ALL sins are forgiven if you ‘accept Jesus as your savior’, right? What about the non-forgivable sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit? We have a little CONTRADICTION problem here?!

There is no contradiction here, though there is a real question, and both statements come from the same sermon: a universal claim with a stated exception is a qualified claim, not a contradictory one. The interesting part is what the exception actually is.

1. A contradiction needs both claims at once. For a contradiction you need the same proposition affirmed and denied. "Every sin will be forgiven except one" does not deny that every sin will be forgiven; it specifies the boundary. If I say every student passed except one, I have not contradicted myself. The objection needs the word "all" to be unqualified, and Jesus qualifies it in the same breath.

2. The context names the sin. Matthew 12:22-24: Jesus heals a man who is blind and mute, and the Pharisees say he casts out demons "by Beelzebul, the prince of demons." They are standing in front of the Spirit's unmistakable work and calling it satanic. That is the act Jesus responds to, and the response only makes sense against that backdrop. Mark's version is explicit: "all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness" (Mark 3:28-29).

3. It is a rejection, not a vocabulary slip. Jesus distinguishes a word against the Son of Man, which is forgivable, from a word against the Spirit, which is not (Matthew 12:32). Paul is the proof: he calls himself "a blasphemer" and says he "received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief" (1 Timothy 1:13). Ignorance is forgivable. Clear-eyed attribution of God's work to the devil is a different act.

4. It is unforgivable because it is final. The sin is not a worse deed on a scale; it is the settled refusal of the only channel by which forgiveness arrives. Hebrews 6:4-6 describes people who tasted the goodness of the word of God and then fell away, and Hebrews 10:26 speaks of sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth. The problem is not the size of the sin but the closing of the door.

5. The anxiety is diagnostic, and it points the right way. People who worry they have committed this sin almost never have. The worry is evidence that the Spirit is still working, because a seared conscience does not fret. If you are still able to want forgiveness, you are still able to receive it. That is not a loophole; it is the nature of the thing.

6. The promise is wider than the formula. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). "Whoever comes to me I will never cast out" (John 6:37). Notice the condition is coming, not a correct recitation. "Accept Jesus as your savior" is a summary of the gospel, not a magic phrase, and treating it as one is what creates the apparent contradiction.

7. The turn: the objection uses the promise as a trap. The question assumes forgiveness is a mechanical transaction triggered by a formula, then faults God for having an exception. But the Bible describes a person coming to a person, not a formula being triggered. If forgiveness worked by formula, the formula could be gamed, and a God who could be gamed would not be good. The exception exists because the offer is relational, not transactional.

8. Christians disagree about who can commit it. Reformed writers typically hold that a true believer cannot commit this sin, since the Spirit's work is irrevocable. Arminian writers hold that a believer can fall away and that this sin is the final form of that. Both read the same texts and reach different conclusions. That is a real disagreement inside Christianity, and it does not affect the practical point: the door is open to anyone who wants it.

The two statements are one statement: every sin is forgivable for the person who comes, and the one unforgivable thing is refusing to come. That is not a contradiction in the text; it is the text's whole point. If you are worried you have crossed the line, the worry itself says you haven't.

Sources: D.A. Carson; Craig Keener; Darrell Bock.

Related challenges:
• What does it mean to be a Christian? There are over 30,000 different groups, all of which answer this question differently. If agreement cannot be found on THIS issue, can the claims of Christians themselves be taken with any degree of seriousness?
• Why do arrogant Christians think they’re right about everything?
• Religion has caused most of the wars and evil in the world. Why do you want to perpetrate this?