This is a good video explanation from an excerpt of a sermon by Pastor Mark Driscoll. Hopefully this would be a good resource for people to understand what the unforgivable sin is.

This is scary. It implies (of course, as was the case in the treatment of Jesus,) that there are people out there that wholesale reject Christ, even knowing that He is God. If you ask me, it is the original sin of Satan. It is looking God directly in the eye and saying: "I know you are God, but I want everything that you have...and more." It is basically the willing acceptance of Hell. Not in the confused-goth-at-a-wishy-washy-Satanist-convention way, but in the sinister, I-would-rather-perish-in-Hell-for-all-Eternity-than-accept-you-as-God kind of way.

I have no idea how ANYONE could develop that kind of arrogance, but apparently it's possible.

Middlemoor : well I mean they can still have a chance to turn to God before they die, but there are such people like that.

Sorry, I didn't finish the video...but I realized that this is something we all do before we accept Jesus as our savior. It's like the default state of man. I suppose it is also possible that there are people out there who've recognized that Jesus is their savior and seen all the evidence and then still rejected Him through love of themselves. I guess i'm going in circles because that's something we all do as well, which is the point of being a sinner...but yeah. Scary.

Middlemoor : mmm, I can't say that this what everyone does before they are saved....Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is a deliberate reject of God. There are some people who does that, meaning that even with the answers to their questions, they just flat out don't want to believe and attribute God to be evil, which is against His nature.

Thank you so much for this; I have been wondering what exactly it meant for some time.
So my question is this: if someone had announced themself and Atheist for a year or so, and then decided to repent and follow the path of Christ, would they still have the sin of Blasphemy in their soul? Is there hope for them still?

play4fun : "mmm, I can't say that this what everyone does before they are saved...."

What I'm getting at is that God is evident in all of creation and we are supposed to be aware of Him even when we're not, but our inherent sin keeps us separate from him and thus we reject Him without even really knowing the true extent of the evil of our ways. I suppose this is why all sin leads to Hell. This is not to say that humans are innocent victims of their own ignorance, when I heard the Good News I became fully aware of the way I had lived my life up until that point in such a way that I was my own god.

Am I interpreting this wrong?

Middlemoor : Well remember what Pastor Mark says here about what is not the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit: "It's not cursing God, it's not denying God, it's not doubting God, it's not suicide, it's not murder, it's not sexual sin, it's not an ongoing sin that you struggle to overcome." It is a lifetime commitment of reject Christ, rather than doing it once or twice. This can be someone who is a "millitant atheist" and goes all out in reject God and not being open about God. Up till death.

sushai : From what Pastor Mark shared from the Book of Luke, as long as someone is alive, there is still a chance to turn back. This sin is basically greatly committing to reject God. Greatly rejecting Jesus to the point of death, a life-commitment. That is how the pharisees were when they encounter Jesus, continue to reject Jesus and call His acts as belong to Satan, all the way till Jesus went to the cross and even after that. Someone who commits this till death is unforgivable. As long one is still alive, there is still hope.

play4fun : I'm still a little bit confused. He says it's "not cursing God, denying God, doubting God, suicide, murder, or sexual sin and it's not an ongoing sin that you struggle to overcome." But he seems to be talking from the perspective of one who's 'saved'.

I can't see much of a difference between what the Pharisees did and what we all do in our lives before we meet Christ. We're told in the Bible that humanity outright rejects God as a symptom of it's fallen state. There's no mention in the Bible (that I'm aware of) that we are innocent in our ignorance. Our ignorance is supposedly just the blindness that comes with unrepentant sin. Perhaps that is why this sin is "unforgivable," not because Jesus doesn't want to forgive it, but because one who steps into this sin automatically and as a consequence separates themselves from God. Therefore, they cannot seek Him for forgiveness. And all the deeper they go if they are fully educated in the grace of God, yet still make this decision. Or is this a special state of mind only reserved for those who know the spirit of God, yet outright declare it as evil?

My confusion lies in that I can't see any difference between this "unforgivable" state and the state we all enter into when we are born into sin and separate from God.

Middlemoor : It's both. The difference is making it a lifetime commitment in reject Christ and doing everything they can to reject Christ. The pharisees continually see Jesus performing miracles time and time again, testifying Himself to be the Messiah, yet they continue to test Him in order to reject Him. Do whatever it takes to make Him stumble. Even when they are proven wrong, they continue to reject.

Either way, Pastor Mark's joke in the beginning gives an attitude of those who commit this: "If you freaked out about it, or have a tender conscience, you probably didn't do it" Because someone who commits their life to reject Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit wouldn't care if his conscience gets hit anyways.

This is different to our born state of sin, because we are forgiven because we went to Christ, whereas those who don't are unforgivable, because there is no propitiation of sins for those who reject Christ when they die.

Thank God...and yes, I think it is important to realise that this appears to be an on-going decision to reject God, no matter what. It definitely ties in with Satan's manipulative lie that we can be like God and his original jealousy towards God.

Why would you comment blasphemy it's just not right there is no reason to :/

Well at first I thought that he was a comedian but then I heard no one laughing. Well as far as that sin yea it is pretty scary...

I watched the entire clip and read through the replies, and I have but one question --at this point anyway. Now I know there are not different levels of sin, but does blasphemy of the Holy Spirit take precedence over other sins we may have until death?