For this reason I tell you: every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven people.
In this saying Jesus at once reveals God’s boundless forgiveness and gives a stern warning. The words “every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven” show that God is ready to forgive even grave sins and blasphemies spoken with the mouth, if a person turns to Him in repentance. Yet blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is presented as a conscious, stubborn, and malicious rejection of the divine work by which a person is called to repentance and salvation. Here blasphemy is not merely a verbal insult, but attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to evil or deliberately rejecting the truth, with the result that a person’s heart becomes hardened and closes itself to repentance. Since the Holy Spirit is the One who leads a person to truth and forgiveness, rejecting His work means a willful refusal of the path by which forgiveness is given; and for this reason that sin is not forgiven, not because God’s mercy is limited, but because of the person’s closed heart. This saying is a call to watchfulness: not to distort God’s work, and to receive with an open heart the saving work of the Holy Spirit.