“What exactly is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit?”

Steve Brown:
What exactly is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit? The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. Our host and teacher is Steve Brown. He’s no guru, but he does have honest answers to honest questions about the Bible. God’s grace changes everything, how we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, purchase, and worship. So, here’s Steve and Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com with street-smart Bible teaching for real life.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi, Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. How you doing?

Steve Brown:
I’m doing really good.

Pete Alwinson:
Good.

Steve Brown:
I shouldn’t be at my age. I should be a lot sicker than I am, but I’m still functioning.

Pete Alwinson:
I mean, you’re even doing better. You’re walking better with that hip thing that happened.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. Listen, pretty soon

Pete Alwinson:
I mean, you’re going to heal.

Steve Brown:
Oh, pretty soon I’m going to run marathons.

Pete Alwinson:
I think that’s going to be great.

Steve Brown:
I’ll swim competitively. Jump up and down and exercise in your shoes.

Pete Alwinson:
Ironman. The Ironman is in in your future.

Steve Brown:
You believe any of that? You’ll believe anything. Pete, I love him. You know we are so different in so many ways. Pete is a guy who works out regularly and it shows, I’m a guy who doesn’t work out regularly and that shows too. But Pete, you’re going to get old. And when it happens, I’m going to watch and I’m going to say to you, I told you it was going to happen.

Pete Alwinson:
I’m there. I’m there.

Steve Brown:
No, you’re not. That’s Pete Alwinson, check out ForgeTruth.com and you’ll be glad you did. That is all about Pete’s ministry. It’s called ForgeTruth or Forge and it is a grace. And if you haven’t read his book, you can get it in audio and you can get it in a regular book format Like Father Like Son. Hey, we love to get your questions and we look forward to this time on Fridays, when we sit down and answer questions. You can send your question to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
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in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
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or you can send your question by e-mail to [email protected]. Or if you prefer, pick up your phone, 24 7, and dial 1-800-KEY-LIFE and follow the instructions and ask your question. And we sometimes put your voice on the air. And we love your questions. And by the way, if you can help us financially, please do. We are a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. Both of those organizations oversee our bookkeeping to make sure that we’re ethical. And I can assure you that we are, and we were before those organizations came along. We’ll squeeze every dime for the glory of God. So, if you can help us, please do. If you can’t, we understand. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer and we’ll get to some of these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
You got it. Let’s pray. Our Great God, what a joy to be able to come to you right now, just for a minute at the end of the week and to just be so thankful that we belong to you. Thank you for interrupting our life. Thank you for proving your love to us by deviating us from the way we were going and bringing us to our knees and before Christ. We love you because you first loved us and we honor you as the great God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And we ask that you continue to do your work in us, allowing grace to have full reign in our life, getting us freer and freer and freer, and more joyful, more alive as we look forward to being with you in your presence. Lord, you know our needs, we have many of them, and we’re not playing games. We need you every day in our lives. And so, we ask for your power and your presence, Holy Spirit fill us. And now we give you this time of Q&A and ask that you would do great things, taking us one step further as we follow you. For we pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, let’s go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
The only thing I know that’s not forgivable is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. What is blasphemy?

Steve Brown:
It’s blaspheming.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. Well, and by the way, you know, we get that question a lot from people who think they’ve committed it.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And I always say to them, if you ask the question and you didn’t, cause

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. If the Holy Spirit had left you alone and left you, you wouldn’t care.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. And you wouldn’t know. Right?

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s right. Blaspheme of the Holy Spirit’s making fun of, demeaning, putting down, pretending it doesn’t exist, turning away from, all of those things as we deal with the Holy Spirit. And Christians who wonder about that, haven’t done it because the Holy Spirit is the convicting power of God. It is the power that sends us to Jesus. It’s the power that reminds us that the blood of Christ is sufficient for all sins. And when Jesus said it was the one sin that wasn’t forgiven, he didn’t mean that if you ask, God wouldn’t forgive you. What he was saying is, if you’ve committed that sin, you wouldn’t ask.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. Ever.

Steve Brown:
Ever.

Pete Alwinson:
You know, and so that’s why, and by the way, it’s in Matthew 12 verses 33, 32 if you want to go read it and Jesus is amazing he says.

Any word against the Son of Man can be forgiven.

But when you’re dealing with that internal testimony about Jesus and the work of God through the Holy Spirit and you demean it and you shunt it aside, that’s fatal.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. And it’s probably not a one time thing. It’s probably a pattern. of doing that.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
Until you just can’t hear his voice.

Pete Alwinson:
I know. I have a friend. I have a friend, if he converts, it’ll be after many, many times of pushing away the message. I know he has heard it, many, many times.

