What Is the Unforgivable Sin?

One of the first people that I led to Christ many years ago was a young man who believed that he had committed the unforgivable sin. He had been raised in a Christian home, but that was the thing that had kept him from Christ for some time because he believed that he had blasphemed the Holy Spirit and committed this sin that was unpardonable. Certainly, Christians have been haunted by these words of Jesus in the gospels.

One of the places we find them is in Mark 3 where Jesus says that, "All sins will be forgiven the children of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin." 

I've met Christians who thought that they had committed this. One of the classic examples is John Bunyan in his spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. He talks about these months of agony and torment that he experienced because he believed he had committed this sin. 

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