What is the WORST Sin?

What is the worst sin you can commit? If  you were to think of the most heinous, vile, detestable thing to God,  something that would separate you from his presence more than  anything else, what would that be? No doubt, many of our minds go to violent  acts like murder or sexual assault, maybe specific or more pronounced examples  like genocide or infanticide… but this is not correct.

God can and does forgive these sins. Based on the amount of attention it gets from  some Christians, you might think that acts of homosexuality or sexual excess would be the  answer, a true abomination in the sight of God. But this is not correct either.

God has  no problem at all forgiving any of these sins. Surely, then it would be something to do with  selfishness, hoarding money in the face of the poor, being gluttonous while others starve,  stealing from those who already have little. There is no doubt that God has choice  words about these people in the Bible, and yet, even still, this is not correct. 

God welcomes back the greedy if they repent. No, according to Jesus, there is  but one sin that cannot be forgiven, one sin that is worst of them all. In the Gospel  of Matthew he says, “Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but blasphemy  against the Spirit will not be forgiven.

” What do we mean by this? What is  it that is so terrible about this sin that even God himself, the  wellspring of mercy and love, cannot forgive? Pope St.

John Paul II offers  what I believe to be the perfect explanation. In his document Dominum et Vivificantem, The Lord  and Life-Giver, the pope writes, “the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit consists precisely in  the radical refusal to accept forgiveness. ” The radical refusal to accept forgiveness. 

This is the sin that God cannot forgive, the sin that separates from him in  an irreparable way, the sin that will inevitably lead to our own condemnation at the  day of judgment: the refusal to be forgiven. It’s not some enormous, egregious, shocking sin  like murder or theft, it’s a small little thing, that, if we’re honest with ourselves, we  may commit all of the time. At its core, it’s not the sin itself that is our downfall  but the attitude that goes along with it.

He goes on to say, “it is the sin  committed by the person who claims to have a ‘right' to persist in evil—in any  sin at all—and who thus rejects Redemption. ” Any sin at all. It could be a small lying to  your parents.

Stealing a dollar. Harboring hateful thoughts in your mind. Engaging  in gossip.

Anything. What he’s saying is that It’s not about the act itself.  It’s about the attitude that says “it’s not that big a deal,” “I’m going to do it  anyway,” and “I don’t need to be forgiven.

” What is God going to do about that? What  can he do? He’s not going to force us to accept his forgiveness… and  so we’ll stay with our sin.

Which, may not seem that bad because our sins  aren’t that bad, just a little thing here or there, but the reason we often don’t  think of them as that bad is because we can rely on forgiveness. But what if  that wasn’t there? What if we rejected it?

To me, it’s like the common cold,  if we turned off our immune system. It’s a paper cut without blood clots.  Sure, they’re just small little things, until we remove the very thing that can save  us from them.

Then they become big things. John Paul II says that what  we do in these situations, when we refuse to accept that we’ve done  wrong and so refuse to accept forgiveness is put ourselves in self-imposed imprisonment.  We are stuck.

We’re doomed. We have no hope… and the door is locked from the inside. We cannot  be forgiven, because we refuse to ask for it.

This Lent, let it all go. Have the humility to  accept that you’ve made mistakes, and the even greatly humility to ask for forgiveness. It  may be embarrassing, it may make us anxious, it may not feel comfortable in the  slightest, but it’s the only way.

Let it go. Stop justifying it. Stop  holding onto it.

Stop beating yourself up over it. Stop locking yourself in  the prison while Jesus is banging on the door to let you out. Name it. 

Confess it. Let God forgive it.