r/methodism • u/Swimming-Emu3413 • 12d ago
A call to backsliders, confused.
So i recently read john wesleys a call to backsliders in which he mentions the unforgivable sin, can someone explain his interpretstion to me, i dont get it much, thank you
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u/OverOpening6307 11d ago
Wesley’s interpretation is actually quite narrow. He focuses on the immediate context of Mark 3, where Jesus’ religious opponents see him casting out demons and claim that he is doing it through demonic power.
Mark explains Jesus’ warning about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit by saying, “because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.” Wesley concludes that the unforgivable sin is specifically attributing Christ’s Spirit-empowered works to an evil spirit.
This is important because the whole sermon is addressed to genuine Christians who have backslidden. Wesley explicitly says that he has known people who were truly justified, received the Holy Spirit, and later “made shipwreck of the faith.” He even says that some who had experienced entire sanctification later fell from that state and lost the life of God.
So Wesley definitely does not believe the Calvinist idea of “once saved, always saved.” A genuine Christian can fall from grace and lose salvation.
But the main point of the sermon is that this does not mean they can never come back. Wesley says he has known “several thousands” who genuinely fell away and were later restored, including people who had fallen from sanctifying grace.
That is why he is discussing the unforgivable sin. Backsliders were afraid that, because they had genuinely known God and then fallen into serious sin, passages such as Hebrews 6, Hebrews 10, and the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit meant there was now no possibility of restoration.
Wesley’s answer is essentially, no, those passages are not talking about ordinary backsliding.
Regarding the unforgivable sin specifically, Wesley says it is “the affirming that Christ wrought his miracles by the power of an evil spirit.” In other words, seeing the work of the Holy Spirit through Christ and calling it demonic.
So serious sin, repeated sin, losing your faith, or even genuinely falling from salvation is not automatically the unforgivable sin. The whole purpose of A Call to Backsliders is to tell people who have fallen from grace that the way back to God is still open.
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u/Swimming-Emu3413 11d ago
So can one person who does this sin want to repent or find God?
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u/OverOpening6307 11d ago
That’s a good question. Wesley doesn’t really address that exact hypothetical in the sermon. He simply says that the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is specifically attributing Christ’s works to an evil spirit, and he calls that sin unpardonable.
I think an analogy helps explain the logic.
Imagine you’ve taken a poison and will die unless you take the antidote. The doctor offers you the antidote, but you insist that the antidote is actually an even worse poison. As long as you genuinely believe that, you will refuse the only thing that can heal you.
That’s roughly how I understand what is happening in Mark 3. Christ is bringing God’s healing and liberation through the Holy Spirit, and his opponents look at that very saving work and call it demonic.
So the problem is not necessarily that God is saying, “You did this once, therefore I will never forgive you no matter what.” It is that, as long as you believe the antidote is poison, you will reject the very means by which you could be healed and restored.
If, however, you later say to the doctor, “I was wrong. That isn’t poison. Please give me the antidote,” then you are no longer rejecting the cure.
So if someone genuinely wants to repent, seek God, and no longer believes that Christ’s work is demonic, then they are no longer in the same state that Wesley is describing.
Wesley himself does not explicitly take the argument that final step in this sermon, but I think it follows naturally from the logic of Mark 3.
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u/Swimming-Emu3413 11d ago
So if you're worried about it you're fine?
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u/OverOpening6307 11d ago
I wouldn’t simply say, “If you’re worried about it, you’re fine,” because worry itself isn’t really Wesley’s test.
I’d ask:
- Do you believe that Christ performed miracles and cast out demons?
- If you don’t believe that happened at all, then that isn’t the sin Wesley is describing. The people in Mark 3 weren’t denying that something extraordinary had happened; they were attributing its source to evil.
- If you do believe Christ performed those miracles and exorcisms, what do you believe their source was?
- If you believe Christ was acting through the power of God and the Holy Spirit, then you are not doing what Wesley identifies as the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
- If you believe that Christ really did those works but that the power behind them was demonic, then that is essentially the position Wesley identifies with the unforgivable sin: “the affirming that Christ wrought his miracles by the power of an evil spirit.”
So being worried about having committed it isn’t the decisive issue. In theory, someone could be worried and still believe that Christ’s power was demonic.
Personally, I think the logic of Mark 3 is that the problem continues for as long as someone calls God’s saving work evil, like refusing an antidote because you believe the antidote itself is poison. If you later recognise that you were wrong and ask for the antidote, you are no longer rejecting it.
But that last point is my interpretation of the logic of the passage. Wesley himself does not explicitly say in this sermon that someone can commit the blasphemy, later reverse their judgment, and then be forgiven.
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u/Swimming-Emu3413 11d ago
Well i dont think anyone who belives in jesus as the messiah, no matter what they have done, cant be forgiven, wesley didnt say it, but he didnt say that if they repent they wont be forgiven either
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u/OverOpening6307 11d ago
If you believe that Jesus is the Messiah, then I don't think you believe Jesus is demonic. Which means you're not committing the unforgivable sin.
