Was it terrorism? Or murder? Or kidnapping? Or incest? Or rape? Or child abuse? Or drug trafficking? Or robbery with violence? No, it was none of these heinous crimes. Their perpetrators must be punished but their sins can still be forgiven by God if they truly repent and put their trust in Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord.
What then was this unforgivable sin? Who is this wicked person who has committed such a dastardly act?
The answers to these two important questions are given to us by two senior politicians.
“Datuk Zaid Ibrahim’s presence at the PKR congress on Saturday in Shah Alam is unforgivable,” says Tan Sri Muhyuddin Yassin (the star, Monday 1 December 2008).
“It also looks like he (Zaid) was supporting their cause and that is unforgiveable.” – Tan Sri Muhammmad Muhammad Taib (the star, Thursday 4 December 2008).
Jesus Christ says: “I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.” Mark 3: 28 – 29
These two verses are difficult to comprehend. “Wrongly understood they have caused untold distress…the unpardonable sin is not an isolated act or utterance, but an attitude of defiant and deliberate rejection of light, a preference of darkness to light (John 3: 19) (The New Bible Commentary). “Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit denotes the conscious and deliberate rejection of the saving power and grace of God released through Jesus’ word and act” William Lane
We would do well to banish the word “unforgivable” from our thoughts and speech when dealing with those who have hurt or offended us or society. We must always make good use of the prayer that Jesus Christ Himself taught us: “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us” (see Luke 11: 1 -4)
December 13th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
The problem is that jesus christ couldn’t even save himself, how is he going to save anybody else?
Edited for clarity – Editor
December 13th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Jesus Christ is quoted as says:
“I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.” Mark 3: 28 – 29.
When I read these words, I thought they don’t sound right. So I check my ancient Bible, and read these solemn words in the same place.
“28 Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme:
29 But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.”
I believe that it is plain and clear that there is a vast difference between
Being in danger of eternal damnation, and
Being guilty of an eternal sin.
Sin is an act of transgression against the truth, the law of God.
Damnation is the just wages earned by an act of sin. Some damnation is temporal, just consequences suffered in this life; other damnation is eternal, just consequences to be suffered for eternity.
I wholly agree that ‘we would do well to banish the word “unforgivable” from our thoughts and speech…’ A man’s duty is to forgive all PERSONAL offenses. Civil authority must punish all evils.
The unforgivable sin mentioned is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit that resided in Jesus Christ… accusing the Holy Spirit as the Evil Spirit… i.e. equating the Holy Spirit as Satan. The Pharisees attributed the power of the Holy Spirit as the power of Satan. That’s is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit of God – an indication of a perverse and willful blindness.
No one is capable of blaspheming the Holy Spirit in that manner because Jesus Christ is now glorified, i.e. He no longer walks on earth. There is NOW NOT one sin that is UN-forgivable. If there is one, then NOT one single sinner can be saved from its just consequence of eternal damnation.
December 13th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Anonymous Says:
“The problem is that jesus christ couldn’t even save himself, how is he going to save anybody else?”
Why do you think that Jesus need to save himself?
What do you think Jesus must do in order to save himself?
It is sinners that need saving from the just damnation of their sins.
But the writer believes that Jesus Christ came as the Saviour of sinners.
That’s his belief. If you don’t agree with him, then at least respect his belief.
December 13th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
jesus christ is fiction. there is no evidence he ever existed. to believe so is the highest of morony.
December 13th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Human beings are all damn good hypocrites. On one hand they try to outdo and outspeak one another about God while on the other hand, they cannot even manage themselves to be good and excellent people inhabiting mother Earth. Why talk about God, which is TOO BIG a subject to handle by us mere dumb and foolish humans, when we can’t even take good care of this planet. Everyday, by the things we do and the words we speak, we are in fact bringing misery to mankind and yet we are shamelessly proclaiming how much we fear and love God (who might be from a faraway planet). There is no need to seek out God from Space, just do the simplest thing and that is to look inwardly for the demon that lives within us, try getting it out and if you succeed, God will come looking for you.
December 14th, 2008 at 12:00 am
“jesus christ is fiction. there is no evidence he ever existed. to believe so is the highest of morony.”
Does any one expect the blind to see the glaring noonday sun?
Please check out if you are unfamiliar with these historical facts…
“Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.”
