08/08/2022 – Day 162 – Luke 11 -12 // What is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the unforgivable sin? (Luke 12:10)
I am actually covering the same section of verses in the prior cycle post; October 26, 2020. I thought this biblestudytools.com commentary was excellent. Thoughts?
Practically, I’ve heard quite a few times over the years that if you are worried about committing the unforgivable sin, you haven’t committed it yet. As explained here, as illustrated with the Pharisees, it is a willful disregard and repudiation for the healing work of the Holy Spirit that was clearly witnessed in this case.
Not Peace but Division is the final section of our reading – Luke 12: 49 -52. Jesus emphatically proclaims: “I came to bring fire on the earth, and how, I wish it were set ablaze!” It can be no other way with the Devil and his minions.
Notice how Barclay points out here how this declaration came as a shock to Jesus’ Jewish listeners:
“In Jewish thought fire is almost always the symbol of judgment. So then, Jesus regarded the coming of His kingdom as a time of judgment. The Jews firly believed that God would judge other nations by one standard and themselves by another; that the very fact that a man was a Jew would be enough to absolve him. However, much we may wish to eliminate the element of judgment from the message of Jesus it remains stubbornly and unalterably there.” (William Barclay commentary – ISBN 0-664-24103-4 – pg.
I’ll go on with verse 50 commentary :
“(ii) The Authorized Version and the Revised Standard translate verse 50, ‘I have a baptism to be baptism with.’ The Greek verb baptizein means to dip. In the passive it means to be submerged. Often it is used metaphorically. For instanc, it is submerged in drink and therefore dead-drunk. It can be used of questions. Above all it is used of a man submerged in some grim and terrible experience — someone who can say, ‘All the waves and billows are gone over me.’
That is the way in which Jesus uses it here. ‘I have,’ he said, ‘a terrible experience through which I must pass; and life is full of tension until I pass through it and emerge triumphantly from it.’ The cross was ever before his eyes. How different from the Jewish idea of God’s King! Jesus came, not with avenging armies and flying banners, but to give his life a ransom for many…
(iii) His coming would inevitably mean division ; in point of fact it did. That was one of the greatest reasons why the Romans hated Christianity — it tore families in two. Over and over again a man had to decide whether he loved better his kith and kin or Christ. The essence of Christianity is that loyalty to Christ has to take precedence over the dearest loyalties of this earth. A man must be prepared to count all the things but loss for the excellence of Jesus Christ.”
Soli Deo Gloria!