Do you worry that you have blasphemed the Holy Spirit? A British comedian has a skit in which he jokes about the Holy Spirit. Has he committed the unpardonable sin? Christians sometimes worry unnecessarily that they may have inadvertently said or thought something that approached the unforgivable sin. So what is blasphemy? Blasphemy is a verbal statement of rebellious antagonism towards God. When Jesus warned of the danger of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, he did so in a certain context, which helps explain it. In Mark 3:30 Jesus explained that the Pharisees had accused him of performing miracles by demonic power, that he had "an unclean spirit." NICNT calls it "the conscious and deliberate rejection of the saving power and grace of God released through Jesus' word and act." Most of us reading this have little or nothing to worry about because we have not committed the unpardonable sin.
(William L. Lane, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, The Gospel According to Mark, Eerdman's, 1974, p. 145)
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