PHARISAISM AND THE UNPARDONABLE SIN

The Unpardonable Sin is not the sin of murder, as Moses, David and Paul were all the takers of life directly or indirectly, and yet they were, through infinite grace, transformed into eminent saints; one the law giver, another a man after God's own heart, and an apostle. When the Bible says that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him, it means no unrepentant murderer. Not only have many actual murders been forgiven, but numerous ones who have harbored hate, its equivalent, for -- "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer."

Likewise, the unpardonable sin is not stealing, as the thief on the cross was freely forgiven. It is not adultery for there are several instances in the Gospels where the Lord forgave freely those guilty of this sin in act with numerous instances where it has been forgiven when committed in thought. And so on through the entire list of what are called gross or overt acts of sin with the violation of all the sins enumerated in the decalogue; collectively or singly, they do not constitute specifically what the Bible means by the Unpardonable Sin. Though, of course, any or all of these sins may persist until, as we shall see, they become equivalent to the Unpardonable Sin and the loss of the soul. In other words, one might as well deliberately commit the unpardonable sin as to persist in any one form of sin.

The specific definition of the unpardonable sin, as the name indicates, is sin in such aggravated form that it is impossible for God to forgive it; it is a sin for which there is no pardon; either in this age, the age of Christ's ministry, or the age to come (the Millennial Age). The Authorized Version reads, "either in this world or in the world to come, " but the proper translation of the Greek word is "Age".

Many conscientious souls have been tormented by the devil into thinking that they have committed this sin, when they do not even know what the sin is. Let us have the answer in Jesus' own words. The account of the unpardonable sin is given by the Lord Jesus in the twelfth chapter of Matthew, particularly verses twenty-one to forty-two. Parallel passages are found in Luke 12:10, etc. In getting a complete view of the causes which led up to the commission of this sin by the Pharisees, it will pay us to read Matthew 11:28 to Matthew 12:42. And it will be helpful to recall the Master's promise of rest in connection with all the horrible bondage of Pharisaism.

Many regard the unpardonable sin as the attributing to a Satanic source what is done by the Spirit of God; but the Lord Jesus surrounds His teaching on the unpardonable sin with other soul-damning sins so that those who have not committed the specific sin of calling Him the Prince of Devils and who have not said that the spirit by which He worked was Satan's, but who still persist in the other forms of sin, which He mentions, may see that their peril of being unforgiven or lost is just as great if they persist in any one form of sin, and amounts to the same ultimately, as though the direct unpardonable sin was committed, namely the loss of the soul. So that one might as well say that Jesus had a devil as to persist in any sin. The specific unpardonable sin is rarely committed by sinners. It is the sin of the religious, but spiritually dead Pharisee and his descendants. Matthew 11:28-30 and 12:1-50.

There are rare instances mentioned in the New Testament of the salvation of a Pharisee; Joseph, of Arimathea, Nicodemus and Paul are the outstanding cases. The Lord regarded the salvation of publicans and harlots as hopeful compared to theirs. But the things which are impossible with men are possible with God, even the salvation of this difficult class. The rescue from the meshes of Pharisaism is so exceptional that the Master frequently warns His disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

We will point out some of the outstanding characteristics of Pharisaism and then endeavor to show their relation to the Unpardonable Sin.

Pharisaism's origin is credited to Satan in his attempted exaltation of himself above the Most High. -- Isa. 14:13:14. Here is the germ of all self-righteousness -- "I will exalt myself above." Jesus had, doubtless, this passage in mind when he charged the Pharisees with being of their father the devil, who set his will against the will of the Most High. -- "His lusts ye will do." He was a renegade from the truth and abode not in the truth, he refused to submit to God; and the Jews, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, went about to establish their own righteousness, thus following Satan's lead who had said -- "I will exalt myself above the throne of the Most High." Sin thus has its origin in an act of self-will and it is perpetuated by the human will crossing the will of God.

