By Horatius Bonar
1867
"I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin." He said this because they were saying--"He has an evil spirit." Mark 3:28-30
It would serve no purpose to discuss or enumerate the various opinions that have been held respecting this sin. Let us just take the passage itself, and try to find out what the narrative really is meant to teach us.
The key to the passage is contained in the 30th verse--"Because they were saying, He has an evil spirit." This is the Evangelist's remark for the clearing up of the statement; or rather, I should say, it is the Holy Spirit's own comment on a declaration made specially respecting himself. In the 28th and 29th verses, the Son is speaking of the Spirit, and of the sin against him; in the 30th, the Spirit interprets the words of the Son, and shows that the sin against himself is in reality a sin against the Son. In reading these three verses, in this connection, as spoken successively by the Son of God and the Spirit of God, we see how jealous the one is for the honor of the other. The Holy Spirit will not put upon record this testimony of the Son regarding himself without adding his own testimony to the Son, and showing how sin committed against himself is committed against the Son, and dishonor cast upon himself is dishonor cast upon the Son.
It was in Galilee that these words were spoken; for Jesus was, at this time "going through every city and village preaching, and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God" (Luke 8:1). He was opposed, reviled, and threatened--as he went along, teaching and healing. The opposition, however, did not come from the Galileans--but from the Scribes and Pharisees who came down from Jerusalem (Matt. 12:24, Mark 3:22). There might be among the inhabitants of that half-Gentile region, ignorance and unbelief; but they did not go so far in their malignity as the more intellectual, better educated, and (in the common acceptation of the word) more "religious" citizens of Jerusalem, as represented by their leaders, the Scribes, and Pharisees, and Priests. These, though better read in the Prophets, and professing to be waiting for Messiah, were foremost in the rejection of Christ; setting themselves against himself and his Messiahship with a persevering and desperate malignity, such as we might have reckoned impossible.
Not only did these Jewish leaders show their unbelief, in Jerusalem and Judea; but they went everywhere, tracking the Lord's footsteps, endeavoring to provoke and entrap him; misrepresenting all that he said and did; maligning him as a drunkard and a keeper of the worst company; no, as possessed of a devil; no, more, as doing and saying all that he said and did under the influence of demonic possession. In the present narrative we find them in Galilee, many days' journey from Jerusalem. What were they doing there? They did not come to listen, nor to be taught, nor to be convinced, nor to admire. They had traveled all this distance out of pure malignity. Like demons from hell, they followed the Lord in order to assail him or plot against him. They grudged no toil, no travel, no cost, in order to carry out their hatred of Christ. They watched, with hellish eagerness, every word and motion; misconstruing all his doings; abusing him both for what he did and for what he did not do; and seizing every opportunity for poisoning the minds of the people against him.
In the scene to which our narrative refers, we find him working a miracle; a miracle of no ordinary kind. The case is a very desperate one. The man is both mute and blind--perhaps deaf too; and more than this, he is possessed with a demon. He is a signal monument of Satan's power. He is one of Satan's best fortified and best garrisoned fortresses. There could hardly be a clearer or more explicit exhibition of Satan's infernal enmity to man, and of his horrid character as the marrer of God's workmanship, the inflictor of darkness and disease. Seldom had the seed of the serpent been so exhibited in his hatefulness and enmity; and seldom had he been so directly and gloriously confronted with the woman's Seed, in all his loveableness of character, and his kindness to man. If ever, therefore, human unbelief were utterly inexcusable, it was here. If ever man's enmity might have been expected to give way, it was here. If ever, in the dreadful halting between two opinions, a better choice might have been forced upon man--and even the Pharisee made ashamed of siding against Christ--it was here. God had brought heaven and hell face to face, before man; he had brought the Prince of light and the prince of darkness into close and direct collision; and that in circumstances most likely to enlist man's sympathies with heaven against hell--with the Son of God against the devil and his demons. It might have been expected that man would, at least for once, have taken the side of God; and that the Scribes and Pharisees, the most enlightened and best educated of the land, would have given way in their prejudice and hatred. But it is just here that the greatness of their hostility comes out; and as afterwards the cry arose in Jerusalem, "Not this man--but Barabbas," so here, in Galilee, a like cry is heard, from the lips of the same men, "He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons!"
