IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 158

YES, HE is Talking to YOU! (continued)

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

Today we come upon a most difficult subject from some rather obscure verses that are recorded in the synoptic gospels as the words of Jesus. These are verses that concern what is commonly called the Unpardonable Sin. Now from our perspective let us start out by saying that there is no sin that is unpardonable; sin is only possible, in the context that we know it, in this Life in this world and this is all but a splash in time as compared to the eternal Life of the Spirit of man and the manifest Life of the Soul. So how do we interpret these verses? Let us look at them in the three gospels:

• In the Gospel of Matthew they follow the line that we discussed recently: “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad” (Matthew 12:30). From this the Master goes on to say that: “Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come” (Matthew 12:31-32).
• Mark, in his Gospel, does not record the line we see above regarding “He that is not with me” and our subject line follows after Mark’s abbreviated version of the saying on the strong man. Mark says it as this:”Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation” (Mark 3:28-29). We should note here what Vincent says on the idea of “eternal damnation” that this is an utterly false rendering. Rightly as Rev., of an eternal sin. So Wyc., everlasting trespass. The A. V. has gone wrong in following Tyndale, who, in turn, followed the erroneous text of Erasmus, krisis, judgement, wrongly rendered damnation⁴.  The American Standard Version (ASV) contains different wording in Greek than does our King James Version (KJV); they render the idea as “but is guilty of an eternal sin” in place of “but is in danger of eternal damnation“. Mark goes on to give us in the next verse his understanding of why the Master said this saying: “Because they said , He hath an unclean spirit” (Mark 3:30).
• In Luke’s Gospel this saying that we discuss today does not appear until the next chapter where the Master is with the multitudes and talking to His disciples about an assortment of things starting with: “Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known . Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops. And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him. Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered . Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows. Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God: But he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God. And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven” (Luke 12:1-10). While in the Gospel of Luke our saying appears to flow more naturally we cannot tell in which context is was naturally given. Most commentary prefer the placement of this as it is in Matthew and Mark as it plays better with their idea of the Master’s denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees who had claimed that He was doing His works by the power of Beelzebub and they interpret this as “the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost“.

So what does this all mean and what does it mean in relation to our premise that says this saying, in the way it is commonly understood, cannot be true. First we need to remember our two ideas about the words of the Master which are, the use of parables in most all of His sayings and teachings and the understanding that there are no idle words. To this we should add here the additional point that the Master is talking to men as men. In Mark’s version the Master is in a house talking to the disciples and the scribes and the Pharisees  and whoever else could hear; Matthew tells us that the Master is in a public place and He speaks to the Pharisees that seek to condemn Him along with the people and His disciples. In Luke, as we said, Jesus is with the multitudes but talking to His disciples and one would think that whoever was close enough could hear Him. We have here three relatively different versions of the same occurrence and from the three we should probably assume that the Master was talking generally to all of the people who could hear but addressing some of what He says directly to certain of them. We have then a parabolic saying; a saying of meaning told to people in using language and terms that they would understand as a saying but not realize the inner meaning unless they focusing on the spiritual part as were His disciples.

Let us repeat that the Master is talking to men as men and He is talking to them in relation to their own speaking and to what it is that they may say. Before we go on we should try to reconcile the terms of these three sayings into a form that we can deal with especially as regards the idea of eternal. We will also need to come to terms regarding the idea of “blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost” as this is a broad statement that can be interpreted in too many ways and is a sin of a nature that, on the surface, everyone among us can easily commit. Our tasks then include identifying what exactly is the sin and second to come to a reconciled idea of the punishment for this sin. Let us start with these questions: is the idea that it “shall not be forgiven” an open ended saying? Is it “shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come” in which we should know that world should be translated as age; we will explore this a bit later? Or, is it, as Mark says, “but is guilty of an eternal sin” which means for us without beginning and without end.

Overall we should see this as a critical statement if it is left to stand as it is; the Master is apparently saying that if one does this thing, there is NO forgiveness. Of course we know, by our study of His other words, that this can not be the Jesus We  should see this also in many of the sayings of His apostles; by example we can look at this saying by the Apostle Peter which we should see as God’s whole idea in relation to this, His creation: “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance“(2 Peter 3:9). These things in view, we should know that there is a mediating explanation that both covers His words and allows us the understanding of them in the reality of our spiritual lives.