The Pharisees, true to their satanic ancestry, had a wrong direction for their volitional powers. "Ye will not come to Me that ye might have life." They would not submit themselves to God's righteousness, but sought to produce it by their own works, which led them ultimately into the first characteristic of Pharisaism we shall mention: --

Irrevocable Self-Righteousness -- irrevocable because although God longed to melt their stony heart and Jesus could weep over them and yearn to gather them as a hen her brood, under His Divine Wing, yet there is something so hardening and blinding about self-righteousness that its victims rarely ever see and repent of it. When doing so much to save themselves, it was difficult to see how they should look for Another, namely Christ, the Righteousness of God, looking away entirely from self and all activities to the Cross of Christ, which exposes Satan's false righteousness by works.

Irrevocably Wrong Direction of Volition -- "Ye would not be gathered unto Me."

Irrevocable Exaltation of Self -- in the ultimate choice of the willful king: -- "If another come in his own name, him ye will receive, " referring primarily to anti-Christ who will sit in the temple of God, claiming that he is God, thus exalting himself above the authority of God. The exaltation of self-righteousness among the Pharisees was (a) In the effort to establish their own righteousness, rather than being submissive to God's plan of "The Lord our righteousness;" and (b) In their braggadocio about their worthless righteousness by works: -- "God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men;" I fast; I pray; I give alms; I tithe; I am not like this publican. This is the dominant note of self-righteousness wherever found: "I will exalt myself above the Most High."

Myself above! My movement above! My church above! My theories above! My demonstrations above! My opinions above! My judgment above! But we forbear to mention more, and stop to record the words of the meek and lowly Jesus, the Son of Man, Who made Himself of no reputation and emptied Himself: -- "Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and whoso humbleth himself shall be exalted."

With this irrevocable self-righteousness is also seen an impenetrable self-complacency and satisfaction manifested in irrevocable unresponsiveness to all the appeals of the Son of God. How fearful is the insensibility of the dead soul when the wisdom and love of Jehovah cannot arouse it from its self-chosen delusion! And how terrible is a free moral agency which chooses self rather than the Lord its God.

The Pharisees resisted all of the prophets who told before of the coming of the Just One. John the Baptist was the Elijah which was for to come (of whom Elijah was the ante-type) whom the Jews believed was to come before Messias came, and they said that John the Baptist had a devil. God's own Son the took with wicked hands and nailed Him to the Tree. Stephen they stoned to death. Jesus said the Pharisees in their unresponsiveness to all the overtures of God made for their deliverance from self-righteousness, reminded him of the custom of the children in the market-places calling unto their fellows and saying, "We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; (or responded as the custom was when they piped) -- we have mourned unto you and ye have not lamented" (beaten upon their breasts in imitation of the hired mourners in those days). -- Matthew 11:16-17.

Then, for the same sin of unresponsiveness, He began to upbraid the cities wherein most of His mighty works were done. At Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum, especially, he had bared His mighty arm of power, and yet they resisted, and He stated that even Sodom (a name synonymous with the vilest depravity, meriting God's fiery judgments' already a city of four thousand years in hell) will not have the degree of torment that will the other cities mentioned, whose penalty for rejecting so much greater light will be such that Sodom's lot will be far preferable. So fearful is the sin of indifference to the appeals of Christ. The men of Nineveh would, too, condemn the men of His generation, because they repented at the preaching of one far inferior to Christ, and the Queen of the South was commended for responding to the wisdom of Solomon; while the Pharisees had not been interested in the very wisdom of God, manifested in Christ. This is approximating the unpardonable sin -- a stolid indifference to every appeal of God in Christ.

Irrevocable unreasonableness and contrariness, evidenced in fault-finding, is another outstanding mark of Pharisaism. With the Pharisee, a day, a tradition, a custom, an ear of corn and shew bread, and the temple, were more important than God manifest in the flesh, the Son of Man in whom dwelt all the fulness of the God-Head bodily. The Pharisee finds fault with Jesus for going through the corn-field on the Sabbath Day and plucking and eating the ears of corn, which he did to sustain His life and the lives of the disciples. The Pharisees found fault with Jesus before and after He healed the withered hand in the Synagogue; before, they watched Him to see if He dared violate their tradition about healing on the Sabbath Day, which forbade it unless the patient were about to die; after, they took counsel how they might destroy Him. They thought more of the blinding and binding legalism in the observance of tradition's letter than of bestowing mercy to suffering men on the Sabbath Day. Satan, as the god of this world, had so blinded them that they could not see that a man was better than a sheep; that if they could deliver an ox or an ass from the pit on the Sabbath Day, or lead them to water, that a man was more worthy of being ministered to, forasmuch as he was made in the image of God, though marred by sin. "Don't desecrate the day," they said. Jesus said that it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath Day and that He was Lord of the day and greater than the day, which was His own creation. The Sabbath was made for man -- not man for the Sabbath. Oh, heartless, blind, Pharisaism! Let the man die, but preserve the day from defilement or desecration!

