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During my years in ministry, I encountered people who were genuinely frightened that they had done something God could never forgive.
Sometimes there was a particular moment they could point towards. Something they had said in anger. A period when they had rejected Christianity altogether. Words about God that they now wished they could take back. For others, it was much less specific. They simply carried the fear that somewhere along the way they had crossed an invisible line, and whatever they did now, there was no way back.
It was not always easy to reassure them, because there is one saying of Jesus that can sound as though their fear is justified.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says:
“Every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.”
Taken on its own, that is a terrifying sentence. Christianity talks endlessly about forgiveness, yet here Jesus appears to announce an exception. Peter can deny him and be restored. Paul can persecute the early Church and become one of its most important figures. The Gospels are full of people whose lives are messy, complicated and sometimes spectacularly wrong, and mercy keeps appearing.
Then suddenly, there seems to be one thing that cannot be forgiven.
No wonder people become frightened by it.
