I wondered about that too. I wouldn’t have thought of the “seven deadly sins” as being part of Protestant tradition, and if so, not really something that comes up in evangelical circles, at least not the ones I’ve run in.
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Thanks! I have a lot to learn.
We all do. Just never lose that desire to learn. Love of learning is the key to knowledge.
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Yes, thanks. Isn’t a just, or kindly, view of God also a key? If we felt that getting it wrong would result in our getting in big trouble, we’d never dare to venture outside our comfort zone. However, since He’s the Judge and patient Teacher, we’re actually learning more about Him as we stumble and learn more about His world. He’s cheering us on, I guess.
You’re right that our view of God is important. That is why Christ is the culmination of biblical religion. In him, the heart of God is on display.
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Thanks alot everyone for the answers! They help tons! 
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Thanks for posting this, I agree with much of it too. I know so very little of the history of many of the religious leaders, there is some great wisdom out there. After reading this, it seems me as to what inspired N.T Wright as well?
As far as the main thread goes, I think this hits the nail on the head the most.
Like a rich man entering the kingdom of God is difficult. It isn’t a disadvantage placed on the rich by God or that a rich man has to go through more to be saved, however being in that situation, it can be harder to trust in or depend on God, when you have plenty of material things to trust and depend on. The problem is on our end, not God’s mercy.
I believe you are referring to Matt 12:31 “And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.”
I am by no means a scholar at all, but I can share my thoughts on it if you care to read.
I have always seen this as basically what @jpm said. We know we can do nothing apart from God, that is to say that we fight a battle, between the spirit and the flesh. Anytime the flesh has priority over God, it is sin, anything the spirit puts above flesh is from God. It is a haughty, prideful heart like the tower of babel that say “We will make a name for ourselves”. That we can elevate our flesh to a level that our spirits are, to build a stairway of our flesh to the heights of the heavens (where spirits belong/come from). This is the same unforgivable sin. To say that the Holy Spirit is not allowing us or helping us to not sin, rather it is our own effort of flesh that delivers us.
I don’t see heaven and hell in the Calvinist point of view. I see heaven as a place where the battle between flesh and spirit is no more. On earth, we have acknowledged that we want to be with God, we want His rule, His kingdom, His will to take priority over our flesh and heaven will be that reality. Hell, is a place where that reality is not realized yet, the flesh will have dominion over the spirit, we will continue to be separate from God. but here on earth, though we are separate, we have glimpses of God through others, in hell, there will be no glimpses of God. It will be a place filled with fear and trembling, gnashing of teeth and loneliness.
So when we reject the Holy Spirit, we are rejecting God’s work in us, rejecting God’s will for our lives, rejecting God, rejecting Heaven. I don’t think it is that God can’t forgive it, it is that it does no good. If God forgave all man of all sin, there are still plenty of those who would chose the flesh over the spirit, plenty that don’t want heaven, don’t want an eternity with Jesus as King of Kings.
So the unforgiveable sin, is only unforgivable, until you stop doing it. If you currently reject God’s will for your life, He can’t force you to live for Him, it is unforgiveable in that sense. But once you turn towards Him, that sin of the past is now forgivable.
I don’t see it as a sin that once committed, you are damned forever, even when you stop sinning like that. The whole rest of the scriptures go against tat belief. I think it just means if you live in that sin, don’t want God’s rule, reject the Holy Spirit trying to help you live His rule, He will allow you to reject Him with you free will.
If perhaps maybe there Jesus did mean that it was indeed an unforgivable sin of the past (though I don’t think He did mean it like that), the good news is that Jesus also says “with God, all things are possible”. I do know God is loving and merciful, just and righteous, and even God can forgive the “unforgivable” sins. There are plenty of apparent paradoxes in the scriptures, but all of them are trumped by the loving, merciful, just, and righteous God, which takes a much stronger theme of the entire Bible, vs, just a few cherry picked verses here and there.
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Jesus in John 19:11 speaks of a greater sin. Based on this statement we can conclude that there are degrees of sin. Romans 1 list specific sexual sins FIRST as examples of the degradation of our world and the handing over of people to indulge fully of that sin. Some sins are greater than other …and yes more difficult to confess.
But, getting back to the OP, where in the Bible is the degree of seriousness of a sin ever tied to God’s ability or willingness to forgive it. I can’t think of one.
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There are degrees of sins, and different types of sin. Not all sin is the same.
The blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is one where the work of the Holy Spirit is attributed to Satan. There is no willingness for God to forgive. This relates directly to the attributes of God’s holiness and justice.
Second, habitual sin without repentance. Hebrews 2 and 6;4 are debatable where some view - the person was never really saved - but the warning is pointed to believers. If the Hebrews 6;4 is a saved person - habitual sin without repentance - person is lost.
I personally don’t think these instances are talking about God’s willingness or ability to forgive. I think they are talking about the natural consequences of human rebellion. You have freedom to completely reject God and condemn yourself to unforgiveness. You have freedom to make yourself so numb to the Holy Spirit’s work by habitual sin that you end up walking away from your faith and condemning yourself to unforgiveness. But rejecting God’s offered grace because you are messed up by sin is not the same thing as God refusing to extend grace because of your sin.
I guess it’s obvious I’d make a terrible Calvinist, huh?
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Your response sounds logical - but then I heard your train of thought get wrecked as it smashed into Romans 9:13
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Followed immediately by Romans 10. Certainly, a tension exists between God’s expressed will and his permissive will.
