Dr. Robert Sumner passed away in December 2016. The Biblical Evangelist newspaper is no longer being published and the ministry of Biblical Evangelism has ceased operation.

The remaining inventory of his books and gospel tracts was transferred to The Baptist Tabernacle of Los Angeles and may be ordered here.

The Unforgiving God (Part 1 of 2)
Evangelist Robert L. Sumner

The Unforgiving God!

By Evangelist Robert L. Sumner

“Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.

“And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.”

                                                                                 – Matthew 12:31, 32

A friend of mine told of a skeptic that a Christian brother was attempting to reach for the Lord. No matter what approach the man of God took, the infidel shrugged it off. Finally the lost man boastingly said, “I’d sell my chance of Heaven for $5.”

He thought that would end the discussion, but it didn’t. The man who loved God and was burdened for souls whipped out a piece of paper and with his pen wrote, “I, today, sell my chance for Heaven for a $5 bill.” He also put a place for a signature and a date, handing it to the skeptic with a $5 bill, saying, “Here you are. Sign it.”

The man put the paper on the table, took the pen in his hand, looked at the paper again, bent down to sign it, but his hand began to tremble and he put the pen down, saying, “I can’t sign that.”

The Christian said, “But you said you would.” And the unsaved man responded, “Yes, but I didn’t mean it.”

No one in his right mind would sign away his possibility for Heaven for any amount of money. Yet, the truth is, many are selling away their right to a heavenly home for free! Again and again I have had people tell me, when I pressed them to trust Christ, “I’m not ready.” “Not today.” “I intend to get saved some day, but I’m not ready now.” Others express it differently, but the result, the outcome, is the same.

Like the gentleman my friend told about, most Christ rejecters do not really mean their negative response, but it is just as real as if they did. For some it is a final opportunity and they are hurled into eternity without Christ, lost forever. For others there may be another opportunity (it is obviously a gamble). Only God knows.

However, the time comes when God says, in effect, “That’s it. He (or she) has had his/her last chance.” And the Father says to the Holy Spirit as He did about Ephraim, “Ephraim is joined to idols: Let him alone” (Hosea 4:17). The old-timers called it ‘crossing the deadline.’ God calls it the unpardonable sin.

Even before we get into the subject of the sin God will not forgive, let me emphasize that things we often call unpardonable are really not. For example, that woman in North Carolina, carrying on an adulterous affair with a married man who did not want the baggage of her children, smothered her God-given maternal instincts, loaded her sons in the back seat of her automobile, parked on a sharp incline leading to a lake, exited the car and hit the gas pedal so it raced down the incline into the water, watching them both scream in panic and drown, then calmly went into town and reported a ‘carjacking.’ She was now free to divorce her husband and marry her lover, she thought.

We say, ‘such a heinous sin is unpardonable. There is no forgiveness for something like that.’ But we would be wrong. God could and would forgive such a crime if His conditions were met.

In my booklet, The Blight of Booze, I told of a 25-year-old man in Texas that had “viciously, wickedly, heartlessly, inhumanly stomped his own 17-month-old baby boy to death with his feet. The baby had been horribly beaten, battered and disfigured.” Almost unanimously we say, ‘there is no forgiveness for such a crime,’ but we would be wrong. God’s amazing grace can forgive even such a horrible transgression.

One might pick up Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and read horror story after horror story of the inhuman treatment wicked religious leaders heaped on women and children, in addition to men, simply because they believed differently, and think – there is not only no excuse for this, neither is there forgiveness. Again you would be wrong.

The same is true of police blotters all over the world, describing what grown men did sexually to helpless little girls and, after shuddering and gritting your teeth, you cry, ‘there is surely no forgiveness for such monsters,’ but again you would be wrong.

It works both ways: what men might pardon, God might not; and what God might pardon, men might refuse. That is why our own personal views must be left out of our conclusions in this area of the unforgiven sin. God sees the true values, the true conditions that man cannot. That is why God told Samuel, when the latter was seeking Israel’s first king, “… the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart” (I Samuel 16:7).

In spite of man’s exalted opinion of himself, he does not have perfect or complete intelligence. In fact, his conclusions may be based completely on ignorance. It is like the man in Paducah (KY), where I was in meetings, who told the pastor all kinds of weird and fantastic stories about how the world came into being. Pressed as to where he learned such things he would only say he read them in a book. Finally, he admitted, it was a ‘comic’ book!

When it comes to spiritual and eternal matters, we cannot trust our comic book understandings over the eternal revelation of Almighty God. He must have the first, last and final word!

