Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Matthew 12:32

o serious a statement needs to be carefully guarded against misapprehension; therefore Jesus adds an explanatory declaration. λόγον κατὰ τ. υ. τ. ἀνθρώπου. Jesus distinguishes between a word against the Son of Man and a word against the Holy Ghost. The reference in the former is to Himself, presumably, though Mark at the corresponding place has “the sons of men,” and no special mention of a particular son of man. Christ gives the Pharisees to understand that the gravamen of their offence is not that they have spoken evil of Him. Jesus had no exceptional sensitiveness as to personal offences. Nor did He mean to suggest that offences of the kind against Him were more serious or less easily pardonable than such offences against other men, say, the prophets or the Baptist. Many interpreters, indeed, think otherwise, and represent blasphemy against the Son of Man as the higher limit of the forgiveable. A grave mistake, I humbly think. Jesus was as liable to honest misunderstanding as other good men, in some respects more liable than any, because of the exceptional originality of His character and conduct. All new things are liable to be misunderstood and decried, and the best for a while to be treated as the worst. Jesus knew this, and allowed for it. Men might therefore honestly misunderstand Him, and be in no danger of the sin against the Holy Ghost (e.g., Saul of Tarsus). On the other hand, men might dishonestly calumniate any ordinary good man, and be very near the unpardonable sin. It is not the man that makes the difference, but the source of the blasphemy. If the source be ignorance, misconception, ill-informed prejudice, blasphemy against the Son of Man will be equally pardonable with other sins. If the source be malice, rooted dislike of the good, selfish preference of wrong, because of the advantage it brings, to the right which the good seek to establish, then the sin is not against the man but against the cause, and the Divine Spirit who inspires him, and though the agent be but a humble, imperfect man, the sinner is perilously near the unpardonable point. Jesus wished the Pharisees to understand that, in His judgment, that was their position. οὔτε, οὔτε analyse the negation of pardon, conceived as affecting both worlds, into its parts for sake of emphasis (vide on Matthew 5:34-36). Dogmatic inferences, based on the double negation, to possible pardon after death, are precarious. Lightfoot (Hor. Heb.) explains the double negation by reference to the Jewish legal doctrine that, in contrast to other sins, profaning the name of God could be expiated only by death, unpardonable in this life. Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, says Jesus, in conscious antithesis, pardonable neither here nor there: “neque ante mortem, neque per mortem”.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Matthew 12:32

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