“He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters. Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come” Matthew 12:30-32

There is no neutrality with Jesus; we are either for Him or against Him. This important truth prefaces something He said that is not easily understood: what did He mean by the unforgivable blasphemy of the Holy Spirit?

Since it is impossible to be neutral concerning Jesus, our assessment of His work cannot be neutral either. Either He performed the miraculous by the Spirit of God, or He did so by the power of Satan. There is no third option.

Spirit here is synonymous with Jesus. It is not that He is lesser, and therefore sin against Him can be forgiven whereas sin against Holy Spirit is a “higher” sin. To reject Holy Spirit working in Jesus is to reject Jesus as well.

As born again believers indwelt with Holy Spirit, to reject the work of Holy Spirit in Jesus is to reject the very Spirit life within us. It is to make a willful, deliberate decision that rejects the Spirit life of God in Jesus, and ourselves, to our absolute condemnation. To so seriously get all of this wrong is to reach a point of no return; not because God cannot forgive, but because we have become so blinded as never to see. As one writer says, it is “rejection of … truth in full awareness that that is exactly what one is doing - thoughtfully, willfully, and self-consciously rejecting the work of the Spirit even though there can be no other explanation of Jesus’ exorcisms than that."

Solemn and serious as Jesus’ words are, they were primarily directed at the religious leaders who were in danger of what Jesus spoke about. The words of Hebrews 6:9 better apply to His faithful followers: “But, beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you, and things that accompany salvation, though we are speaking in this way.”

Rather than alarming the people of God who are resolutely committed to Christ from the day of conversion until the present, these words serve as boundary markers and important reminders that, as we said at the start, there is no neutrality with Jesus. Every person, without exception, either stands with or against Jesus. It all punctuates Jesus important question to His disciples and, by extension, every person: “But who do you say that I am?” Matthew 16:15.

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