The Grieved Spirit

A good friend has a saying: ‘I’d rather have a sore face than a red face’ and I know exactly how he feels and what he means. We hate being embarrassed, and try to avoid it at all costs but we don’t always succeed. In fact, we can also be the reason for some others’ embarrassment, and there are time we do it intentionally.

On a legal theme, we are told that it is more important to recognise and honour the spirit of the law, rather than just the letter of the law. Now take it a step further into our faith lives and ask yourself if you ever embarrass the Lord, either intentionally or not? I think we all have done that, and immediately regretted our actions, feeling that we have grieved God, and our own spirit reacts to the Holy Spirit in contrition. Taking the Holy Spirit for granted, and calculating our sin in advance of ‘assumed future forgiveness’ is a very dangerous thing. I suggest that is more of a conniving heart, than a contrite heart. The bible tells us in Jeremiah 17:9 that the ‘heart is deceitful above all things, and beyond cure’.

We are all very familiar with the forgiving nature of God, and we are right to be very thankful for it. We serve a God of the second chance! So what do we do with these verses: And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man. Genesis 6:3 or Whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come. Matthew 12:32

Since Scripture is inspired and cannot contradict itself, we cannot afford to ignore these verses. You can rationalise the first one, and say it applies to the Genesis flood only, but you cannot do that with the words of Jesus, so we must take care when we already know the way and choose to take His Word for granted and abuse it. In that respect, could it be that the saved have a much greater responsibility to keep His commandments, than the unsaved to find salvation. According to these verses, the eternal result would be the same. Now that’s a staggering and sobering thought.