What does this mean for someone who at one point had faith, turned from it, denied God, and professed atheism, and then had a change of heart?

Are they just screwed?

The sin was watching Jesus perform miracles and then claiming that it was the power of Satan he was using instead of the Holy Spirit.  I don't think that is applicable today.  In your example, they are not screwed.

That does seem to be more logical. Thank you.

I understood it to be blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.  The context it was used was a person could slander Jesus and be forgiven but
he that blasphemed the Holy Spirit, who not.

Matthew 20:1-16 - For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard.

2 He agreed to pay them a denarius[a] for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing.

4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’

5 So they went. “He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing.

6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’

7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius.

10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius.

11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner.

12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius?

14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you.

15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.

It doesn't matter when you come back, as long as you come back.

It's sort of like saying the only disease a doctor can't treat is the one that prevents the patient from going to the doctor.

Agree.

I have heard, to have the sure knowledge of the Holy Spirit and Jesus and then turn your your back on it. Like being in the sun at noonday, and denying the sun is shining.  Most people would not get that kind of vision or testimony in their lives. I'm not saying it is impossible. Some do. We have prayers answered and may be given signs but it's not the same as the Holy Ghost giving you a personal witness. So it's not a sin the majority of us have to worry about.

But Jesus said it would be better for us to have a mill stone hanged about our necks and drowned in the sea than to hurt children. We should think on that one a little more.

I was taught that there are 10 commandments, or that Christ freed us from all the commandments and replaced them with "love your neighbor as yourself".   I get confused as to which applies.  If the commandments were replaced by Christ's admonition a, surely there are more than just the one I mentioned, for example, "suffer the little children not to come unto me", and I am sure there are more.

I guess my question is whether the commandments were replaced by Christ's instructions, in which case we would need a list of all of them, including any relating to the Holy Spirit.  I am just trying to figure out which belief system people are operating under.

"Love your neighbor" is the principle behind the last 6 of the 10 commandments. The 10 commandments (and the 613 more specific commandments) were the teaching tool to teach how to "love your neighbor".

Christ's and Paul's exposition of those commandments was to teach the principle behind them, i.e. "love your neighbor" and not to quibble about loopholes. Some of the Jews were aware of this as Christ's discussion in Mark 12:28-34 demonstrates.


Yes, the law was replaced (Heb 7:12, 8:13).

Excellent reply, thank you.  Would I be correct then in presumingthat among the 613 other commandments mentioned that among them is a specific proscription regarding the one "unforgivable" sin?  If so, where would that reference be found?  And a second question, if a sin against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable, there would seem to be no hope for salvation once that sin had been committed, so why even bother trying as nothing anyone does afterwards will ever be good enough?

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is more eternal sin.
Everything else can be forgiven.

A better example is that you know you are sinning but begin to malign the work the Holy Spirit want to do in your life.
You begin to build a wall of your own doctrine or excuses to justify the sin. You still know it's wrong "fundamentally". But take the steps to changes the fundamental ideology to accommodate the sin.
Then you begin to pull others in to support that fundamental change and it goes on perpetually because you begin to believe that you know more than God and the Holy Spirit.

I agree with angelfire. Example: I have a very old friend who used to live a few miles away. Thirty years ago, he was fairly well grounded in the Christian faith. Since then he's moved across the country many times, been here-there-everywhere, and as a consequence, has been "exploring" many of the so-called Christian denominations.

Long story short--well, he surfaces last night and calls me from the East coast. He then starts railing about how the Christian God is only two persons--"Father and Son, period!" He out and out denies the trinity and says the Holy Spirit does NOT exist. I asked him when he was baptized, what exactly were the words used, and he mentioned at the ceremony they said: "I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit."  He now says that to mention the Holy Spirit during baptism was "wrong" that "the people at the church MADE the Minister say those words and THEY are wrong."

My poor friend has some real big issues....like angelfire said--he's not only maligning the work of the Holy Spirit, but denying it! As I read scripture, THAT is the "unforgivable sin."

So , what if he repents and spends the rest of his life on missions bringing others to Christ?  Will he be forgiven?

Ah, yes. That passage:

"'He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever says a word against the Son of man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come" (Matthew 12:22-32).

Darn good question. Here's what a former pope and now a Saint in the Catholic Church, Pope St. John Paul II, said:

"Against the background of what has been said so far, certain other words of Jesus, shocking and disturbing ones, become easier to understand. . . . They are reported for us by the Synoptics in connection with a particular sin which is called 'blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.' . . . Why is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit unforgivable? How should this blasphemy be understood? Saint Thomas Aquinas replies that it is a question of a sin that is 'unforgivable by its very nature, insofar as it excludes the elements through which the forgiveness of sin takes place' (ST 2b:14:3). According to such an exegesis, 'blasphemy' does not properly consist in offending against the Holy Spirit in words; it consists rather in the refusal to accept the salvation which God offers to man through the Holy Spirit, working through the power of the Cross. If man rejects the 'convincing concerning sin' which comes from the Holy Spirit and which has the power to save, he also rejects the 'coming' of the Counsellor . . . If Jesus says that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven either in this life or in the next, it is because this 'non-forgiveness' is linked, as to its cause, to 'non-repentance', in other words to the radical refusal to be converted. . . . Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, then, is the sin committed by the person who claims to have a 'right' to persist in evil—in any sin at all . . . [T]he Church constantly implores with the greatest fervor that there will be no increase in the world of the sin that the Gospel calls 'blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.' Rather, she prays that it will decrease in human souls" (Encyclical Letter Dominum et Vivificantem ["The Lord and Giver of Life"] 46-47).

Catholic apologist, Jimmy Akin, says the following:

Apostasy, contrary to some interpretations, is not the unforgivable sin. Like the parallel sins against faith—infidelity, schism, and heresy—it only becomes an unforgivable sin if one dies in it. Until death it is always possible, God willing, for an infidel to convert, for a schismatic to return from his schism, for a heretic to renounce his heresy, and for an apostate to re-embrace the faith of Christ.

It would, therefore, seem to me--if my friend repents, acknowledges the error of his ways, he can avoid the "final impenitence."

BNA summed it up well. The point being that a person persists in perpetual sin denies the Holy Spirit. The perfect example of this is Judas. Judas was one of the chosen to follow Christ. He traveled with our Lord, heard the fulfillment of the Old Testament, witnessed healings, dispelling of demons, ressurection of dead people. But he knew more than God. In spite of all The Christ did, Judas betrayed Christ. His perpetual sin was pride and believing he knew more than God by making the choice to betray him. Even after that, The Father could have forgiven him. But Judas perpetuated the sin by trying to escape it by committing suicide. (Not all suicides are done for this reason, mental illness is a sickness and can be forgiven because it's not necessarily committing the sin in full knowledge of the sin.) Judas knew full well what he had done, and who he was doing it. The sin of Judas was that he deprived God of the opportunity to forgive. It was a perpetual sin he committed in full knowledge of the Lord. The opportunity to repent and seek forgiveness is gone. He denied not only the Holy Spirit but Christ and God the Father. 

Start at Mt. 22:34 for the full context.  There is something else before the neighbor.