Are there really sins that cannot ever be pardoned?

Are there really sins that cannot ever be pardoned?

ANSWER:

“but anyone who blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. This is a sin with eternal consequences.” Mark 3:29.

IMPLICATION:

The above texts are words of Christ on this subject, showing that there are “Unpardonable sins”, which are sins against the Holy Spirit. Some years ago, I asked a priest, “Does this mean that God refuses to forgive this sin?”

The priest could not give a clear and conclusive reply. After years of study and prayer, I finally stumbled on an explanation that made sense.

HERE IS WHAT I LEARNED:

God does not REFUSE forgiveness. Rather, when one sins against the Spirit of God, he deliberately hardens his heart, shuts himself to God’s light, and refuses the very grace that makes repentance possible. Such a person becomes unable — not unwilling — to ask for mercy, because he has rejected the interior movement of the Holy Spirit that leads a person to repentance.

The “Unpardonable” does not mean God changes from a “Forgiving Father” to an “Unforgiving Judge”, as though He turns His face away from someone weeping for mercy. No. He is always forgiving. The tragedy is that the sinner who commits this sin never wants to weep anymore. Even those who are in Hell cannot ask for pardon; not because God withholds mercy, but because they have eternally closed themselves to it.

The grace of remorse/contrition is a very expensive gift of the Holy Spirit, given to the sincerely repentant. There are people who, through long and stubborn resistance to grace — for example, by receiving the Sacraments carelessly, or by persisting in serious sin without any desire to change — slowly deaden their conscience. With time, such sins begin to feel “normal”, even “a way of life.”

This grace is meant to sharpen our sensitivity to sin and move us to sorrow. But when someone persistently kills the light of conscience, he eventually loses the capacity to feel genuine contrition. He may even boast about his sins to his friends and feel like a “big shot.”

This is what it means to commit an “Unpardonable” sin: a final, hardened refusal of repentance. But whenever such a sinner even slightly opens his heart to God’s light and sees his miserable state, and confesses with sincerity, God forgives instantly and completely, for He has promised:

“Even if your sins be as red as scarlet, I shall make you as white as wool.”

So the key thing is this: for the sin to be truly “unpardonable,” the sinner must persist in this hardened refusal of repentance until death.