Let us start by determining, according to the Bible,

I. WHAT IS ‘NOT’ THE UNPARDONABLE SIN?

         First of all,

A. It is Not MURDER!

Taking the life of another is a terrible sin. It is what makes abortion so vile and wicked. It is why God demanded capital punishment for anyone that commits murder. Yet Moses, so highly revered by Judaism, Christianity and even Islam, committed murder when he was living in the palace of Pharaoh. The Scripture tells us, “He looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand” (Exodus 2:12), yet he went on to be the savior that delivered the Israelites from the bondage of Egypt, miraculously led them across the Red Sea, and to the very threshold of God’s Promised Land.

King David, the sweet singer of Israel and the man after God’s own heart, in a moment of evil passion, committed adultery with another man’s wife and when it was about to become known, murdered his faithful and loyal subject, Uriah. The Scripture says David told his field commander in a letter, “Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die” (II Samuel 11:15). God described that act as murder plain and simple, asking in II Samuel 12:9, “Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword,” adding “and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon.”

That wicked act of David was ‘despising’ Jehovah’s commandment in Exodus 20:13 and, although Uriah fell fatally wounded in battle, God said he slew him ‘with the sword of the children of Ammon’ just as surely as if he had crept into Uriah’s house and slain him when he was asleep in his own bed.

Then there was Saul of Tarsus who helped the Pharisees stone Deacon Stephen to death after he had preached his fiery sermon calling them ‘stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears,’ men who ‘always resist the Holy Ghost,’ and calling them ‘betrayers and murderers’ of the Just One. Acts 8:1 says, “And Saul was consenting unto his death.”

But after helping murder Stephen, God not only forgave him, He called him to preach the gospel he had once despised, transforming him into the Apostle Paul, one of the greatest preachers and servants of the Lord Jesus Christ in all of Christendom right up to the present hour. Amazing grace!

The most infamous act of murder in the history of mankind took place at the Cross of Calvary where “wicked hands” viciously “crucified” and slew (Acts 2:23) the Lord of Glory. Yet some of them were not only offered redemption, they accepted it and, being converted, were added to the New Testament church (Acts 2:36-41).

Yes, murder is terrible, hideous, heinous, but not unpardonable, not unforgivable.

B. It is Not ADULTERY!

Proverbs 6:32 says, “Whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.” One who commits adultery, violating the seventh of God’s Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:14), is, to be brutally frank, a fool. Many who have committed this vile sin feel hopeless, that there is no forgiveness for them; but this is untrue.

We have already mentioned David, the man after God’s own heart, who stooped to this sin with beautiful Bathsheba. The record tells us, “And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king's house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon ... And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her uncleanness: and she returned unto her house” (II Samuel 11:2, 4). That was wrong, wicked, evil. God said in His Word, summing up the matter in verse 27, “… But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.” In fact, David himself was filled with anguish over his sin and the picture of his heart is seen in several Psalms, most notably Psalm 51.

Yet both David and Bathsheba were forgiven and are found in the royal line relating to the birth of the Christ (Matthew 1:6).

There was also the woman of Samaria, in John 4, with whom Jesus had the conversation at Jacob’s Well while His disciples were gone into town to buy bread. As our Lord pointed out to her, when she said she had no husband, “Thou hast well said, I have no husband: For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly” (Vss. 17, 18). Yet Jesus not only forgave this woman who had married five men and was now living in open adultery with the sixth, she became a fruitful soul winner the same day of her conversion, leaving her water pot at the well and going into the city to tell all the men, “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?” (Vs.  29). The men hastened to the well and the Scripture tells us “many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman” (Vs. 39), while still others urged him to stay with them even as He unfolded the Scripture and “many more believed because of his own word” (Vs. 42).

Yes, she was wonderfully forgiven and so was the woman described in John 8 who was taken “in the very act” of adultery (Vs. 4). When she claimed Jesus as her Lord, He said to her, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more … I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (Vss. 11, 12). This wicked woman, caught in the very act, was sweetly forgiven.

In fact, the Word of God tells of at least two women who committed adultery for a living (prostitutes, harlots) who were forgiven and saved. One was Rahab the harlot, who is named in Hebrews 11, ‘Faith’s Hall of Fame,’ where we are told she “perished not with them that believed not” (Vs. 31). The other was the woman in Luke 7 “which was a sinner” who brought an expensive “alabaster box of ointment” (Vs. 37), then knelt at His feet and “began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment” (Vs. 38).

Adultery is a hideous, horrible sin, but it is not unpardonable, unforgivable.

C. It Is Not PROFANITY!

Cussing is a cheap sin showing the rottenness of an individual’s heart. Jesus said in Matthew 12:34, 35: “O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.”

