Choices

I've had a new co-worker on the job for about a month or so. An opportunity to share the gospel with him was practically forced on me while working with him the first week. He attends a local Baptist church but he knows very little about Jesus. He was coming at Christianity from the viewpoint that Christians live "good lives." I talked with him as gently as I could about sin, righteousness and judgment, and when we established together that he is not a good person, and that neither am I, he seemed genuinely shocked, as though he had never even considered the notion. He thought about it for days, and mentioned it to me a couple of times after that with incredulity.

He has come to me with numerous Bible questions since we had our first talk, and he isn't an unintelligent guy, but his life experience is pretty different from mine, and he has been raised up in an environment where he was taught a sense of "entitlement."

Today while we were unloading some tables together he asked me why we were working on the Sabbath when the Bible forbids it. I explained to him that now that Jesus has come that we may rest from our own works, and that He is our Sabbath, our rest, every day. He then asked me why we worship on Sunday and we talked about that a little bit. He ended up asking me about what the unpardonable sin is. He said he thought it was blasphemy.

I told him that the only unpardonable sin that I know of is the rejection of Jesus Christ as one's Savior. It is to me, the ultimate blasphemy. In the Bible, "blaspheming the Holy Spirit" is called the unpardonable sin. It was so defined because while Jesus was walking the earth, the religious leaders of the day accredited His miracles to demons, when the reality was that Jesus' miracles were the direct outworking of the Holy Spirit in His life.

The kind of heart that would do this was an extremely hard heart. A heart in that state showed no visible sign of repentance because the ministry of the Holy Spirit was so clearly evident in the words, and in the works of Jesus, not just as a prophet, but as the Anointed One of God, whom Moses prophesied. To reject Jesus in such a way was not just hard-hearted, it was supremely rude, and made it clear that such a person was in an unrepentant state. It could be considered nothing less than unpardonable.

My co-worker then asked innocently, "So then everybody goes to heaven, right? Because the Bible says that God doesn't what anyone to die?" I told him that while it is true that the Bible says that "God does not want that any should perish, but that all should come to eternal life," that many would go to hell. This man is seeking after truth, and I explained it to him, using the Scriptures. It may have sounded harsh to him, but what the Bible says is easily understood in context, and many will not enter into heaven.

Speaking of the Holy Spirit in John 16:8-11, Jesus said:

"8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: 9 of sin, because they do not believe in Me; 10 of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; 11 of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged."

The one and only unforgivable sin is the rejection of Jesus, the Christ. It is plain to see from the passage above that it is the convicting work of the Holy Spirit which shows us that rejection is the issue involved here. Those who keep their allegiance to the "ruler of this world," will be judged with the ruler of this world. The good news is that anyone can have forgiveness if they repent of their sins and place their trust in Jesus.

In the Bible, there are two places where it states that men were, "cut to the heart" (NKJV) by the truth of the gospel of Christ. In Acts 2:37, there were those who received the Word with gladness and turned to the Lord and were baptized. In Acts 7:54, the reaction of the men was much different, and they proceeded to stone to death, a man named Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit and who had, "the face of an angel."

These were two completely different reactions to the truth of God, plainly stated. One group turned to a merciful God who accepted them because they had bowed to Jesus as their righteous Sacrifice, and the other group rejected God, and killed His messenger. The difference is not hard to see.