Did Jesus’ family blaspheme the Holy Spirit?

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our sermons this last week. We talked about Mark, chapter three, where Jesus uses the term blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, and people who blasphemy the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. And so, of course, course, we have some questions related to that massive topic, which we addressed a good bit in the sermon, but we will probably never be able to address fully. And as I said in the sermon, people have really great, well respected, well studied theologians, have different views or just slightly different views from each other on that subject. But the question this week is, did Jesus family commit blasphemy of the Holy Spirit?

Because they’re in this narrative, they seem to be missing who Jesus is. If you remember the first part of the passage up there, it says there’s these family members who believe that Jesus is out of his mind. Is the quote there in verse 21. And then the way Mark writes is he starts a story and then it’s kind of dot, dot, dot is put that on pause. And then there’s an interruption which religious leaders come in, accuse Jesus of being Satan.

Essentially, Jesus says, whoever commits blasphemy the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. And then starting verse 31, we conclude the story of the dot, dot, dot. So verse 21, this family sets out to get Jesus dot, dot, dot. And then verse 31, it picks up the dot, dot, dot, and they arrive where Jesus is in this building teaching, and they try to get to him, presumably related back to verse 21, where it says that he’s crazy. And so the question is, was Jesus family committing blasphemy of the Holy Spirit because they didn’t understand who he was?

So thanks for the question. They are related. I believe the warning applies to them. You might remember in the sermon we said Jesus never even actually said the religious leaders committed blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. He just warned them about it because of what they had said, which was they thought he was Satan, a misunderstanding of who Jesus was, how he was working.

And so I think the same warning applies to this family that comes down to seize him. But my view is because Jesus family eventually did come around, as we talked about in the sermon, that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is not like something that you would commit one time. And that would be, if you do it, you’re out. You may not even know when you do it. It’s some kind of ongoing, continual process where you never let the Holy Spirit bring you to Jesus.

And Jesus family, of course, eventually did have the Holy Spirit bring them to Jesus. They became believers, leaders in the church, whereas many of the religious leaders, as far as we know, of course, not all of them, but many of the religious leaders never let the Holy Spirit bring them to Jesus. And if you’re never brought to Jesus, you’re never forgiven, because forgiveness is found in him alone. And so, again, instead of it being like a one time thing that if you do it, you’re out instantly, it seems to be some kind of ongoing process where you’re refusing to ever let the Holy Spirit bring you to Jesus. And so, no, ultimately, I don’t believe Jesus family committed that sin because they were brought to Jesus eventually, whereas many of the religious leaders probably did.

But in both cases, in this particular passage, it’s only a warning. Jesus doesn’t say, You’ve done it, you’re out. He just warns them. What should be a warning to all of us, right, is, are we listening to the Spirit to bring us to Jesus? Are we refusing him?

Are we trying to silence him in our mind?

Holy Spirit’s, God himself, working for our good to bring us to the one we need most, who is Christ? And so it would be to our peril not to listen to him. So we hope that helps. Thanks for sending in the question, and we will see you next time.