Did you ever stop to think about it, that cursing is the only sin you can do and get nothing in return. Satan can get men to spew forth the most vile obscenities and taking of the Name of the Lord in vain and not give him a thing in return. A man may find his wife in bed with another man and in a passionate rage murder that man. He has the reward and satisfaction of revenge. Another man may have been laid off from work because of the economy, all of his savings exhausted and his wife and children starving. He may then rob a bank to get money to feed them and have the reward and satisfaction that he has saved their lives.

But Satan can get a man to cuss without promising him anything. What an evil thing it is to drag the holy and sacred Name of Almighty God around in the gutter. Yet one can be forgiven for doing that very thing by the God who has been so nauseatingly insulted.

The Apostle Peter is a case in point. He had been a faithful, loyal disciple of Jesus Christ for three years or more, following Him wherever He went and sacrificing in many ways. Yet when the Lord was betrayed by Judas, arrested and brought before the Jewish leaders in a mock trial that was in reality a farce, all the steel went out of Peter’s spine. He folded before a young girl and three times he denied that he even knew Jesus.

Since the first two denials had not convinced the enemies of Christ that he was not one of the disciples, he added profanity to his denunciation. Mark 14:71 tells us that Peter “began to curse and to swear, saying, I know not this man of whom ye speak. And the second time the cock crew. And Peter called to mind the word that Jesus said unto him, Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice.”

That convinced the critics! Surely no Christian (although this was before the disciples were called Christians) would ‘curse and swear,’ taking God’s holy Name in vain. Yet Peter was forgiven, restored to fellowship with Christ and the other disciples, then went on to become the powerful preacher of Pentecost, filled with the Holy Spirit, and seeing some 3,000 men saved that day alone. He then went on to become one of the prominent leaders of The Faith that swept hundreds of thousands of souls into the Kingdom of God in the Middle East.

Yes, profanity is a terrible, wicked sin, one that not even Satan rewards, but it is not unpardonable; it is not unforgivable.

D. It is Not STEALING!

How wrong it is for one man to steal what belongs to another, valuables that he has earned by his own sweat and blood. One of the Ten Commandments sums it up in four short words: “Thou shalt not steal” (Exodus 20:15). It was one of the commandments Jesus faced the rich young ruler with when he came to inquire about obtaining eternal life.

Yet we can use the illustration of a common criminal, one of the two malefactors dying with Christ on the cross. Both were thieves (Matthew 27:38), but when one of them cried out to the Son of God, acknowledging him as his Lord (Luke 23:42), Jesus promised that robber (who was also a murderer), “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Vs. 43).

Think of it! A common criminal, being punished at the time for his thievery, being forgiven by God and ushered into Paradise the very same day our Lord was crucified!

To give you another illustration, this time of a white collar thief, that short of stature tax collector, Zacchaeus, after responding to the invitation by the Christ to come to Him, did so immediately and, among other evidences of a new birth experience, promised to  give half of his goods to the poor and to restore fourfold things taken “from any man by false accusation” (Luke 19:8), the latter being an admission of his thievery.

And what did Jesus say to this big time crook? “This day is salvation come to this house … For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Vss. 9, 10).

As bad as helping yourself to that which rightfully belongs to another is, it is not unpardonable, not unforgivable.

Nor is it what most folks think – from a misunderstanding of our Lord’s words.

E. It is Not ASCRIBING TO SATAN THE WORKS OF THE SPIRIT!

The highly acclaimed – and rightfully so – Scofield Reference Bible makes this mistake. But do you realize what this would mean? For one thing, it would mean that all the people He was addressing, who had just said He was performing His works through Beelzebub, would be lost for eternity – with no opportunity for salvation from that moment on.

It would mean, as has happened repeatedly over the years, those who said great revivals were of the devil, simply emotionalism gone wild, would be lost forever. It would mean that the parents of some little child who returned home from Sunday School and told them he had just been converted, receiving the Lord Jesus Christ into his heart – and they smiled knowingly and called it merely a childish emotional experience of the moment that would pass – that mother and father could never be saved, no matter what. Yet we have known of just such cases where the parents were wonderfully saved later on through the testimony and faithfulness of the child.

It would mean that someone who scoffed at a wonderful and miraculous answer to prayer, calling it a coincidence, would have no hope of missing Hell. Again, we have known of some that have done so yet later were happily saved.

It would also mean that Christians could commit this unforgivable sin and lose their salvation, because some of them have committed the mistakes of the few previous paragraphs. Yet the child of God, who has put his faith and trust in the Lord Jesus, has the promise of Christ, “I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish” (John 10:28-30).

What, then, is the meaning of Christ’s words when He declared in our text, “Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.”?

The answer is in the context, which Scofield and other good men have missed. Look at verses 24-26, just prior to our text: “But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils. And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand: And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand?”

