Don't Deny the Forgiver

Wednesday, June 13
Mark 3:28-30 (The Message)
" 'Listen to this carefully.  I'm warning you.  There's nothing done or said that can't be forgiven.  But if you persist in your slanders against God's Holy Spirit, you are repudiating the very One who forgives, sawing off the branch on which you're sitting, severing by your own perversity all connection with the One who forgives.'  He gave this warning because they were accusing him of being in league with Evil."
    The first verse of this passage seems overlooked in many commentaries.  They move on to verse 29 quickly.  But verse 28 should and can stand alone!  "There's NOTHING done or said that can't be forgiven!"  Nothing!  Wow!  What a liberating statement.  God's love is so vast, his capacity for forgiveness so great, that nothing we have done in our past or may do in the future can separate us.  Nothing.....except....
     ...to deny the source of that forgiveness.  That in itself is the unforgivable.  To blaspheme God, the Holy Spirit, is to bite the hand that feeds you, to saw off the branch on which you sit.  To be freed and redeemed in God's love and forgiveness, we must honor and glorify God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit.  It's unforgivable to treat the Forgiver in any other way.  To live in a relationship with God that nurtures redemption and confession is to live without fear but in freedom.
     Let's watch what we bite and what we cut away....and live in the freedom that results.