Jesus taught that the man was dearer to God than an exact observance of the day. We may yet make so much of days that we lose the spirit of Jesus, while contending for their proper observance. The spasmodic, seasonal giving at Christmas-time is foreign to His spirit of perennial benevolence; Easter's fashion-parade has no relation to Him whom the world hated, neither to his true disciples who love not the world neither the things which are, in the world.

What hardness of heart is that which will endeavor to kill or greatly hinder a man's influence because he does a work of healing, without perhaps our exact formula; that would stone him to death for his many good works?

After Christ healed the man who had the withered hand; the unreasonable Pharisees took counsel together bow they might destroy Him. It is inevitable, if He is right. then they are terribly wrong! "This man doeth many miracles, what do we?" "If we let Him alone, the Romans will come and take our city." They cannot let Him alone because He is the personification of Goodness and they are the personification of evil, and the false must oppose the true.

When Christ cast out a devil, the Pharisees continued their life-long habit of fault-finding: they could find no explanation but that He hath a devil Himself and casts out Beelzebub because He is the Prince of devils. Doing what Christ did was inevitable, being what He was, and since they could do no such miracles, they must discredit His.

Some of them said, "He is a good man but all the more dangerous because He is not straight on tradition." He was Holy but not "Holiness;" He heals but does not see it as we do; He casts out devils but does not follow with us; He is acquainted with letters but he is self-educated -- Christ ever, in His teaching, labors to show that the Pharisee's conception of religion and His were entirely different: in other words that they were endeavoring to merit salvation by the works of the law, which works, they were unable to fulfill, and were never meant to fulfill, as it was given as a "school-master to bring them to Christ;" in other words, to make them realize their total inability to do anything of themselves apart from Christ Jesus.

That, my friends, is the battle ahead of us today -- so to exalt Jesus Christ that false religions will be exposed by His true light. "We must clearly demonstrate by life and teaching that much so-called Christianity of the Twentieth Century, is not the Christianity Jesus Christ and the apostles lived and taught. The great need, of Our day is the conversion of men to Jesus Christ and not to a religious profession. Jesus said -- "I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." Someone recently said, in commenting on the lack of response to a stirring appeal in a large audience for men to come forward and accept Christ -- "The trouble today is that too much time is spent by evangelists in calling the righteous (instead of sinners) to repentance -- "in other words, the self-righteous, those who do not see their need, though they may have heard the gospel again and again.

Now much fault-finding there is among us! A gnat is often strained at and a camel swallowed. How often the servant of God, with satanic pressure on every hand, is the victim; his every movement criticized! Oh, how much he needs prayer! But it is the way the Master went and shall not His servants tread it still?

The Pharisee is contrary and unreasonable it is as easy to reason with a devil or a stone as with him. John, the Baptist, came neither eating or drinking and they said that he had a devil; Jesus came eating and drinking (in moderation) and they said He was a glutton and a wine-bibber; how much inward darkness, with such numerous external religious activities, can co-exist with a persistent profession of seeing, is too complex for the finite mind.

Irrevocable unmercifulness while zealously pursuing the externals of religion, is another prominent Pharisaical characteristic. Jesus rebuked them for their formal sacrifices, performed while they harbored a hard, unmerciful spirit, and which were followed by no acts of mercy to mankind. "I will have mercy and not sacrifice." The merciful, who seeks the highest good of the offender, as does God, shall have mercy. The extension of mercy is regarded as a sin by the Pharisees. Allied to unmercifulness is the condemnation of the guiltless: "But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless." They revered the day, the tradition, the corn, etc., and they wanted to make Christ guilty for violating their traditions in mercifully healing a suffering man on the Sabbath, regardless of the fact that He was Lord of the Sabbath and Lord of Creation, and that He had the right to walk through the fields of His own creation and pluck and eat the corn; that He was greater than the temple and that it was constructed from the materials of His own creation. They overlooked the fact that in an emergency of hunger David and they that were with him went into the House of God and ate the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor they that were with him, but only for the priests: and yet another instance in which the priests in the temple profaned the temple and were guiltless, and "shall not He who is greater than all" heal a man on the day of His own creation, and in a Temple solemnly dedicated to Him?

