When Does God Harden a Sinner’s Heart?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | One of the most asked about themes in the inbox
00:00:06.400 | is God's hardening of the sinner's heart.
00:00:10.120 | It's an incredible theme throughout Romans
00:00:12.640 | and no chapter of scripture has inspired more APJ questions
00:00:16.900 | than Romans 9 has.
00:00:18.580 | We now have over 400 emails on this chapter alone,
00:00:22.780 | loads of questions, including this really good one
00:00:25.560 | from a listener named Nate.
00:00:27.840 | Hello, Pastor John, I was recently reading Romans 1,
00:00:31.100 | verses 24 to 27, and Paul seems to be saying
00:00:34.480 | that God gave over these sinners to dishonorable passions
00:00:38.840 | as a consequence of their sin.
00:00:40.800 | But then when I got to Romans 9, verses 1 to 29,
00:00:44.840 | Paul seems to indicate that God himself hardens sinners
00:00:48.120 | in unbelief, God hardens whom he wills.
00:00:52.440 | That's chapter 9, verse 18.
00:00:54.700 | So in the case of Romans 1, did God first harden
00:00:58.160 | these sinners before he gave them up
00:01:00.000 | to dishonorable passions?
00:01:02.360 | Which came first, did the sinners harden their own hearts
00:01:05.400 | or did God harden their hearts?
00:01:08.560 | In thinking back to the Old Testament,
00:01:10.360 | God first promised to harden Pharaoh's heart.
00:01:13.920 | It's Exodus 4, 21 and 7, 3.
00:01:16.420 | And then Pharaoh hardened his own heart
00:01:18.940 | in Exodus 8, 15 and 32.
00:01:21.480 | Then God hardened his heart even more
00:01:23.700 | in Exodus 9, 12.
00:01:25.120 | Then Pharaoh hardened his own heart even more
00:01:27.040 | in Exodus 9, 34.
00:01:28.520 | Then God hardened his heart even more
00:01:30.160 | in Exodus 10, 1, 20 and 11, 10.
00:01:33.240 | How does this dynamic work more generally in culture?
00:01:36.880 | Or is the giving over in Romans 1
00:01:38.980 | and the hardening of Pharaoh's heart
00:01:40.640 | different categories altogether?
00:01:42.360 | Pastor John, how would you respond to Nate
00:01:44.560 | in putting Romans 1 and 9 together?
00:01:46.480 | - The first thing I want to say is that
00:01:50.480 | there is no hardness in the human heart against God,
00:01:55.480 | either from God's decree or from human depravity,
00:02:02.100 | which is so hard that God himself cannot overcome it
00:02:08.060 | and save the hardest sinner.
00:02:11.620 | This is the very heart of the new covenant promise
00:02:17.060 | of Ezekiel 11, 19.
00:02:19.420 | I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh
00:02:23.820 | and give them a heart of flesh.
00:02:25.760 | Nothing is too hard for the Lord, Jeremiah 32, 17.
00:02:30.760 | Now I start here because I know
00:02:34.340 | that thousands of people listening
00:02:36.620 | have friends and family who have been resistant
00:02:43.020 | to the gospel for years
00:02:46.820 | and how easy it is to despair
00:02:50.420 | that they could ever be saved.
00:02:52.300 | They're just too hard.
00:02:55.540 | So our hearts tempt us to believe.
00:02:59.240 | But what I want to stress here at the outset
00:03:03.660 | is that it is the very omnipotence,
00:03:07.780 | the very sovereignty and freedom of God
00:03:10.820 | who says, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy
00:03:13.460 | and I will harden whom I harden."
00:03:15.220 | It's that very freedom and power,
00:03:17.940 | which is our only hope
00:03:20.180 | that the seeming impossibility of human hardness
00:03:23.900 | cannot stand before the mercy of the sovereign God.
00:03:27.700 | That's where I want to start.
00:03:29.500 | Now, let's look at the specific question,
00:03:32.580 | namely, did God first harden the sinners in Romans 1, 24, 26,
00:03:37.580 | 28, before he gave them up to dishonorable passions?
00:03:44.980 | Let me quote one of those verses, verse 28.
00:03:47.340 | "Since they disapproved of having God in their knowledge,
00:03:51.940 | God gave them up to a debased mind
00:03:56.140 | to do what ought not to be done."
00:04:00.020 | So it's clear that there is a sinful, rebellious condition
00:04:05.020 | prior to God's giving them over to a debased mind.
00:04:11.180 | In other words, his removing the restraints
00:04:15.700 | that he often puts on sinners and sinful cultures
00:04:18.460 | is not the ultimate origin of their rebellion.