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I do not deny that chosenness is a strong theme in the Bible. But it needs to be balanced with the whole counsel of Scripture, where grace and forgiveness are also strong themes, and form the heart of the gospel message.
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I disagree. The sexual sins are not the first sins mentioned by Paul in Romans 1. In fact, I would say that the sexual sins are the LAST in a long chain of sins that began when “they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.” Next, “they claimed to be wise,” which is the root of idolatry and the temptation represented by the snake in the Garden. It is also the sin of the king of Tyre, who was expelled from the garden of God because “you think you are as wise as a god” (Ezek. 28.1-19). And, of course, their foolish pride led them to full-blown idolatry, and they “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images.”
The sexual sins are the culmination of a long downward slide of sinfulness, with the end result that people are left in spiritual darkness. The sexual sins are a symptom, but the disease is human pride and idolatry. As Douglas Moo put it:
“At the very center of every person, where the knowledge of God, if it is to have any positive effects, must be embraced, there has settled a darkness …”
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I love Tevye’s quote–“God, I know we are Your chosen people–but couldn’t You choose someone else, sometime?”
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Does God hate certain people?
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I don’t think that case can be made from the overall arc of scriptures (certain cherry-picked and re-interpreted verses about Esau or others notwithstanding.)
But you can bet that when someone suggests that God hates people, the people so-hated are almost never part of that person’s family or circle of friends but are usually “others out there” making bad choices and engaging in the “worst possible” sins. Pharisees are alive and strong today.
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Looking up the original quote from Malichi, the translation I looked at renders it as “choose” and “rejected” in this context. So perhaps that helps. As I recall, even though Jacob was chosen, God blessed Esau in his life also. Also When you consider all the “until this day” language, it is written much later, so you wonder about retrospectoscope effect.
There may or may not degrees of sin, but the title of the thread is are any forgiven any less. At the end of your post, you seemed to agree with @jpm on this?
I agree with this, but what does lost mean? Does lost mean, will not be in heaven? Or does lost mean, does not know the way, cannot see the way, does not know where one is, does not even know there is a way. The Way, is Jesus, the way is the 2 greatest commandments, the way is humility and knowing and acknowledging that the Kingdom of Heaven is how we were intended to be created.
Is lost a bad thing? Sure it is optimal to be on the path, but in realizing you are lost, you are at least acknowledging there is a path you strayed from. I wouldn’t say lost is optimal or a goal, but I don’t know if I would say it is a bad thing either.
So if a person is not trying to live their lives in humble servitude to their Creator and fellow man, yes they are lost. I mean that literally, lost, not lost just as a term for those who aren’t saved or aren’t Christians. If you are not walking the path to God or don’t even know there is a path to God or a purpose He made us for, you are lost. If they pridefully think they can live a better life than God intended/designed for them, then yes they are not on the path, but they don’t think they are lost. They are the way in their own minds. Someone who does no believe they are lost, will never be found. That is like blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. But even that is unbelief until it is believed. Can one blaspheme the Holy Spirit for days, and then one day see the light and stop? Does it need forgiven, are they doing it anymore? Does God prefer to have sins punished, have people suffer for their sins, or prefer repentance from them?
But if a man is trying to walk the path, but falls off, they can get back on. If a man is walking the path and gets distracted by a butterfly and begins to chase it, once realized, they can get back on the path. Or if a wolf is spotted (who cannot get on the path, but this is unknown or difficult to have faith that the path is protected when a wolf is gnashing its teeth at you and sprinting towards you and you see a tree off the path that looks like it will provide safety from the wolf that we can understand/comprehend) and you run off that path to climb up the tree to attain safety from that wolf, you are not lost. What if a man wants to walk the path, asks for directions, but they don’t understand or forget the directions, that person would end up being lost too. But all of these men are seeking God, they want to walk the path, that is their hearts intent.
What if that person chasing the butterfly wondered off so far that they can no longer see the path? It is possible they never stop chasing the distraction and never realize they are not even on the path anymore. Hopefully God brings someone in their life to point out to them that they have strayed, and they will ask God, and God will put them back on the path.
We are to lean not on our own understanding, but in all our ways acknowledge Him. Our understanding would be to run up the tree, but if we followed His path, we would be safe, though we find that hard to do when the wolf is charging us. Is that person lost? They see the path still, but our of fear are just sitting on a tree, off the path, waiting for the wolf to move of or be destroyed, sometimes asking God to kill the wolf before one can continue on the path.
All of these folks are habitually sinning, they are constantly wondering off the path, they don’t want to, but it happens to them. I think they are greatly different than the ones who don’t care about the Way. They think they have their own way, they reject the Way. That is what I think blaspheming the Holy Spirit is, it is rejecting the One who tries to guide you on the Way.
The only way to grow fruit, to shine light, to live life abundantly, to do as the Creator created us to do, is to be on the path. He created us to depend on Him to live our lives, to be image bearers, and that is the only way to bear His image, is the let Him shine in us, to live in us. We are lamps, He is the electricity, no light comes from a lamp, it comes from the electricity flowing through it. A lamp that is plugged in can display light, a lamp that is no plugged in is not doing it’s purpose. Man accepts the Holy Spirit can display God, man who rejects the Holy Spirit is not doing his purpose.
This is basically Mat 13.
All of that said…
When Peter was looking at Jesus, He walked on water, but the second his gazed strayed, he began to sink. The only time we are not lost is when we are looking towards Jesus. Peter was saved from drowning though, even when his gaze strayed from Jesus. So I don’t think “lost” means unsaved.
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