Note, “Jesus knew their thoughts!” It was not their words that condemned them, it was their hearts! It was their thoughts! Their mouths mumbled the words and made the alibi, but it was their hearts that condemned them. Jesus said on another occasion, referenced above, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matthew 12:34). The Pharisees were saying in their hearts, “We will not accept this man as our Messiah even if He is God come in the flesh. We will not accept Him. We hate Him.”

F. It is Not Even an Act of REJECTING CHRIST!

I remember reading an illustration told by the famous evangelist, educator, scholar Rueben Archer Torrey. When he was conducting a crusade in Maryborough, Australia, a fine looking gentleman asked to see him and when he came to his hotel asked the preacher, “Sir, what have you got against me?”

Surprised and perhaps a little shocked, the evangelist responded, “Why, what do you mean? I don’t have anything against you. I don’t even know who you are.”

“Here is what I mean,” was the man’s reply, “I am not a Christian. I have never accepted Christ and have no intention of doing so. But I have always led an upright life. As far as I know, I am doing my full duty toward my wife, my children, my employers, my neighbors and everyone else. However, I admit I am not a Christian and don’t intend to become one. So, what have you got against me?”

Torrey responded, “Sir, I will tell you what I have against you. Jesus Christ is your King by Divine right. You admit that you have not trusted Him and do not intend to do so. That means you have taken your stand against Him.” Then he looked him straight in the eye and said, “Sir, I accuse you of high treason against Heaven’s King.”

The man seemed stunned, rose to his feet, stood there for a moment, then without another word he walked to the door and left. Torrey followed him down the hall and out the door, but he never looked back one time. Days, weeks and months passed. Torrey left the country for crusades in Tasmania, but then returned to Australia and was speaking at the Alfred Hall in Ballarat.

One afternoon when he finished his message and came down from the platform a man was waiting to speak with him. The gentleman asked if Torrey recognized him and the evangelist replied, “No, I meet too many people. Your face is vaguely familiar, but I can’t place you.”

He said, “Do you recall accusing a man of high treason against Heaven’s King?”

“I have charged many a man with that.”

“No doubt you have, but do you recall one particular one,” and he described the events above and it all came back to Torrey.

Then he looked at Torrey and said, “I have come way down from Maryborough to Ballarat to tell you, sir, that never again will you accuse me of high treason against Heaven’s King.” Then he put out his hand and when Torrey grasped it, he said, “Down.” And together they sank to their knees and the Maryborough man poured out his heart and soul in surrender to Heaven’s King.

No, one rejection of Christ is not the unforgivable sin. If it were, where would most of us be? How many Christians received Christ the first time they had an opportunity to do so? I didn’t. Most of my friends who have told me their conversion stories didn’t. How many times we said ‘No,’ crucified Him afresh, insulted the Holy Spirit who was  tenderly moving in our hearts, urging us to surrender to Him, but we said ‘No’ and went on our way in rebellion against Him.

Yet how dangerous is ‘putting off’ salvation! No one knows what a day may bring forth. In Michigan, a couple of young boys – five-year-old James Sutherland and four-year-old Mark Snow, neighbors – were playing beside a busy street in Ferndale. Suddenly, without warning, both lads dashed out into the street after a ball or something. Brakes squealed and the approaching driver was able to stop without striking them. Witnesses said the unidentified motorist jumped out, grabbed both boys and scolded them severely for running into the street, then returned to his car and drove away.

Minutes later the lads, absorbed in their game, ran into the street again. Once again brakes squealed, but this time the speeding driver was not able to stop and stuck them both. And Jimmy and Mark were killed instantly.

As I read of this tragedy in the newspaper, I could not help but be impressed with how much like poor lost sinners these boys reacted. Warned again and again of the slavery and sentence of sin, unconverted sinners keep coming back to their sins as a dog returns to his vomit, until sudden destruction strikes … and it is all over!

There is one more thing that I need to emphasize here.

G. The Unpardonable Sin is NOT a Sin SAVED PEOPLE COMMIT!

When one has been born into the family of God, his sins are already forgiven, hence not unpardonable. By one offering at Calvary Jesus Christ took care of all our sins, past, present and future. Listen to Hebrews 10:10, 12, 14, with emphasis to make it clear: “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all ... this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God … For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” If that were not true, He would have to die again every time we sinned.

Hymn writer H. G. Spafford put it in words Paul P. Bliss made alive:

My sin – oh, the bliss of this

    glorious tho’t –

My sin – not in part, but the whole –

Is nailed to the cross and I bear it

    no more,

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,

    O my soul!

In the words of Christ in John 6:37, “…him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” He said again, in John 5:24, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.”

Paul echoed the thought of salvation’s permanency when he wrote to young Timothy, “… I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (II Timothy 1:12).

A person redeemed by Christ, the possessor thereby of eternal life, obviously cannot commit the sin that is unforgivable.