Last night we had devotions and I led a discussion on Lords Day 36 and the third commandment concerning taking the Lord's name in vain. When preparing for it I came across a sermon from Rev. Zekveld dealing with the unforgivable sin. In his sermon he goes on to state that committing blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the unforgivable sin. This is interesting because to commit blasphemy against God or Jesus is not. According to the Bible this is because of the different stages of God's Revelation to his people. In the Old Testament, God forgave those who committed blasphemy against his name because God had not revealed yet who he fully was and so people didn't know full well of what they were doing. Also, when Jesus was ridiculed by those who accused his works as from the devil, he prayed to God to forgive them because once again, they didn't know what they were doing fully. But now that Pentecost has come, and God has fully revealed himself through the Holy Spirit and His Word (until He comes again), to commit blasphemy against the Spirit is unforgivable. (To commit blasphemy is to utterly despise the Spirit of God and to remove him from your life.)

Now it is very common to hear people use Gods name carelessly like "O my God" or "Jeez" or "Gosh". This is not blasphemy against the Triune God, but according to The Ten Commandments by Rev. Douma, when people outside the church use God's name carelessly like this, it gives us a glimpse of the inner state of their heart, and maybe even the blasphemy that they have committed against the Triune God. Recently though, I have been increasingly hearing the careless use of God's name come out of the mouths of Christians. For Christians to be adopting this practice from the secular world is very dangerous and careless, showing much disrespect to God. We should cringe when we hear such words uttered carelessly out of the mouths of our brothers and sisters in Christ! We cannot just shrug it off our shoulders - we should feel hurt by this and feel obliged to talk to the person, warn them, and remind them of the seriousness of what they said. For this is the God that has given them life, and gave up His only Son to die in our place. Only with such fear and reverence should his name come out of our mouths.