{"id":468,"date":"2015-06-29T20:11:51","date_gmt":"2015-06-30T00:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=468"},"modified":"2015-06-13T21:44:09","modified_gmt":"2015-06-14T01:44:09","slug":"tuesday-june-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=468","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday, June 30"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MATTHEW 12 <sup>22\u00a0<\/sup>Then one was brought to Him who was demon-possessed, blind and mute; and He healed him, so that the blind and mute man both spoke and saw. <sup>23\u00a0<\/sup>And all the multitudes were amazed and said, \u201cCould this be the Son of David?\u201d<sup>24\u00a0<\/sup>Now when the Pharisees heard <em>it<\/em> they said, \u201cThis <em>fellow<\/em> does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.\u201d<sup>25\u00a0<\/sup>But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them: \u201cEvery kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. <sup>26\u00a0<\/sup>If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? <sup>27\u00a0<\/sup>And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast <em>them<\/em> out? Therefore they shall be your judges. <sup>28\u00a0<\/sup>But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. <sup>29\u00a0<\/sup>Or how can one enter a strong man\u2019s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house. <sup>30\u00a0<\/sup>He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad.<sup>31\u00a0<\/sup>\u201cTherefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy <em>against<\/em> the Spirit will not be forgiven men. <sup>32\u00a0<\/sup>Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the <em>age<\/em> to come.<\/p>\n<p>St. John Chrysostom:<\/p>\n<p>But blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven, not even to those who repent.\u201d But how could this be right? For even this was forgiven upon repentance. Many at least of those who said these words believed afterward, and all was forgiven them. What is it then that Christ was implying? That this sin is above all things inexcusable. Why so? Because they might have been ignorant of Jesus and who he might be, but of the Spirit they could not be ignorant due to their own previous experience. For the prophets had spoken by the Spirit. The Old Testament as a whole had an exalted understanding of the Holy Spirit. What he says, then, is this: \u201cSo be it\u2014you may be offended at me, because of the humanity I have assumed. But you cannot say the same of the Holy Spirit. You cannot claim not to know the Spirit. Therefore your blasphemy has no excuse, and you will suffer the consequences both here and hereafter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MATTHEW 12 22\u00a0Then one was brought to Him who was demon-possessed, blind and mute; and He healed him, so that the blind and mute man both spoke and saw. 23\u00a0And [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orthodox-daily-devotional","has_no_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":469,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions\/469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}