious; you must be a believer in God, or in a devil.
4. There is no knave who is not a fool; for if he were not a fool, he would not be a knave.—R. Glover.
Mark 3:23. Christ’s question.—Jesus has questions to ask as well as His opponents. Too much attention is given to the answering of questions. We listen to the “How?” and the “Why?” of the sceptic; but are we alive to the advantage that we should gain if we were to propose questions for ourselves?
Mark 3:28-29. Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost.—Blasphemy, that is, speaking against. But thought is speech to God. “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter,” says Keats. Heard blasphemy is bitter: is unheard blasphemy less bitter to the ear of the Holy One? And speech is deed. Therefore, “by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit does not demand audible speech. At the very time Christ used this unparalleled language, He was replying to the inaudible speech of the Pharisees: “Knowing their thoughts, He said unto them.” So the essential thing is not in the speech, but in the object of it. “No man can do these miracles except God be with him”—that was the witness of the truth they knew. “He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils”—that was the lie to their own sense of right. And it was because of that deliberate lie against the light within them that Jesus told them of the sin that hath never forgiveness. Since the departure of Jesus from the earth, the Holy Spirit has been to men the inner light. Magnificent gift! Momentous responsibility! He takes the place of it within us. We no longer obey it, resist it, quench it: we obey, resist, quench Him. He is the Advocate, come to plead the cause of right within us, the cause of righteousness and judgment against us. He convicts the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.—Expository Times.
Mark 3:29. The soul incapacitated for repentance.—Strength, Purity, Light, Life, and Love,—are not these the foundation pillars of the throne of God? And these are the words under which the nature and work of the Holy Ghost are revealed to us. Now suppose a man by an act of deliberate and conscious choice renounces this God of Holiness, this Spirit of Light, and Life, and Love,—saying, “These are things that I hate. Death and corruption are better than the life of God. His love I trample on and despise.” Imagine a man speaking to himself after this fashion, and proceeding to shape his life accordingly. Would not that be a kind of blasphemy which might well incapacitate the soul for repentance, and so, as a necessary consequence, for forgiveness?—W. R. Huntington, D.D.
The man who blasphemes against the God within him—who calls that right which he knows and feels to be wrong, and who, knowing the good, deliberately says to evil, “Be thou my good,”—is not to be forgiven in this age. No, verily: for this age has brought him all that it has to bring, and he has rejected it: the most penetrating and intimate ministries of Divine Grace have been vouchsafed him, and he has resisted them: let him feel the judgments of this age, since he will not accept its choicest gifts; let him pass out of this age only to enter into the discipline of the next: and as he suffers these æonial judgments, let him consider and reconsider himself, lest he also lose the ages beyond.—S. Cox, D.D.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 3
Mark 3:21. The world’s estimate of Christian zeal. The Rev. Rowland Hill, on one occasion, strained his voice, raising it to the highest pitch, in order to warn some persons of impending danger, and so rescued them from peril. For this he was warmly applauded. But when he elevated his voice to a similar pitch in warning sinners of the error and evil of their ways, and in order to save their souls from a still greater peril, the same friends who before had praised him now pronounced him fool and fanatic.
Zeal.—When some one expostulated with Duncan Matheson, the evangelist, that he was killing himself with his labours, and ought to have rest, he replied, “I cannot rest whilst souls are being lost: there is all eternity in which to rest after life is done.”
Earnestness in work.—Soon after Dr. John Morison’s ordination, a neighbouring minister called on him, and said, “You are doing too much; you must take care that you do not overwork yourself.” “Depend upon it,” replied Morison, “the lazy minister dies first.” Six months later he was called to the death-bed of this same minister. “Do you remember what you once said to me?” asked the dying man. Morison could only reply falteringly, “Oh, don’t speak of that!” “Yes, but I must speak of it,” said his friend; “it was the truth. Work, work while it is called day, for now the night is coming when I cannot work.”
Mark 3:23-26. Christ’s actions prove His Divine mission.—When the Netherlanders broke away from the bondage of Spain, they still professed to be loyal subjects of King Philip, and in the king’s name went out to fight against the king’s armies. That was a kind of loyalty which Philip refused to recognise. The scribes professed to believe that the devil was content with loyalty like this—that, in fact, he hugely enjoyed the destruction of his own works by Jesus, and supplied Him with all the help He wanted in that line. A sane man does not burn his insurance policy, and then set fire to his house as a means of providing for his family. A loyal soldier will not undermine his own camp, and blow it into the air, as a means of increasing the strength of that camp. The captain who is anxious for the safety of his ship will not step down into the hold and bore a hole through the ship’s bottom. Nor will Satan join in destroying his own kingdom. That Christ came and destroyed the works of the devil shows that He is Satan’s enemy and Satan’s conqueror.
