What does Mathew 12.32 mean?

[MishellaLee]

Hi, so I don’t really know if I’m asking this question in the right thread or forum so I apologize.
I just have a question…and I looked online and googled it but I still seem a little boggled.
Okay so Jesus says in
Mathew 12.32 “Whoever speaks 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.”
Why I need help understanding this:
How can you speak against the Holy Spirit?
Isn’t the Holy Spirit with God? Like God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are all one…
So if you speak against Jesus you are speaking against the Holy Spirit…
I also don’t understand the Holy Spirit…the way I look at it the Holy Spirit is the Messenger and is a way God can be on Earth right?
This is why the bible is amazing…one verse can totally throw you off into a frenzy of finding out what it means.

 

[Skygor]

Sometime translated “blaspheme against the Holy Spirit” this passage refers to core of what and how God forgives. God will forgive any sin. However if you do not believe/trust that God will forgive you, then you won’t ask for forgiveness, and therefore won’t receive forgiveness.

It’s sort of like saying Clinical Depression is incurable. In fact it is very treatable and one of the easiest mental illness to cure. However people who are Clinically Depressed don’t think that anything they do will work, don’t get help and therefore remain Clinically Depressed.

In various catechisms they sometimes list “Sins against the Holy Spirit”. If they don’t most are covered under the First Commandment as “Sins against Hope”. These are just different ways in which people don’t seek forgiveness, mercy, or friendship with God. So they don’t get the benefits either. They are:

Despair - believe that God cannot or will not forgive you.
Presumption - believing that you don’t need God to forgive you (because you are already holy etc.)
Resisting known Truth - lalalalalalala I can’t hear you, it’s not bad if I don’t know about it.
Envy of another’s Spiritual Goodness - sour grapes, but you don’t do anything about it
Obstinacy in Sin - this is good for me OR I just can’t help myself
Final Impenitence - not even going for the death bed conversion.

 

[OneSheep]

This is what I remember a priest told me about the “sins against the Holy Spirit”:

God forgives all the time, unconditionally, period. However, this falls under “forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” It is not a matter of that God will forgive only if we forgive. It is a matter that we will not know a forgiving God if we do not forgive everyone else.

If we forgive everyone else, then we will see others the way that God sees us, as beautiful creations, worthy of love. This is a big step into realizing the Kingdom here on Earth.

A sin against the Holy Spirit is to ascribe to the devil, to a questionable source, what comes from God. We close ourselves off to some aspect of God’s goodness, we are blinded. Again, it is not a matter that we are not forgiven, it is a matter that we will not realize the kingdom because we are blind to the workings of the Holy Spirit. The message from the priest was that it is unwise, if not harmful, to ascribe events that occur to the devil. There is good intent to be found everywhere. This is a priest that said people only go to hell if they reject God “yelling and kicking” the whole way.

I am going to give a personal example. In my parish, about 15 or so years ago everyone sort of spontaneously started holding hands during the Lord’s prayer. Okay, we all saw the Cursillistas doing it, and it caught on. Along comes a priest bothered by the practice, he found it “disruptive” and he questioned where the practice came from. He stopped it, and well, now we have a fairly empty church, probably 80% just quit coming. Sure, it wasn’t just because of the hand-holding thing, the priest was abrasive with others, and people just quit coming.

I think the practice came from the Spirit. Does God forgive the priest? The God I know does, for sure. Is the priest somewhat closing himself off from the Kingdom because of his closed-mindedness? Well, maybe. To say “yes”, for me, would be a comparative statement, and I can’t claim to be “open minded” about everything either. I am a bit blind and ignorant too, but I keep working at it. God forgives me anyway.

 

[JRKH]

Both great answers above. Just to add to them…

What comes out of the mouth comes from the heart (Mt 15:18-19). So Blaspheming the Holy Spirit reflects a rejection of Him in the heart. If we turn our heart to God we cannot blaspheme the Spirit…

Peace
James