Spir Dynamics 93-94 11/29/92; Eph 1034 4/4/89; 7/25/75; 8/4/75
A. Definition.
1. Inasmuch as God the Holy Spirit has certain specific relationships with members of the human race, there are certain ways in which man sins against the Holy Spirit specifically.
2. Since the human race is divided into two categories based upon attitude toward Jesus Christ, the sins against the Holy Spirit are divided the same way. The unbeliever can commit sins against the Holy Spirit and so can the believer.
3. The two sins committed by the unbeliever against the Holy Spirit are committed in the status of spiritual death.
a. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, Mt 12:14-32. Believers cannot blasphemy the Holy Spirit.
b. Resistance of the Holy Spirit, Acts 7:51
4. The three sins of the believer against the Holy Spirit.
a. Lying to the Holy Spirit, Acts 5:3.
b. Quenching the Holy Spirit, 1 Thes 5:19.
c. Grieving the Holy Spirit, Eph 4:30.
B. Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit, Mt 12:14-32.
1. Matt 12:24, “But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, `This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the prince of the demons.’ And knowing their thoughts He said to them, `Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined; and any city or house divided against itself will not stand. Consequently, if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then shall his kingdom stand? Furthermore, if by Beelzebul I cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Consequently, they will be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. ...Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age, or in the {age} to come.”
2. This sin could only be committed during the dispensation of the Hypostatic Union and Incarnation. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit was rejection of the signs, miracles, and Person of the Messiah.
3. Because of the great jealousy of these Jewish religious leaders of the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, they said that Christ was performing these miracles in the power of Satan and rejected Christ as Messiah. This was rejection of salvation and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. They were saying that Christ’s healing was an evil act because it was done under the power of Satan.
4. Every sin and every blasphemy is forgiven men, because all were judged on the cross, except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which is tantamount to rejection of Christ. This was the blasphemy of rejecting the Holy Spirit’s testimony to these unbelievers that our Lord Jesus Christ was the Savior of the world. They rejected the overwhelming evidence from God the Holy Spirit that Jesus was the Christ.
5. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit can only be committed by the unbeliever, who rejects the Spirit’s ministry of common grace and the divine call to believe in Christ.
C. Resistance of the Holy Spirit, Acts 7:51.
1. Acts 7:51, “You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in your right lobes and ears [they heard and rejected common grace], you are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing what your ancestors did.”
2. Resistance of the Holy Spirit is rejection of Jesus Christ by the unbeliever during the course of human history. “Stiff-necked” means scar tissue of the soul; “uncircumcised of heart” means blackout of the soul.
3. The Holy Spirit acts as a human spirit in order to make the Gospel real to the unbeliever, 1 Cor 2:14. The unbeliever resists by rejecting Gospel information. Preaching sin is not preaching the Gospel. You cannot be saved by giving up sin.
4. Gen 6:3 teaches that the Holy Spirit makes the Gospel real to all. Jn 16:7-11 describes the Holy Spirit’s ministry in convincing the unbeliever of the truth that Jesus Christ is the only Savior of the world, “concerning sin because they do not believe in Me.” Compare 1 Cor 1:18 and 2 Cor 4:3-4. Once the unbeliever has the Gospel, the Holy Spirit keeps bringing it into focus as long as he lives. The unpardonable sin is rejection of the Holy Spirit’s ministry of convincing the unbeliever of the truth about our Lord Jesus Christ.
5. The one unpardonable sin is called blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which occurred in the dispensation of the hypostatic union by the unbeliever, and resistance of the Holy Spirit, which occurs during the Church Age by the unbeliever.
6. Resistance of the Holy Spirit includes three stages of negative volition.
a. Negative volition at the point of Gospel hearing.
b. Negative volition at the point of the divine call.
c. Negative volition at the point of salvation opportunity through faith in Christ. In other words, no efficacious grace.
D. Lying to the Holy Spirit, Acts 5:3ff.
1. Lying to the Holy Spirit is the sin of self-fragmentation or implosion (see the Doctrine of Fragmentation.) Lying against the Holy Spirit is inordinate ambition and inordinate competition in the spiritual realm. It is jealousy, bitterness, vindictiveness, implacability, hatred, self-pity, revenge motivation from malice and revenge modus operandi toward other believers. The Biblical illustration is inordinate competition in Acts 5:3, “But Peter said, `Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit, and to keep back some of the price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control? Why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men, but to God.’ And as he heard these words, Ananias fell down and breathed his last; and great fear came upon all who heard of it.”
a. Ananias and Sapphira were in the real estate business and owned extensive property in Jerusalem. They were very successful in business and had become believers. They discovered that a man named Barnabas, one of their rivals in business had actually given all of his property to the ministry of Peter, who in turn gave it to the starving in Jerusalem. Later, Barnabus would go with Paul as a missionary.
b. This was not Satan possession or demon possession but satanic influence. This is total self-absorption.
c. There was nothing wrong with keeping back part of the price of the land, but in competition with Barnabas, Ananias came and lied about what he gave. They were jealous of Barnabas, which motivated the lie. They were also legalists and self-righteous; therefore, they were in moral degeneracy.
d. They were dishonest in their spiritual life. They were in competition and trying to make an impression from the arrogance complex of the sin nature. They were living under approbation lust. Arrogance becomes the basis of rejecting the ministry of God the Holy Spirit in the life. Believers do this today by Christian activism, crusader arrogance, doing great things for God in the power of the flesh (human ability). Christian activism is born-again believers being used by satanic thought to whitewash the Devil’s world.
