Most or
all of these Pharisees and scribes could have said about the ten commandments
just what the rich young ruler said to our Lord Jesus, in Mark x. 20, “All these
have I observed from my youth.” So far as outward morality was concerned, they
each wore the “white flower of a blameless life.” Yet these were the men whom
Jesus warned as being almost, if not actually guilty of committing the
unpardonable sin!
The next
thing that strikes us is that the unpardonable sin is clearly some form of sin
against the Holy Spirit. “Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Spirit, it
shall not be forgiven him, neither in this age, neither in the age to come.”
Probably none of those who heard these words fall from the lips of Jesus would
think of the Holy Spirit as a Person in the Godhead, distinct from the
Father, any more than they recognized in Jesus Christ the incarnate second Person
of the divine Triunity. They would think of the Holy Spirit as an influence
exercised by God upon men. Their monotheism was unitarian, not trinitarian.
The full revelation of God as a Triunity only breaks upon us as the pages of
the New Testament proceed. (J. Sidlow Baxter, Studies in Problem Texts [London:
Marshall, Morgan and Scott, Ltd., 1949], 119, emphasis in bold added)
