“Truly, I say to
you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies
they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has
forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.”
- Jesus (Mark 3:28-29)
FaceBook proudly
announced that it now supports over fifty definitions of gender from which to
choose when crafting a profile. Over fifty! If this doesn't speak to our
culture's confusion over gender identity I don't know what does. What it also
speaks to, whether we care to acknowledge it or not, is how prevalent the
"unforgivable" sin has become among us.
I'm not suggesting
that FaceBook has committed the unforgivable sin (it is, after all, a company
not a person). Nor am I saying that being confused about your gender (or
certain about your confused gender) is the unforgivable sin. What this turn of
events shows us, however, is that many people have wondered into that dark and
desperate place that is fertile soil for the "eternal sin."
Just what is this
eternal, unforgivable sin? Jesus clearly states that the sin that is outside of
the boundaries of forgiveness is blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. What He
means by blaspheming the Holy Spirit is clear from the context in which He makes
this statement. He had just driven a demon from a person, which is a work of
God. His adversaries, who rejected the idea that Jesus is God, attributed His
power to Satan. Thus blaspheming the Holy Spirit by saying that what is of God
is not of God and, if you really want to make sure you're blaspheming the Holy
Spirit, attributing God's work to Satan.
This brings us back
to FaceBook and it's fifty-plus gender choices. What FaceBook has done is
simply to acknowledge the realities of our culture, especially the realities
that stem from rejecting God's Word on the matter of human sexuality. In
another discussion with His adversaries, Jesus pointed out that "from the
beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female’" (Mark 10:6).
Creating human beings in two specific, clearly defined genders is the work of
God. For some time now our culture has fallen into the unforgivable sin by
rejecting God as our Creator. But lately a new way of blaspheming the Holy
Spirit has emerged through our views of sexuality. Not only are people
rejecting the binary nature of gender as God has created it, they are making
God the source of their sexual sins by claiming that "God made me this
way." They've doubled-down on the unforgivable sin.
But before clearly
identified male and female heterosexual Christians get too smug about getting
their sexuality right, we need to understand why Jesus was pointing out the
unforgivable sin in the first place. His goal wasn't to condemn His Holy
Spirit-blaspheming adversaries to well-deserved eternal suffering, but to warn
them of the consequences of persisting in their sins. We live in a spiritually
dark world in which many people are perishing through the very things they are
celebrating. Following Jesus' lead, we should recognize our obligation to hold
back those who are staggering toward death by warning them of the dangers that
they face and leading them to the grace of a God who can even cleanse them of
their "unforgivable" sins -- just as He has cleansed us from our sins
of fear, hate, confusion, and blasphemies.
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