Luke 12:10

“And every one who shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him, but to him who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit it will not be forgiven.”

Some of those who are called for judgment (such as Paul) may look back to a time when they had not believed, and had even blasphemed against the Son of Man. But they need not fear. Such blasphemy would have been forgiven them once they turned to Jesus Christ. And forgiveness for this will continue to available as He is proclaimed among men. But those who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. This was an added warning to the crowds who were listening.

This blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is revealed elsewhere as indicating those who, in spite of the clear evidence before their eyes, deliberately and continually close their minds to what they know about Him, so that eventually their minds became so hardened that they are unable even to consider the matter any further (Mark 3:28; Matthew 12:31). It is warning them that if they are not confessing Him now they have the opportunity to repent, but that if they delay until too late they may become too hardened and be unable to repent, and then their doom will be sealed. The example given in Matthew and Mark is of those who saw Him cast out evil spirits, and in spite of their own belief that men who could do this were of God, refused to believe it in Jesus' case out of pure prejudice. They totally and continually day by day shut their minds against Him, saying dogmatically, ‘He has an unclean spirit'. Such men are in danger of hardening their hearts until they became unmeltable. (Anyone therefore who is afraid that they have committed such a sin can be sure that they have not. For those who have committed it will never be aware of the fact until that Day, for their hearts are too hardened).

Luke may well have had this saying in mind in the way that he depicts Jerusalem throughout his writings. Jerusalem was not rejected for its treatment of the Son of Man, nor even for its crucifying of its Messiah, for the risen Jesus told the Apostles to go to Jerusalem with their message after His resurrection (Acts 1:8) and the Apostles afterwards continually went out to Jerusalem with His offer of forgiveness (Acts 1-6), and large numbers responded. But when Jerusalem finally failed to respond wholeheartedly to the work of the Holy Spirit in its midst, and to its Messiah, it would be set to one side (Peter ‘departs for another place' - Acts 12) and replaced by Syrian Antioch as the centre from which the Good News spread (Acts 13). Yet even then it had the witness of the Jerusalem church still continuing to speak to it. But when in the end its Temple doors finally closed on Paul (Acts 21:30), that was also the end of Luke's interest in the Jerusalem which had previously been so important to him. Following these events Jerusalem did, of course, then make a martyr of James, the Lord's brother, and the result was that it was finally utterly destroyed. Up to that time the offer of mercy had still been open, although clearly receding, but by its continual rejection of the signs and wonders and testimony in its midst it had finally ‘blasphemed against the Holy Spirit'. Its period of probation had come to an end, and it had become hardened and it thus came to its final punishment from which there was no escape. In 70 AD Jerusalem was finally destroyed. This is probably a very good illustration of what the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit means, and is a picture in miniature of the history of the world.