00:04:21.940 | That removal is not the ultimate origin of their rebellion.
00:04:25.260 | That was there before he handed them over
00:04:28.620 | to their own rebellion by removing all restraints.
00:04:33.040 | So what was their condition before this handing over,
00:04:38.660 | or you could say this hardening?
00:04:41.460 | What was their condition before that?
00:04:44.460 | Now, let's let Paul describe it in Ephesians 4, 17 and 18.
00:04:49.460 | It says this, "You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do.
00:04:55.740 | In the futility of their minds,
00:05:00.100 | they are darkened in their understanding,
00:05:03.460 | alienated from the life of God
00:05:06.540 | because of the ignorance that is in them
00:05:10.080 | due to the hardness of heart."
00:05:14.940 | So Paul traces the condition of Gentiles,
00:05:19.780 | that's virtually all of us,
00:05:21.940 | and he's gonna say in a minute
00:05:23.500 | that includes the Jewish people as well.
00:05:25.960 | He traces our condition back through futile minds,
00:05:30.960 | through darkened understandings,
00:05:34.460 | through alienation from God,
00:05:36.780 | through ignorance, and finally,
00:05:39.500 | at the bottom, to hardness of heart.
00:05:43.940 | That's the root problem.
00:05:45.780 | And Paul makes plain that this hard spiritual deadness
00:05:50.540 | is universal for Jew and Gentile, not just Gentiles,
00:05:54.200 | because he says in Ephesians 2, 1 to 3,
00:05:57.820 | "You," namely you Gentiles, "were dead in trespasses
00:06:01.420 | and sins in which you once walked
00:06:03.140 | following the spirit that is now at work
00:06:05.820 | in the sons of disobedience, among whom we,"
00:06:10.500 | and he's now including Jews, including himself,
00:06:13.440 | "we all once lived in the passions of our flesh,
00:06:17.180 | carrying out the desires of the body and the mind,
00:06:19.420 | and were by nature the children of wrath
00:06:24.420 | like the rest of mankind."
00:06:28.140 | Now, here's a great mystery.
00:06:31.380 | We may not be able to fully explain it,
00:06:34.380 | but here it is in Scripture, namely,
00:06:38.260 | what humans are by nature
00:06:42.540 | fits us for God's just wrath.
00:06:47.540 | They were by nature, quote, "children of wrath
00:06:51.760 | like the rest of mankind."
00:06:54.320 | This is the condition of every human being.
00:06:57.040 | We are by nature sons of disobedience, verse two.
00:07:02.040 | That is, by nature we disobey.
00:07:04.440 | It's our nature to disobey.
00:07:06.480 | By nature we rebel.
00:07:07.920 | By nature we are selfish and God-ignoring
00:07:11.320 | and God-belittling, and therefore,
00:07:13.100 | by nature we deserve God's wrath.
00:07:18.100 | Now, how did that come about,
00:07:20.080 | that all human beings are by nature
00:07:24.840 | justly subject to the wrath of God
00:07:28.880 | because of our proneness to disobey and rebel,
00:07:33.360 | sons of disobedience?
00:07:35.160 | And Paul's answer in Romans 5 is that Adam's sin
00:07:40.080 | has infected his race.
00:07:42.040 | That is, the punishment that fell on Adam
00:07:45.680 | fell on all who are part of Adam as his descendants.
00:07:50.680 | Here's how Paul puts it in Romans 5:18.
00:07:54.980 | One trespass led to condemnation for all.
00:07:59.520 | By one man's disobedience, the many were appointed sinners.
00:08:05.520 | So the answer to the question,
00:08:09.940 | did God first harden the sinners of Romans 1
00:08:13.660 | before he gave them up to dishonorable passions?
00:08:16.460 | The answer is, in this sense, yes.
00:08:21.020 | God passed judgment on the whole human race in Adam.
00:08:26.020 | Our hardness is owing to God's judgment
00:08:32.380 | on the whole human race in our forefather Adam.
00:08:36.860 | This hardness or deadness or futility,
00:08:40.820 | which we all have from Adam on, is basic.
00:08:45.820 | All other texts in the Bible about God's hardening,
00:08:50.820 | have this as their backdrop,
00:08:53.300 | which means that any given case of hardening
00:08:57.980 | may mean that God is giving someone up to the hardening
00:09:01.820 | that God decreed from the beginning.
00:09:04.300 | And the reason I say from the beginning
00:09:06.460 | and decreed from the beginning
00:09:09.140 | is that Paul says in Romans 11, verse five,
00:09:13.300 | "At the present time, there is a remnant,"
00:09:16.460 | namely of believing Jewish people,
00:09:18.400 | "There is a remnant according to the election of grace.