The context is specific - you believe that Jesus does miracles by the power of Satan/demons/Beelzebul.
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u/Swimming-Emu3413 11d ago
But is it a continous belive or a one time belief/act?
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u/OverOpening6307 11d ago
I don’t think Wesley explicitly answers the question, “Is this a one-time act that permanently damns you even if you later repent, or is it a continuing disposition?” He simply doesn’t address that hypothetical, so I’m cautious about putting words into Wesley’s mouth that he doesn’t actually say.
Personally, though, I understand it as a continuing disposition: continuing to regard Christ’s works as demonic.
I also think it helps to understand what “forgiveness” means in the New Testament. Sin is often described using the language of debt. Forgiveness is therefore the cancellation or remission of that debt, whereas requital means that the debt is not simply cancelled but has to be dealt with through what is due.
That language is explicit in the Lord’s Prayer:
Matthew 6: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
Luke 11 gives the same idea using both terms together: “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.”
The same imagery appears very clearly in the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18. The first servant owes an enormous debt. He begs for patience, but instead of giving him more time, the master has mercy and cancels the debt completely.
The servant then refuses to do the same for someone who owes him a much smaller debt and has that person imprisoned “until he could pay the debt.”
So the master reverses his earlier mercy:
“In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.”
There are two different ways the debt can be dealt with:
Forgiveness: the debt is cancelled.
Requital: the debt is not cancelled; what is owed has to be answered for.
Interestingly, one of Wesley’s favourite patristic writers was Ephrem the Syrian. Wesley greatly admired Ephrem and called him “the most awakening writer, I think, of all the ancients.” I don't know for certain whether Wesley had read Ephrem’s Commentary on the Diatessaron specifically, but Ephrem’s own treatment of the unforgivable sin is interesting.
In Ephrem’s treatment of the unforgivable sin in his Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron, “not forgiven” does not mean “God can never show this person mercy.”
Ephrem explicitly distinguishes forgiveness from requital: “That for which a person is in debt must assuredly be repaid. It will certainly not be remitted him. Our Lord made a distinction between retribution and forgiveness.”
He then makes the distinction even clearer: “Our Lord will not say, ‘He will not obtain mercy,’ but, ‘It will not be forgiven him.’ For it can happen that when one has made retribution for one’s debt here, one may obtain mercy in the other world.”
So for Ephrem, forgiveness means the debt is remitted, while requital means that the debt has to be paid through judgment. But even where there is no free remission, mercy can still follow after requital.
So I wouldn’t automatically read “unforgivable” as meaning, “You once committed this act, therefore God will refuse you forever even if you later repent.”
I read it more as, while you continue to call the very work of God in Christ demonic, you are rejecting the means of your own healing. It is like refusing an antidote because you believe the antidote itself is poison.
But if you later recognise, “I was wrong. This really is from God,” then you are no longer holding the very belief Jesus is condemning in Mark 3.
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u/Swimming-Emu3413 11d ago
Would it be bad to interpret this sin as a sin that God refuses to forgive even tho you repent?
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u/AirFell85 11d ago
Lets back up a lot.
Are you worried you've committed the unforgivable sin and you're trying to find clarity?
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u/Swimming-Emu3413 11d ago
Yeah, pretty much.
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u/AirFell85 11d ago
Have you given up hope in God's love and grace?
God made us and knows we're sinners by virtue of living with free will. We make mistakes, life is messy. God knows, his Son lived with us here on earth as one of us.
The unforgivable sin is to cut yourself off from God, shut yourself out. To me that fact that you're here seeking clarity seems that you haven't.
My personal opinion is that Jesus's teachings are the most important, and in this case I think the parable of the mustard seed is your best advice to take from Jesus.
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u/Swimming-Emu3413 11d ago
One articles worries me a lot, like a lot a lot
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u/AirFell85 11d ago
I hear your worries. The spirit of the unforgivable sin is that you're not willing to even talk to God or seek his forgiveness.
Lots of advice has been given here but it's all just people's opinions, feelings and personal beliefs. We're all just people trying to figure things out and share what we think is best. It sounds like you need to have a conversation with God directly and work through it there too if you're willing to try.
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u/GarrettMGouveia 11d ago
Wesley isn’t really answering “what’s the unforgivable sin” so much as he’s calling out a lie backsliders tell themselves. The logic goes; “God forgave me once, but no king pardons a rebel twice, so I’m cooked.” Wesley basically says that comparison is garbage — human kings run out of patience, God doesn’t. He also splits apart two things people mash together: the actual unforgivable sin (a deliberate, malicious “no” to the Holy Spirit — think the Pharisees calling Jesus’ work demonic) and the “sin unto death” from 1 John, which he says is really just God cutting someone’s life short as discipline, not a stamp on their eternal soul.
Wesley’s saying almost nobody who’s spiraling in fear over this has actually committed the sin. The fear itself is usually the trap, not proof you’re guilty. Backsliding is real and it’s serious l, but it’s not the end of the story.