One old friend of mine, a pastor no less, recently wrote to me in response to an article I wrote about modern Israel in prophecy. He said: “Looks like you’ve provided more ammunition to curse Israel and lead an attack against them someday. That gives you the opportunity to face the Lord standing on the Mount of Olives to fight against you.” He apparently believes I am a heretic whom Jesus is going to kill personally at His return because I believe that God does not favor Jews over Gentiles or hold them to different moral standards. I believe, like Paul, that:

There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek, but glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For there is no partiality with God (Rom. 2:9-11, emphasis added).

To claim that God is partial mischaracterizes Him and impugns His perfect character. He is not unjust. He is not a racist. Yet many professing Christians, and particularly dispensationalists, think otherwise.

In any case, my old friend’s response illustrates how passionate some people can be about certain cherished doctrines. Yet both of us claim that our beliefs are based on the Bible.

So what is heresy, and what is blasphemy? Let’s start with heresy.

Sects and Factions

The English words heresy and heretic come from the Greek hairesis and hairetikos. In the NASB, hairesis is translated three ways:

1.) In a neutral or negative sense, it is sometimes translated “sect” (see Acts 5:17; 15:5; 24:5, 14; 26:5; 28:22). We read of the “sect of the Pharisees” and the “sect of the Nazarenes” (a negative phrase that described Christians).

2.) Hairesis is also translated as “factions” that split the church, as in 1 Corinthians 11:19 and Galatians 5:20. In Galatians it is listed as one of the works of the flesh. Those who practice such things, Paul says, “will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:21), a phrase that refers to eternal salvation (see Matt. 25:34; 1 Cor. 6:9–10; 15:50). That solemn fact should give us pause during church splits, especially over small matters. Christians who differ in minor doctrine or conviction are supposed to work lovingly for harmony (see Rom. 14:1–15:7).

Consequential False Teaching

3.) Hairesis is also used in the New Testament to refer to significant false teaching:

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies [hairesis], even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep (2 Pet. 2:1-3).

Note that Peter warns about “destructive” heresies. He was not writing about doctrinal differences that are essentially harmless but, in this case, about teachings that “deny the Master.”

I think it is unlikely that anyone in Peter’s time was directly teaching Christians to “deny Jesus.” Peter’s choice of the word “Master” points to the heresy he was warning about: any teaching that diminishes the importance of obeying Jesus. Note his description of the false teachers who were troubling the church. They were marked by sensuality. The Greek word is aselgeia, which refers to shameless, unrestrained sexual or immoral conduct. They were also marked by greed. Paul warned that neither the sexually immoral nor the greedy will inherit God’s kingdom (1 Cor. 6:9–10).

This third use of “heresy” best matches how the word is used in modern Christian circles. Obviously, it is applied unevenly. What deserves the label differs from one believer to another. To me, any doctrine that misleads people about salvation is heretical. Persuading people, for example, that holiness is unnecessary for final salvation is destructive. It is “denying the Master who bought them.” Our New Testaments instruct us to “Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14).

Here is another relevant biblical passage:

Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds (2 John 10-11, emphasis added).

John told his readers to avoid teachers who do not “abide in the teaching of Christ.” Entire segments of modern professing Christianity fall into that category, including some that claim to be evangelical. That is why I do not hesitate to label as heretics those who teach that, because Jesus was ministering under a different dispensation, Christians may ignore His teaching that so often ties holiness to salvation. That is a significant false teaching, because it could rob people of salvation.

Some likewise claim that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount expounds “kingdom ethics” for Israel in His day, and/or for a future millennial kingdom, and that it therefore has no relevance to Christians. I consider that heresy as well, and for many biblical reasons. James, for example, alludes to points in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount at least eighteen times in his letter to New Testament Christians.

Recall that after His resurrection, and under the New Covenant, Jesus Himself commanded His apostles to teach their disciples to observe everything He had commanded them (Matt. 28:16–20). That means Jesus’ commandments are relevant to all of us.

What is Blasphemy?

The English word blasphemy comes from the Greek noun blasphēmia, which the NASB sometimes translates “slander” when the object is a person rather than God (see Eph. 4:31; Col. 3:8). When someone slanders me, they say or write something about me that is not true.

That helps define blasphemy in modern English. It is slander directed at God. Any spoken or written misrepresentation of God could be considered blasphemous.

Intentional slander is much worse than unintentional slander (akin to false gossip), and the same must be true of blasphemy. God has great mercy on those who sincerely hold doctrines that misrepresent Him because they rest on isolated texts and ignore the balancing ones.

So although I firmly believe, for example, that Calvinism, assembled from selected proof texts, grossly misrepresents God’s character—so much so that all five of its cardinal doctrines are blasphemous—God seems much more gracious than I am toward Calvinists who are His children.

That said, some blasphemy is so offensive to God that it is unforgivable. Recall Jesus’ words:

Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin (Mark 3:28-29).

And here is Luke’s slightly different version:

And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him (Luke 12:10).

It is a complete mystery to me why it would be a lesser sin to “speak a word against” Jesus than to blaspheme the Holy Spirit.

In any case, Satan has used these verses to plague many sincere believers who have been persuaded that they have committed the unpardonable sin. The context, however, shows what Jesus was talking about.

According to Matthew’s account, Jesus had just healed a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and the Pharisees responded, “This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons” (Matt. 12:24). Jesus, by contrast, attributed His power to cast out demons to the Holy Spirit (see Matt. 12:28). The Pharisees attributed to Satan what Jesus attributed to the Holy Spirit. Their sin was blasphemy so grievous that it was unforgivable.

It is often said that if you are worried you have committed the unpardonable sin, that is evidence you have not. I agree. You are not the kind of person whose heart is so hard that you would attribute to Satan Jesus’ power to deliver people from demons—a hardness of heart that seals one’s eternal fate. Hearts can become so hard that God may tell you not even to pray for those who possess them, just as He told Jeremiah concerning backslidden Judah (see Jer. 7:16; 11:14; 14:11).

All of this is to say that God is looking for ways to save people, not for ways to damn them. If you are reading this, that is a sign your heart is soft. You have not blasphemed the Holy Spirit, so keep loving and serving Jesus.

By the way, denying that Jesus is the Son of God and the Messiah is categorized in the New Testament as blasphemy, since that is a slanderous misrepresentation of God. Paul wrote of his former actions as a persecutor of the church:

And as I punished them often in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme [Gk: blasphemeo]; and being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities (Acts 26:11).

Note that Paul tried to force them to blaspheme, which implies that they resisted. They likely knew Jesus’ solemn warning, “Whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 10:33). Even in that warning, Jesus did not imply that the consequences were irreversible. Peter, under great pressure, denied the Lord three times. He was remorseful soon afterward, and he was ultimately restored and used greatly by God. Again, God is in the redemption business, not the damnation business. Praise God!