They made the observance of the letter of the law of more import than the mercy. But Jesus reversed the order and said -- "I will have mercy." "Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy."

The Bible commends discretion but not unforgiveness of indiscretion. This type of discretion is more unlike Jesus than the indiscretion. The purity of the church is not guarded by unmercifulness, like the treatment of the lapsed in the church of the first centuries, which, under a false conception of discipline, made them impose unwarranted conditions upon the lapsed for restoration, requiring in some instances, as much as three years to lapse before full restoration. But Christ imposed no such conditions. "There is one mediator between God and man -- the Man Christ Jesus." The early church and the Roman church imposed themselves be tween the man and God, and the modern church often1 does the same. Presumptuous sin is to be avoided, but, "If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father. and He is the propitiation for our sins" -- and immediately forgives our confessed sins without the medium of a confessional, priest, preacher, evangelist, altar or campmeeting or revival, a waiting-time, or tears. "He restoreth my soul" immediately upon the recognition of the need and the acceptance of the Propitiation.

The Pharisees were especially unmerciful towards certain forms of outward sin, while they covered up secret sin as repugnant to God as the sins they so contemptuously denounced. For example, they were covetous and derided Jesus for rebuking them for this sin which as effectually shuts the soul out from the kingdom of heaven as adultery; indeed it is a deeper sin, a sin so respectable often in the eyes of men that one may have a reputation for success and gain great publicity from its fruit, while the other sin is of the flesh. The Master regarded the salvation of the adulteress as hopeful compared to that of the covetous Pharisee. There was a quicker consciousness of the other sin than the subtle sin of the spirit. The Pharisee wanted to stone the adulteress; but by their custom of putting away a woman for every cause and marrying again shortly thereafter, they were legalized adulterers. A keen modern observer said that the looseness and laxity of our American divorce laws amounted to legalized adultery. If one go through the regular legal procedure of securing a divorce for less cause than adultery he may marry again and be welcomed into good society as it is termed, because the sin is committed in a way approved of men, though condemned of God, but a bigamist who does not wait for the legal procedure to take its course, is arrested for the crime which thousands, according to the teachings of Christ, are committing in the regular and so-called respectable way. This is one of the Latter day satanic characteristics of the deceivableness of unrighteousness by which men and women find legal ways of rejecting the lave of God. while claiming rightness with God through identification with the Church. Simon. the Pharisee, holds Christ's prophetic claim in contempt because he seemed not to discern the character of the woman weeping at His feet. and he despises the fallen but penitent woman; but Christ reverses the order and holds Simon's discourteous and contemptuous treatment of His guest up to scorn and extends mercy and forgiveness to the woman.

No matter how sinful men and women have been if they are truly penitent and we yet hold in contemptuous scorn those who need pity and forgiveness, it is akin to Pharisaism. We readily pity those who are crippled in body but have nothing but withering scorn and condemnation for those who are defective in soul. If Simon ever forgave the woman, which is doubtful, he would no doubt have demanded that she go through endless ceremonies of purification, but Jesus forgives her immediately upon repentance and faith; and He commands his disciples to treat the falle.n who repent exactly as He did. The accusers are more guilty than the accused, and the great peril of an unforgiving spirit is with its possessor. Jesus does not seem to regard the peril of one who has sinned and yet returns seven times in a day to his brother and repents, as great as that of the brother who is exasperated at the sinner. There is in the spirit of the Pharisee who cannot forgive, something utterly foreign and at variance with the compassion and mercy of Christ.

"If thy brother trespass against thee forgive him; and if he trespass against thee seven times in a day and say I repent, thou shalt forgive him." It is suggestive that Jesus introduces this incident by telling the disciples to take heed to themselves! -- as though in an attitude of unforgiveness, they were in as great danger, or greater, than he who trespassed, for if he repents he is forgiven. "How the thought of our great salvation, through Jesus Christ ought to melt our hearts to forgive our brother, for the appeal through grace is that because we have been forgiven we ought to forgive one another."