Mark 3:29. Penal element in punishment.—Punishment has surely an element which is purely penal—vindictive, if the word must be used, but with a Divine vindictiveness. And this seems to be the confession of the human heart in the most differing states of society. An Indian judge tells of the impression produced by a thief who cut off a child’s wrists merely to get some tightly fastened bracelets. As the maimed stumps were held up in court, a hundred voices cried, “Death is not enough.” In the south of France a monster amused herself with her paramour at the theatre, while her little boy was found slowly starved to death, with his cheek laid against a little dog which nestled close to him. Many cried, “The priests are right; there must be a hell.”—Bishop Wm. Alexander.
Unpardonable sin as to the body.—There is an unpardonable sin that may be committed in connexion with the lungs, or with the heart, or with the head. They are strung with nerves as thick as beads on a string; and up to a certain point of excess or abuse of the nervous system, if you rebound there will be remission, and you will be put back, or nearly back, where you were before you transgressed nature’s laws; but beyond that point—it differs in different men, and in different parts of the same man—if you go on transgressing, and persist in transgression, you will never get over the effect of it as long as you live.—H. W. Beecher.
No hope for those past feeling.—A man may misuse his eyes and yet see; but whosoever puts them out can never see again. One may misdirect his mariner’s compass, and turn it aside from the north pole by a magnet or piece of iron, and it may recover and point right again; but whosoever destroys the compass itself has lost his guide at sea. So it is possible for us to sin and be forgiven: recovery through God’s Spirit is not impossible. But if we so harden our hearts that they cannot feel the power of the Spirit, if we are past feeling, then there is no hope.
A terrible text.—In my first charge, when I was young and inexperienced, the very first grave task set me was to carry what comfort I could to my predecessor’s widow, a singularly devout and devoted woman, who, in the depths of her grief, had come to the conclusion that she had committed “the unpardonable sin,” or “God would never have been so hard with her.” No reasonings, no prayers, had the slightest effect upon her, or seemed so much as to touch the fixed idea she had taken to her heart. With an almost incredible ingenuity, she turned all grounds for hope into food for her despair. And in a few weeks she passed from my care into an asylum, only to be carried from the asylum to the grave. For years after I shrank from this text as if it had been guilty of murder. Such experiences bite deep.—S. Cox, D.D.
Shrinking from the commission of this sin.—A striking testimony to the power which these solemn words have had over the minds of men is afforded by the absence of this one sacred name, “the Holy Ghost,” from all the vocabularies of profaneness. It shows how men whom we are accustomed to call bad men have often, after all, more reverence for what is holy than we give them credit for having—nay, more than they credit themselves with having. They may have committed crimes innumerable, and may have boasted of them; still, notwithstanding this, they shrink from the commission of what is worse than any crime—the unpardonable sin. The shrinking is to their credit.—W. R. Huntington, D.D.
This sin consists not in words only.—I remember the case of a young man in college, who, having fallen into a morbid state of mind under the pressure of religious excitement, went out upon a lonely bridge at midnight, and shouted out into the darkness words which he supposed to be the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. It is not easy to believe that for doing this he fell under the fearful condemnation of which Christ speaks. On the other hand, it is not difficult to believe that the sin against the Holy Ghost may have been committed by persons who have never in any spoken utterance blasphemously used that awful name.—Ibid.
Paralysis of the soul.—It is told of some of the Hindoo ascetics, that they will at times, in compliance with a vow, keep a limb in a constrained position until the natural use of it is wholly lost and gone. May not the habitual putting of evil for good and good for evil bring on a similar paralysis of the soul? May not the devotees of the god of this world so keep the vows they make to him, as to rob themselves of the power to take the postures of a holier devotion?—Ibid.
Eternal sin.—
“A sin that passes!” Lo, one sad and high,
Bearing a taper stately like a queen,
Talks in her sleep—“Will these hands ne’er be clean?”
“What’s done cannot be undone.” She walks by
As she must walk through her eternity,
Bearing within her that which she hath been.
“The sin that I have sinn’d is but one scene,
Life is a manifold drama,” so men cry.
Alas! the shadow follows thee too well.
The interlude outgrows its single part,
And every other voice is stricken dumb.
That which thou carriest to the silent dell
Is the eternal sin thou hast become.
The everlasting tragedy thou art!
Bishop Wm. Alexander.