Sins Against the Holy Ghost Eph. 4:30 CLICK TITLE FOR AUDIO
After you are saved, you need to be especially careful not to sin against the Holy Ghost. You sin against the Holy Ghost when you:
Grieve him – Eph 4:30 – you grieve the Holy Ghost by disobeying him [Heb 13:17]. He has sealed you and he is charged with the responsibility of leading you. Leading you is a grief when you don’t willingly go along with him. You grieve him by walking in the flesh [Gal 5:16-18, Rom 8:13-14]. The works of the flesh keep you in bondage. However, where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty [2 Cor 3:17]. It is a grief to the Spirit for you to be in bondage when you are supposed to be free [Jn 8:32-36].
Quench him – 1 Thes 5:19 – you quench the Holy Ghost by lukewarm Christianity [Rev 3:15-16]. Lukewarm Christianity is humanistic Christianity; you have to have things the way you like them. You have heard of a “watered down” gospel. You have heard of being “on fire for God” and then cooling off. You have heard of “cold” dead churches. These are the result of quenching the Spirit. With the Spirit of God in us we are to be “zealous” of good works [Titus 2:14]. Our prayers are to be “fervent,” [Jas 5:16]. We are to love each other the way that Jesus loves us [Jn 13:34-35]. When the Spirit is quenched we lose our zeal, our fervency and our love.
Lie to him – Acts 5:3 – you lie to the Holy Ghost when you pretend to be more spiritual than you are. Ananias and Sapphira thought they could get away with lying about the size of their offering to make it look like they were giving all, like the rest of the disciples were [Acts 4:34-37]. The Holy Spirit knows everything there is to know about you. So, when you try to impress people by living before them differently than you live before God, you are living a lie. Charismatics who profess to have a gift from God that the Holy Ghost didn’t give them are lying to the Holy Ghost!!
Vex him – Is 63:9-10 – you vex the Holy Ghost when you rebel against him. And when you rebel against the Spirit, he opposes you. He may simply leave you alone until you get back on track. He may start arranging circumstances in your life to make it more difficult [Prov 13:15; Lk 15:14-17]. He may shut out your prayers [Prov 28:9]. He may sic the devil on you [1 Cor 5:5; Prov 13:21]. In any case, he will not be leading by his gentleness [Gal 5:22].
Note: these days you cannot blaspheme the Holy Ghost because that sin is committed by saying, Jesus “hath an unclean spirit,” [Mk 3:28-30]. The men who blasphemed the Holy Spirit during Jesus’ ministry despised the Holy Ghost [Heb 10:29] and thus they faced God’s vengeance at the hand of the Romans [Heb 10:30; Matt 21:41-45; Matt 22:7].
Conclusion: You can see from the Bible that Christians sin against the Holy Ghost regularly and this ought not to be so. Commune with him [2 Cor 13:14] and learn not to sin against the Holy Ghost. And if you are not yet saved, don’t resist him like Israel did when they rejected Jesus Christ [Acts 7:51, Jn 16:8-10]. That’s a sin against the Holy Ghost.