December 14th, 2008 at 12:34 am
there are enough ancient records to prove Jesus existed… anyone who write otherwise does it out of ignorance or spite… don’t need to waste time with people like them… they are in a limbo land…
December 14th, 2008 at 12:54 am
Dear Bro Lau:
Guilty of an eternal sin (ενοχος εστιν αιωνιου αμαρτηματος). The genitive of the penalty occurs here with ενοχος… The text here is αμαρτηματος (sin), not κρισεως (judgment), as the Textus Receptus has it.
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The KJV, much beloved and revered as it deserves to be for the past 500 years, has had its day. There are more accurate translations coming out now, based on even earlier proof texts than the Textus Receptus.
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Textus Receptus (Latin: “received text”) is the name subsequently given to the succession of printed Greek texts of the New Testament which constituted the translation base for the original German Luther Bible, for the translation of the New Testament into English by William Tyndale, the King James Version, and for most other Reformation-era New Testament translations throughout Western and Central Europe. The series originated with the first printed Greek New Testament to be published; a work undertaken in Basel by the Dutch Catholic scholar and humanist Desiderius Erasmus in 1516, on the basis of some six manuscripts, containing between them not quite the whole of the New Testament. Although based mainly on late manuscripts of the Byzantine text-type, Erasmus’s edition differed markedly from the classic form of that text.
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No school of textual scholarship now continues to defend the priority of the Textus Receptus; although this position does still find adherents amongst the King-James-Only Movement, and other Protestant groups hostile to the whole discipline of text criticism—as applied to scripture; and suspicious of any departure from Reformation traditions.
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As for the reply to “True Saviour”, much better to use a neutral, non-Christian historian roughly contemporaneous with the early apostles (ie. active in the 1st century AD) to give testimony about the historicity of Jesus Christ:
Josephus’ Testimony to Jesus
(Testimonium Flavianum)
Josephus, Antiquities 18. 63-64
The words in ALL CAPS are likely interpolations added by Christian copyists over the centuries in an attempt to make Josephus support faith in Jesus as the Christ. We have only three Greek manuscripts of this section of Josephus, all from the 11th century. These phrases, added rather clumsily, appear to be rather obvious additions even to the modern reader in English. Once restored to its more original reading Josephus offers us a most fascinating reference to Jesus. Indeed, it is the earliest reference to Jesus outside the New Testament, and its rather matter of fact, neutral reporting, makes it all the more valuable to the historian. It is worth noting that in his earlier work, The Jewish War, written shortly after the revolt under the auspices of the Emperor Vespasian, he mentioned neither Jesus, nor John the Baptist, nor James, while in Antiquities, written in the early 90s C.E., he mentions all three. For an excellent discussion of this text see John Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (Doubleday, 1991), Vol I, pp. 57-88.
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man IF IT BE LAWFUL TO CALL HIM A MAN, for he was a doer of wonders, A TEACHER OF SUCH MEN AS RECEIVE THE TRUTH WITH PLEASURE. He drew many after him BOTH OF THE JEWS AND THE GENTILES. HE WAS THE CHRIST. When Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, FOR HE APPEARED TO THEM ALIVE AGAIN THE THIRD DAY, AS THE DIVINE PROPHETS HAD FORETOLD THESE AND THEN THOUSAND OTHER WONDERFUL THINGS ABOUT HIM, and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day (Antiquities 18:63-64).
Professor Shlomo Pines found a different version of Josephus testimony in an Arabic version of the tenth century. It has obviously not been interpolated in the same way as the Christian version circulating in the West:
At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon their loyalty to him. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive. Accordingly they believed that he was the Messiah, concerning whom the Prophets have recounted wonders.
December 14th, 2008 at 1:01 am
‘Does any one expect the blind to see the glaring noonday sun?’
How true. One is so blinded by religion that he fails to see the real truth behind Christianity and how it has fooled billions for thousands of years. Even at this age of Science, it still amazes me how religion plays a big role in the lives of the ‘lost’.
December 14th, 2008 at 2:20 am
Looking at the comments here and at Malaysia Today, I wonder how many actually bothered to read the article before commenting. Most of the comments (esp. in MT) are totally out of topic and miss the main point of this article.
