Matthew 12:31 · World English Bible
Matthew 12:31 Meaning Therefore I Tell You
Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men.
What does Matthew 12:31 mean?
Everything can be forgiven except one thing, and the exception reveals what the whole moral order rests upon. The spirit that must never be betrayed is the process of honest, self-correcting truth-telling, the mechanism by which a person notices his error and turns from it.
From the Clinical Psychology reading below.
Matthew 12:31 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Clinical Psychology
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
Clinical Psychology
Everything can be forgiven except one thing, and the exception reveals what the whole moral order rests upon. The spirit that must never be betrayed is the process of honest, self-correcting truth-telling, the mechanism by which a person notices his error and turns from it. Blaspheme that spirit, and a man abandons the one faculty that could ever repair him. Violate that process and there is no hope, because it is the means by which a person improves himself.
Every other fault leaves the door open, because the truth can still find you and pull you back. Habitual lying closes it. A swamp of avoided truths accumulates, and out of that swamp the old chaos rises again. Cain murdered his own ideal and was cursed to wander forever, alienated from the good. Refuse the truth on principle, and nothing is left to save you with.
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Clinical Psychology lens
Live Matthew 12:31 today
- Find one lie you have been telling yourself, the small flattering one about why things are the way they are, and write the true version down somewhere private.
- When you are wrong in a conversation today, say so in the moment, plainly, without the softening clause that makes you right again.
- Under pressure, when the easy half truth would end the awkwardness in the email or the meeting, say the accurate thing instead. Each one of those keeps the door open.
Which truth about myself have I decided in advance never to look at?
The same truth in other traditions
Buddhism · the Eightfold Path
Right speech asks for words that are true, and the teaching treats deliberate deception as the fault that blocks the path itself, because a mind committed to lying cannot see clearly enough to correct course.
Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius
Marcus wrote that the person who lies willingly cuts himself off from the order of things, and that the one who refuses to see his own error has removed the only tool that could have fixed him.
Zen
Zen teachers hold that a student who hides his mistakes cannot be taught, while one who admits them freely can be corrected endlessly. The willingness to be wrong is the whole door.
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