Shall be forgiven unto men— It is evidently our Lord's meaning here, not that every such sin shall actually be pardoned, but that it is, in the divine economy, capable of being pardoned, or is pardonable. Dr. Campbell renders the passage, in men is pardonable.
Matthew 12:31-32. The inference in these verses is not particularly connected with the member of the discourse immediately preceding it; but it arises from the whole series of the reasoning; as if our Lord had said, "Since all these arguments make it evident that I perform my miracles by the Spirit of God, you should not ascribe them to the devil; yet this blasphemy may be forgiven you, because you may repent and believe, upon receiving stronger proofs of my mission from God. When that period comes, namely, after I am raised from the dead by the Holy Ghost; when his miraculous gifts are shed down upon believers, and the nature of the Messiah's kingdom is more fully made known, the foundation of your prejudices against me shall be wholly removed: wherefore, if you shall then speak against the Holy Ghost by maliciously affirming that his gifts and miracles come from the devil, it shall not be forgiven you; because it is a sin which you cannot possibly repent of, inasmuch as farther evidence shall not be offered you; but you shall be punished for it both in this world and in the world to come." Or we may translate the clause differently: "It shall not be forgiven him, neither in this age, neither in the age to come;" importing, that no expiation was provided for the blasphemer of the Spirit, neither under the Jewish nor Christian dispensation. St. Mark adds, Mark 3:30. Because they said, he hath an unclean spirit; signifying, that our Lord declared the irremissibleness of the sin against the Holy Ghost on this occasion, that the Pharisees might be awakened to a sense of their danger, in approaching so near as they did to that sin, when, being unable to deny his miracles, they represented them as performed by the assistance of the devil. The reader desirous of seeing the above interpretation indubitably confirmed is referred to Dr. Whitby's note, and 4th appendix to St. Matthew, and to John Hales's tracts. Archbishop Tillotson, vol. 1: serm. 17 has endeavoured to prove, that the sin against the Holy Ghost was that which these Pharisees committed in ascribing the miracles of Christ to Satan: and certainly, if they persisted in that blasphemy after the full demonstration of Christ's mission, this was really to sin against the Holy Ghost. Dr. Clarke's paraphrase, vol. 6: serm. 1 nearly agrees with what we have above given; but for the satisfaction of the reader on a subject of so much inquiry, we shall here subjoin it: "Since it is as evident as it is possible for any thing to be, that the works which I do are by the immediate authority of God, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, therefore whosoever shall resist this great conviction, by so unreasonable and obstinate a degree of malice, as to ascribe these very works, these greatest and highest evidences of divine authority, to the power of the devil; to such a person God will never afford any farther means of conviction; and therefore, though all other blasphemies, and all particular sins whatsoever, may be repented of and forgiven, yet he who is guilty of this total corruption of mind, this maliciously perverse and desperate rejecting of the greatest and highest conviction which God vouchsafes to afford men, shall never have granted him any farther means of repentance and forgiveness. Every particular kind or sort of sin whatsoever, and all other blasphemies whatsoever, shall be forgiven men: even he that speaks against me (says our Lord) in all other respects, or calumniates me upon any other account whatsoever, and is not at first convinced bymy preaching and exhortations, may yet afterwards be convinced by the mighty works he shall see, and by the power of the Holy Ghost, and so repent and be forgiven: but he who obstinately resists even this greatest and most extraordinary method which God has thought fit to make use of for the conversion of mankind, and maliciously reviles the most evident operations of the Spirit of God; such a one has no farther means left, by which he might be convinced and brought to repentance, and consequently he can never be forgiven."
Matthew 12:32. Whosoever speaketh a word, &c.— The prejudices which alleviated the sin of the Jews, who rejected Jesus during his own lifetime, and which in the period here referred to (viz. the day of Pentecost) were to be removed, arose from such causes as these: 1st,His parentage and place of abode; for his countrymen, being well acquainted with both, would not allow him to be the Messiah, because they imagined when the Messiah came, no man would know whence he was, John 7:27. 2nd, The old prophet Elias had not appeared to usher in the Messiah, as they expected, according to the doctrine of the scribes, Matthew 17:10 founded on the prophesy, Malachi 4:5. 3rdly, Christ's mean condition of life occasioned violent prejudices against him in the minds of the Jews, who firmly believed that their Messiah would be surrounded with all the pomp and splendour of an earthly prince; and who, in speaking of him, had been accustomed to give him the titles of the King of Israel, and Son of God. But, by our Lord's resurrection from the dead, and by the descent of the Spirit on the Apostles, the foundation of all these prejudices was sapped. Then he was demonstrated to be the Son of God with power, Romans 1:4. Then he was known to have come down from heaven, John 6:60-62. Then he was exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance and remission of sins, Acts 5:31.—A kinglydignity, infinitely superior to all the most dazzling honours of an earthly diadem. See Macknight.