The fact that the article was written primarily for a Christian audience seems to also have been missed by a lot of folks. Apparently intolerance is both alive and well outside the Church as well.
Then again, I must say that Peter Young may have actually succeeded in being pithy
December 14th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Bob,
It is not just this article but practically every article in MT that attracts irrelevant or frivolous comments. This is merely a reflection of the scholarship of the average Malaysian.
Furthermore, the opportunity to make anonymous comments is a new freedom that the people are enjoying. So they are letting fly with everything they have (or don’t have).
They are best ignored. Otherwise, we only add to the noise.
December 14th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Dear Singam, Bob Kee,
Spare us your high horses.
Some comments here are not irrelevant. They challenge your very belief in the existence of god, of Jesus Christ and the validity of the Bible. You guys have to establish such propositions, not the non-believers. And if you are unable to do so, then what you say about god, the world, non-believers are irrelevant to non-believers.
December 14th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Brother LCK,
Thanks for the enlightening notes on the TR. I do appreciate your kindness.
I resolved to leave it to you and other textual scholars to decide the priority of the various extant manuscripts. I am hardly proficient in Greek, much much less a textual critic.
Common sense informs me that the idea of ‘an eternal sin’ is a strange idea. I have not come across the same idea in the rest of the Bible. A sin is an act of transgressing against the law of God. An act of man in time can’t possibly constitute an eternal sin. Such an temporal act in time may incur a consequence that is eternal. This may sounds simplistic… but make sense to me.
The idea of an judgment that is eternal makes plenty of sense, as the same is spoken of in many other places. Scriptures is its own infallible interpreter.
Thanks for the witness from Josephus.
December 14th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Apparently propositions go both ways.
December 15th, 2008 at 1:18 am
Sorry, this is not on the piece but on the comments to the piece.
I’m so tired of atheists. They are as bad as those types who stand at bus stops passing out church flyers and harassing commuters (sorry to those readers who have done this).
We say there is a God, they can’t prove there is no God. And the greatest scientific scholars, Einstein included, believed in a God. So i don’t understand laying down science as a means of proving there is no God, because it indicates to me and to many other scientific scholars the very opposite.
Atheism is as much a faith as any other religion. And this new-wave of Malaysian atheists shove it down anyone and everyone’s throat as much as any other religious fanatic. Rukun Negara? No cannot, coz they don’t believe in God. Negaraku has the word “Tuhan”? No cannot because they don’t believe in God. Don’t believe in God then don’t sing Negaraku and don’t say the Rukun lah! Talking about being secure in one’s faith…
What’s frightening is they come across as narrow-minded, and with as blinkered an eye-view as any fundamentalist of whatever religion out there.
But tell them this, and they splutter and spew and get upset.
As I said, talk about being secure in one’s faith…
These fundamentalist atheists… someone should write an article on this actually.
December 15th, 2008 at 3:13 am
One should also be aware of the presence of people who deliberately provoke to elicit a reaction. There used to be a rash of them known as cyber troopers who go around impersonating IDs (including one that impersonated the late Bishop Julius Paul in my blog) and posting some of the most bigoted stuff you’d ever read.
December 15th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Guys, guys….just what is the problem here? Jesus or the two mamats? BTW, what’s the link between them anyway? Mamat 1 & 2 had “condemned” an honest guy for sticking to his guns/principles while Jesus was referring to anyone who says bad things about His Father’s teachings. In my non-christian view, two totally different worlds, bros! One’s irrelevant and the other, too complex (& sensitive) to discuss without getting emotional! You might be wasting your cyber-breath railing against the Aaamno ******! Bob Kee is right, Mamats 1 & 2 could just be looking for more “ammo” to throw innocents into Kamunting, using the cyber-****** (to call them troopers would be to drag the real troopers down to their non-human levels)
regards,
December 15th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Yep, you can change your IP using Firefox.
November 11th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
The existence of God is something which cannot be proven by reason alone. As the philosopher Dr Charles Taylor said: “This (religious belief) is something that you cannot ultimately prove except by impressing people with the fact that you have a more intelligent interpretation all the time.”
However, pls read this article that points at the circumstantial evidence supporting the truths or non-truths of Jesus and the Bible:
http://jeremiahliang.blogspot.com/2009/03/five-ways-to-ascertain-truth-of-bible.html