Marcos 3

Scribes blaspheme the Holy Spirit

22 Then some scribes who had come down from Jerusalem*They had come all the way to Galilee, just to combat Jesus. started saying, "He has Beelzebul,"*All Greek manuscripts have ‘Beelzebul’, rather than the familiar ‘Beelzebub’, that is a carryover from the Latin. and "It is by the ruler of the demons that he casts out demons." 23 So summoning them He started saying to them in parables: "How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a household is divided against itself, that household cannot stand. 26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and become divided, he cannot stand, but is finished. 27 No one can plunder the strong man’s goods,*Since the definite article occurs with ‘strong man’ the first time the phrase occurs, the entity has already been introduced, so the reference is to Satan. Here is a biblical basis for binding Satan, which is now possible because of Christ’s victory. Hebrews 2:14 informs us that Jehovah the Son took on human form to destroy the devil, while 1 John 3:8 affirms that He was manifested to undo the works of the devil. But in John 20:21 the resurrected Jesus said, "As the Father has sent me, so send I you", and not long after that He returned to the Father. He defeated Satan alright, but it is up to us to ‘undo the works’. invading his house, unless he first binds the strong man—then he may plunder the house.

28 "Assuredly I say to you: all the sins of the sons of men can be forgiven, including whatever blasphemies they may utter; 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation"*Perhaps 1% of the Greek manuscripts, of objectively inferior quality, read ‘sin’ instead of ‘condemnation’, to be followed by NIV, NASB, LB, TEV, etc. 30 —because they were saying, "He has an unclean spirit."*Those scribes committed the unpardonable sin. They said that the Holy Spirit was Satan; that His work was Satan’s. Are there not those in our day who have done the same thing?