Looking at the words used in the three variations we see that the effect of this sin could be open ended, for this age and the coming age, or for eternity which we can accept here as everlasting as to not get into the true ideas involved with the English word eternal. To understand this saying along the lines of what we have been saying we need to break away from the normal understanding of these words. The ideas above can all be seen to mean about the same thing from a human perspective; open ended has no end and the end of an age plus another can be seen as much as everlasting as anything else but we should recognize that the word that actually translates into everlasting is not used. Being bold, as we are prone to do, let us take advantage of the relative uncertainty revolving around the Greek word aion as it is used in scripture. In the KJV it is translated as ever 71, world 38, evermore 4, age 2, eternal 2, miscellaneous 5 plus some other meanings in combination with other words²; while the New American Standard Version (NAS) renders aion as  age 20, ages 6, ancient time 1, beginning of time 1, course 1, eternal 2, eternity 1, ever* 2, forever 27, forever and ever 20, forevermore 2, long ago 1, never* 1, old 1, time 1, world 7, worlds 1 ². Same idea generally but very different style as we see that world is little used in the latter. Compounding this array of differing interpretations of aion of which we have these type of sayings:

• Strong’s says of aion that it means: eternity, age (time period); “this age” can mean the universe or even the current world system; the “god of this age” refers to the devil³. Our point here is centered around the phrasing of the Strong’s definition in the idea that this can mean this or can mean that plus our notation that these definitions are of a definite religious nature bringing forth what is the interpreted message of the scriptures.
• Vine’s tells us this: “an age, a period of time,” marked in the NT usage by spiritual or moral characteristics, is sometimes translated “world”, the RV marg. always has “age”. They go on here to some individual scripture references to usage and then Vine’s goes on to say this: in 1 Cor. 10-11, KJV, “the ends (tele) of the world,” RV, ” the ends of the ages,” probably signifies the fulfillment of the divine purposes concerning the ages in regard to the church…. ⁶. This goes on but for our point we only need to see the uncertainty posed by the idea of probably and the definite religious bent to their sayings.

What is our point? just this; there is no certainty in the usage of this Greek word as we see above nor in its usage as regards eternity or age long or even the open ended approach. The usage is of this word and the related word aionios (which is most always eternal or everlasting) is not in keeping totally with the right understand of the word eternal and is often translated as everlasting for which there is a different Greek word to use if everlasting is what is meant. Whether we see this as eternal or age long, the idea from our flesh perspective is much the same. The importance of this is in the whole idea of eternal punishment or eternal sin or eternal anything that is not eternal Life and this eternal life is of the Spirit and not of the flesh. It is difficult to understand these terms with our finite minds and perhaps this the key to the confusion that abounds about so many spiritual issues. Much like the word infinite, eternal is hard to imagine especially in its true sense of always was and always will be. Infinite tells us that something is never ending in a spatial concept which we cannot properly comprehend from a physical perspective especially if we consider this word to go both outward and inward. Sincere thinking on these terms without the aid of any spiritual insights can only serve to give one a headache. Recognizing the above and projecting these things into the idea of translation of a Greek word to say things that are incomprehensible should give us pause to think that there is some other meaning and this is where our boldness must enter in. Remember also the the Master speaks in parables and this is as much a parable as anything else that we have seen.

For our purposes then we will make the following statement and then put the rest of this discussion off until the nest post; both to give the writer and the reader the time to properly understand what it is that we are saying and to come to terms with the possible effects of our determination. When it is understood that the Master is speaking to men and speaking about worldly things and events we should interpret the words accordingly. That is if we speak of eternal it is the entire of this lifetime plus its afterlife in the nether worlds. If we speak of age long we should see it this way as well as we do not know nor can we tell the idea of an age in spiritual terms. Taking this one step further we would need to say that if we subscribe to the idea of reincarnation then this eternal would likely last until one’s next incarnation or, if we do not subscribe to this we should see this eternal lasting until that awaited judgement day which, in retrospect would end in being an eternal punishment anyway.

We will attempt to make some more sense of this in the next post and continue on to exactly what this sin is.

Note on the Quote of the Day