Steve Brown:
You know, I’ve heard evangelists say, and I used to be critical of it, but I’m not, if you are feeling the Holy Spirit drawing you to Jesus, jump on that right now because the time may come when you won’t hear that. And that’s a profound statement and a sad statement and a true one. So, the person who asked the question, you haven’t done it. Just trust us on it. And if you listen to what we just taught you, you know why.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. That’s great. And I love that we Christians should have a sensitive spirit to our own sin and not want to commit sin. I mean, that’s what grace does.

Steve Brown:
Sure it does. Can you offer some advice and or recommend some books for my family member who wants to believe in God, but my mind won’t allow it, he says.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. What do you think?

Steve Brown:
Oh, well, I, you know, I would always recommend C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. That has seen more conversions than you would believe, but there’s a new book by my friend Eric Mataxas. And it is such a cool, what is it the death of Is?

Pete Alwinson:
Is Atheism Dead? Yeah. We both read it and it’s very good.

Steve Brown:
Oh man. In fact, as I was reading it, I was thinking this, man, if you can be an atheist after reading this book, you are a fruitcake.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
There is something wrong with you. He brings evidence from every imaginable place, that leaves you with no answers.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
You just have no place to go.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. And it’s logical, but it’s also rooted in current science.

Steve Brown:
It really is.

Pete Alwinson:
And I think that, now, let me just give my recommendation is if you have a friend like this and you want to, don’t just get the book and give it to them, unless they’re voracious readers. Get two books. You read it and mark it up. And then ask if they’ll read maybe a chapter at a time, meet with you for maybe two, three times and

Steve Brown:
that’s wise

Pete Alwinson:
get together and go over it. You’ll learn a lot when they come back with you with questions.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
And it’s because there are legitimate issues that unbelievers have that the Holy Spirit can use you to help answer.

Steve Brown:
And the thing, the point you make too, is that’s not an easy book to read.

Pete Alwinson:
No, it’s not.

Steve Brown:
It’s very thick.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And it’s intimidating.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
So, your friend might not read it. So, that is so wise, Pete. So, get two copies.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
So, you know what’s in it and you can sit down and talk about it.

Pete Alwinson:
And buy them through Key Life so that, you know, Key Life gets the profit on that. Or is that possible?

Steve Brown:
I don’t know whether we carry that book or not, but I think after this broadcast we’re going to. Is the Holy Spirit female? That’s an e-mail question.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Kind of a interesting question. Maybe, I don’t know why people would ask that when the Bible is universal about using male pronouns for the Holy Spirit.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
So, gender is not really something that

Steve Brown:
Well, the Greek word for the Holy Spirit is in the female, it’s feminine. So, some people have tried to draw on that to make a point, but you’re right, the witness of the Scripture says no. And if you’re female and that makes you angry, deal with it. I didn’t say it, the Scripture said it.

Pete Alwinson:
But we can say the Bible’s very clear on gender, there’s two genders. And God created both. So, he under, he knows both, he understands both, he created both.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. You know, there’s been so much discussion of late and some of it’s a nonsense. It’s not science and you find even people who ought to know better, to know what this does to people psychologically and physically. Often it’s mutilation of children.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
You’ve just got to as Christians to speak truth and you need to speak it clearly.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
We did an Etcetera program, that’s our talk show on that a number of months ago. And I, as a result of that program, developed great compassion for transgendered people. That is a sad, hard place

Pete Alwinson:
it is

Steve Brown:
to be. And I’ve had personal experience with friends about that, and it really is sad. So, we don’t need to jump up and throw rocks at it, but we need to speak truth lovingly and kindly. Don’t go there. It’ll kill you.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. And a secular source that’s very good is Abigail Schreyer book on this whole subject. And, you know, it’s everywhere, I mean, even in our suburban, middle to upper middle class neighborhood, we’re seeing it as an issue, so.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, it’s everywhere. And then parents are making decisions for their children.

Pete Alwinson:
Letting their kids make those decisions.

Steve Brown:
And, you know,

Pete Alwinson:
passively

Steve Brown:
it’s been known forever, that there is gender envy on both sides as you grow up and go through different phases. And if you do something that’s permanent and physical, physiological, you can do damage that is without estimation. It’s just awful.

Pete Alwinson:
It is awful. And it’s so important that we help our kids know that they are being evangelized toward this online, especially the white middle class girls.

Steve Brown:
So true. And we need to tell our daughters. And I did. You are wonderful. And being woman like your mom is so very cool. Or to your sons, you are a man, and I want you to grow up and be a godly man. We’ve got to go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.