00:09:23.400 | But if it is by grace,
00:09:27.620 | it is no longer on the basis of works,
00:09:29.820 | otherwise grace would no longer be grace.
00:09:31.980 | What then?
00:09:32.820 | Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking,
00:09:38.260 | but the elect obtained it,
00:09:40.580 | and the rest were hardened."
00:09:45.580 | So Paul traces the deliverance from hardness
00:09:50.580 | back to the election of grace,
00:09:55.140 | which happened before the foundation of the world.
00:09:58.200 | He chose us in him before the foundation of the world,
00:10:02.120 | Ephesians 1.4.
00:10:03.840 | So from the beginning,
00:10:05.460 | that is the very beginning of God's eternal planning
00:10:09.520 | before creation, from the beginning,
00:10:12.360 | he chose to save his people through Christ
00:10:16.140 | from this condition of hardness,
00:10:20.660 | which means we should be very, very thankful
00:10:25.660 | that our eyes are open to the truth and beauty of Christ
00:10:31.680 | and that our heart of stone has been taken out
00:10:36.940 | because we did not bring this about ourselves.
00:10:41.140 | This rescue from hardness was a sovereign work of God
00:10:46.140 | who chose us before the foundation of the world
00:10:49.960 | to be his soft, believing children.
00:10:54.800 | Now, with regard to the other question raised,
00:10:58.540 | namely, how does this work in culture?
00:11:01.140 | I mean, that's another world he opens up
00:11:03.620 | kind of at the end there.
00:11:04.460 | He just throws that one in.
00:11:05.740 | Are you kidding me?
00:11:07.500 | You're gonna throw that question in here
00:11:10.560 | on top of this?
00:11:12.160 | How does this work in culture?
00:11:13.540 | So let me just close with one observation.
00:11:17.320 | In view of Romans 1, 24, 26, 28,
00:11:21.780 | it is naive to look at culture
00:11:24.920 | sinking deeper and deeper into sin,
00:11:27.560 | which I believe ours is,
00:11:30.060 | and to say only that this culture is ripening for judgment.
00:11:35.060 | Well, that's true,
00:11:37.760 | but it conceals another more fundamental truth,
00:11:40.900 | namely, the sinking deeper and deeper
00:11:45.220 | into the bondage of sin itself is God's judgment.
00:11:50.220 | That's the point of Romans 1, 18.
00:11:54.740 | The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven
00:11:59.740 | against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men
00:12:03.980 | who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
00:12:07.080 | That suppression is the handing over of God,
00:12:11.420 | which is a manifestation of his judgment and his wrath.
00:12:16.000 | So the sinking of individuals and the sinking of cultures,
00:12:21.000 | even the disappearance of cultures
00:12:24.220 | into more and more blatant sin
00:12:27.620 | is always owing both,
00:12:30.140 | one, to our natural hardness of heart against God,
00:12:35.980 | and two, God's giving us over to that hardness.
00:12:40.980 | There is one hope through the gospel,
00:12:46.300 | because God promises in the new covenant,
00:12:48.860 | which is a gospel promise in Ezekiel 11, 19,
00:12:52.820 | I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh
00:12:57.820 | and give them a heart of flesh.
00:13:01.120 | That's our prayer.
00:13:02.840 | That's our cry for ourselves, our friends, our family,
00:13:07.840 | and whole cultures that God would take out
00:13:11.460 | the heart of stone.
00:13:12.980 | - Yeah, such an important dynamic to understand in scripture
00:13:16.740 | and then to see applied in broader culture today.
00:13:19.900 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:13:21.460 | And thanks for listening.
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00:13:30.500 | And to find other episodes in our archive
00:13:32.180 | or to submit a question to us like Nate did today,
00:13:34.700 | do that online at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:13:39.700 | On Monday, we hear from a listener to the podcast
00:13:42.260 | who recently sought after a prostitute
00:13:45.860 | and is now devastated at this decision.
00:13:48.900 | Even in seeking a prostitute,
00:13:50.540 | has he crossed a line for which he cannot return?
00:13:55.540 | Pastor John will address that when we return
00:13:58.000 | on Monday next week.
00:13:59.420 | Thank you for listening.
00:14:00.260 | I'm Tony Reinke.
00:14:01.080 | We'll see you back here on Monday.
00:14:03.020 | Have a great weekend.
00:14:04.060 | (upbeat music)
00:14:06.640 | (upbeat music)
00:14:09.220 | [BLANK_AUDIO]