Irrevocable small-mindedness, pettiness, narrowness. small souledness and unfairness, afflict the Pharisee. Small talk, small acts, and narrow, unfair, one-sided judgments come from small, selfish souls. Pettiness, manifested in speck-mongering, watching ever with the eagle eye for the bit of divergence from the established tradition of the elders, for each little deviation from the jots and tittles and the iota subscripts of their law, lying in wait that they might catch something from His speech that they might accuse Him, flaw-hunters they were, picking to pieces and nagging -- when a sour Pharisee gets through picking his victim, a singed chicken is a beautiful sight in comparison.

Pharisaism is thus, in its relation to the unpardonable sin, a series of preliminary steps which prepares the way for the committing of the unpardonable sin.

Such is Pharisaism: a hard, unmerciful, unsympathetic spirit, a legalism destitute of all mercy to offenders; a rigid traditionalism, which is more concerned about deviation from its binding exactions than acts of mercy to suffering mankind; which thinks more of ritualistic temple worship and form than of the One to whom the temple was dedicated; a hard spirit which would let Jesus and His disciples starve rather than see them as they thought, desecrate the Sabbath by plucking and eating the corn. Jesus tried to teach them that it was more important to save the man than the corn or the day's exact observance. Paul said that this legalistic observance and magnifying of days by the Christian was the same as being fallen from grace.

The Pharisee is not for Christ, which is equivalent to being against Him. He commits blasphemy in the true sense of the word -- talking sanctimoniously while his heart is bad, which is contrary to the law of nature which causes the bad tree to bring forth bad fruit and the good tree good fruit; they were at heart vipers, yet they talked as though they were good. This is the Bible use of the word blasphemy, i.e., pretending to be what we are not. "I know the blasphemy of them who say they are Jews and are not." The store-box man does not properly blaspheme -- he is what he is -- he curses and swears publicly. But blasphemy is the sin, primarily, of the professor, and has the element of secrecy in it; it is hypocrisy, to claim to be What we are not; to claim to be holy when we are not; to claim to be right with God when we are not; to claim to have victory when we have it not; to claim rightness with God when certain things are covered up, hidden in heart and life. It was in connection with the teaching of Jesus on the blas.phemy against the Holy Ghost that Jesus warned to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy, then He immediately described the things covered up, hidden. Ah, my friend, to claim to be right with God and at the same time to have things covered up, is to commit the sin of blasphemy. "I know the blasphemy of them Who say they are Jews and are not."

Irrevocable antagonism to Jesus in all of His words and works and movements -- hounding his every step, hindering and opposing Him in every way and never satisfied until the Person whom they hated is nailed to the tree -- this is Pharisaism. Essentially evil, it must hate the good. Antagonizing Jesus, they must hate the Holy Spirit within Him and commit the unpardonable sin of saying that He is animated by the spirit of Beelzebub in casting out devils.

They professed goodness while their hearts were evil and hardened in their hatred of goodness as manifested in Christ; claiming to be the only representatives of God, they hated Him whom God sent in His express image changing the established order everywhere in the universe that like brings forth like, good trees bearing good fruit and bad trees bad fruit, They being evil spoke good things."

They were also given to irrevocable covetousness, a prominent characteristic of the Jews, called by Jehovah, the iniquity of covetousness" and hated and derided Jesus for reproving them for it. "The Pharisees which were covetous, derided Him." The multitudinous external religious activities were powerless to break the power of selfishness in them; indeed all false religions have this ear-mark, powerlessness to break the power of sin.

Finally, they had an irrevocable conceit of wisdom and understanding of God whom Jesus said they knew not. He thanked God for hiding the true wisdom from them and revealing it to babes, not by knowledge or wisdom of the world which knew not God. but by Divine revelation. "Spiritual things are spiritually discerned."

The Master gives His solemn word about the idle words which men speak, and the solemn holding to account therefore in the judgment day in connection with the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, for in them there is often the profession without the possession; this is the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost for it makes God a liar.