Matthew Chapter 12 verse 32 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 32. - Our Lord applies the general principle of ver. 31 to "blasphemy" against himself. This might be, comparatively speaking, innocuous if it was merely defamation or detraction of him as man; but if, on the other hand, it referred to his work in such a way as to mean a real detraction of God's actions considered as Divine, it indicated a state of feeling which did not admit of forgiveness (vide supra). If it be asked whether the individual Pharisees referred to in vers. 24-28 had committed this sin, the answer depends upon whether they had recognized the hand of God as such, and had, notwithstanding, wilfully rejected it. If they had - as our Lord's tone seems to imply - then they had in fact committed it. Yet they may afterwards have repented, and so have come under a different category. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man (Matthew 8:20, note); e.g. his birth, the circumstances of his life on earth, or his decisions respecting the sabbath or meats, or his disregard of the conventionalities of his time in his treatment of "sinners" and publicans. All such things must have been included in those which St. Paul once blasphemed (1 Timothy 1:13). It shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh (such a word) against the Holy Ghost (the Holy Spirit, Revised Version), it shall not be forgiven him (οὐκ ἀφεθήσεται). The margin of Westcott and Hort, with the Vatican manuscript, represents it still more strongly (οὐ μὴ ἀφεθῇ). Neither in this world (age, Revised Version margin), neither in the world to come. "The age to come" (העולם הבא) included all that followed the coming of Messiah. Sometimes it was restricted to, or practically identified with, the reign of Messiah upon earth, but usually it included much more - eternity as well as time (see especially Weber, 'System,' pp. 354, 355; and cf. Schurer, II. 2:177). It is in its widest sense that our Lord here uses it - contrasting the present order of things with that which will be the final result of his coming, his thoughts travelling far beyond the present course of this world to that which is to be hereafter.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(32) Neither in this world, neither in the world to come.--The distinction was hardly the same for our Lord's Jewish listeners as it has come to be with us. For them "this world"--better, perhaps, this age--was the time before the coming of the Christ; "the age to come" was that which was to follow it. (Comp. Hebrews 6:5, Luke 18:30.) Our Lord thus stood on the boundary-line of the two ages, that of the Law and the Prophets, and that of the Kingdom of Heaven, and He declares that while all personal outrages to Himself as the Son of Man, i.e., the Christ, are capable of forgiveness, this enmity against goodness, as good, shuts it out in both. Practically, however, the order of things since the first coming of the Christ has been one of slow and continuous growth, not of rapid and complete change. There has been no "age to come" such as the Jew dreamt of, and we still wait for its manifestation, and think of ourselves as still living in "this world," in "this age," and of the "world to come" as lying in the far future, or, for each individual soul, beyond the grave. Our Lord's words, it may be noted, clearly imply that some sins wait for their full forgiveness, the entirely cancelling of the past, till the time of that "age to come" which shall witness the great and final Advent. Does this imply that repentance, and therefore pardon, may come in the state that follows death? We know not, and ask questions that we cannot answer, but the words at least check the harsh dogmatic answer in the negative. If one sin only is thus excluded from forgiveness in that "coming age," other sins cannot stand on the same level, and the darkness behind the veil is lit up with at least a gleam of hope.