2. This sin is committed by the believer living in reversionism. People who lie are unstable and destructive to their own soul. Pressure on pride causes jealousy, which motivates lying. Reversionism causes evil in the soul, which leads to lying to the Holy Spirit and others.
E. Grieving the Holy Spirit, Eph 4:30.
1. Eph 4:30, “Furthermore, stop grieving the Holy Spirit, the God, by whom you have been sealed.”
2. Grieving the Holy Spirit is the status of postsalvation sinning. It is failure to rebound. It is self-fragmentation from soul sins (the arrogance complex of sins, the lust pattern, the emotional complex of sins) and polarized fragmentation (polarization toward legalism or antinomianism).
3. Grieving the Holy Spirit refers to the eight stages of reversionism, or the early stages of Christian degeneracy:
a. Reaction and distraction.
b. The frantic search for happiness.
c. Operation boomerang.
d. Emotional revolt of the soul.
e. Locked-in negative volition.
f. Blackout of the soul.
g. Scar tissue of the soul
. h. Reverse process reversionism, where there is no interest in Bible doctrine. Your scale of values reverses to those things which distract you from ever executing the protocol plan of God.
(1) Up to the fifth stage of reversionism, the believer grieves the Holy Spirit. But once he is in blackout of the soul, he is quenching the Holy Spirit. When a believer is positive to doctrine and then sins, he gets out of fellowship and this grieves the Holy Spirit.
(2) The reversionist also sins but does not recover through the use of rebound because he has rejected rebound as the technique for recovery.
4. Grieving the Holy Spirit is really the more persistent sinfulness of the reversionist in Satan’s cosmic one, who is arrogant in his sinfulness.
5. No matter how low you go into sin, you always have choices—the choice to rebound and then to learn doctrine.
F. Quenching the Holy Spirit, 1 Thes 5:19.
1. 1 Thes 5:19, “Stop quenching the Spirit.” This is a command to stop doing something that these believers have begun in the past and continues into the present. This suggests that the believer involved has ignored or rejected the rebound technique over a long period of time. This is stifling the Holy Spirit.
2. Quenching the Holy Spirit occurs under the following four battles in the soul.
a. When you have stress in your soul, you are quenching the Holy Spirit. You have little or no problem solving devices on the defensive line of the soul.
b. When the old sin nature controls your soul, you are quenching the Holy Spirit.
c. When you have false doctrine in the soul, you are quenching the Holy Spirit. The issue is metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness versus false doctrine controlling the soul. As a result of losing the first two battles (stress in the soul and sin nature control of the soul) a vacuum opens in the soul and sucks in all kinds of false doctrine, Eph 4:17. The vacuum of the mind not only attracts every system of false doctrine but results in seeking solutions related to arrogant self- absorption.
d. When you function under maladaptive defensive mechanisms instead of the problem solving devices of the protocol plan of God, you are quenching the Holy Spirit. Maladaptive defensive mechanisms include the following.
(1) Repression—a mental mechanism in which a person transfers to his subconscious those things which constitute a threat to the arrogant image of self.
(2) Projection—a defense mechanism in which the believer projects his or her own flaws on the rejector.
(3) Denial—is a mental or emotional mechanism in which a person fails to acknowledge some aspect of external reality which would be apparent to another.
(4) Dissociation—is a mechanism in which a believer sustains a temporary alteration in the integrated functions of his or her soul; therefore, the split off of personality.
(5) Intellectualization—is used to describe a person who engages in excessive abstract thinking to avoid reality or experiencing disturbing feelings about self.
(6) Autistic fantasy—a mechanism in which a person substitutes excessive day dreaming for the pursuit of human relationship rather than using the problem solving devices.
(7) False memory syndrome—a defense mechanism in which one seeks to justify self by imagined victimization, then blaming and falsely accusing others for your own sinful behavior; the creation of imagined memories which are not factual.
3. When a believer loses the first three battles, it is inevitable that he will lose the forth battle of the soul and probably complete loss of his or her spiritual life at this stage. This believer retreats into total self-absorption, total locked-in arrogance, spending their lives fighting on the side of Satan himself. This believer becomes hopelessly involved in Satan’s cosmic systems.
a. Quenching the Spirit is entrance into the last three stages of reversionism or Christian degeneracy: blackout of the soul, scar tissue of the soul, and reverse process reversionism.
b. Quenching the Spirit is perpetual living inside cosmic two. This believer is under the influence of evil and produces only human good. The result of quenching the Spirit is either locked-in moral or immoral degeneracy.
4. While the believer is losing these battles of the soul, two categories of garbage are accumulating in his soul: garbage in the subconscious composed of maladaptive defense mechanisms and garbage in the stream of consciousness related to what is called idealization, role model arrogance, unrealistic expectation, autistic fantasy, and projection. These are the believers who live in childhood thinking; they expect someone to fulfill and gratify their wishes; they feel entitled to do anything they want to do; they feel exempt from the rules of God; they expect others to solve their problems; they react to unfair treatment with the victimization syndrome—they never use the problem solving devices; they blame others through denial and projection.
R. B. Thieme, Jr. Bible Ministries 5139 West Alabama, Houston, Texas 77056 (713) 621-3740
© 1990 by R. B. Thieme, Jr. All rights reserved.
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