A beautiful & profound reflection from The King’s English blog on what it means to have a hard heart.
Here’s an excerpt discussing the passages in Exodus that talk about God hardening Pharaoh’s heart:
There is an interplay between Pharaoh’s hardening and the LORD’s. But it is striking that the LORD’s agency is highlighted more than Pharaoh’s.
What’s going on?
Well, just as a resolve can be hardened so can a heart. Its direction is not changed, only reinforced. This is the sense of the LORD’s hardening of Pharaoh. You could even translate it, “The LORD strengthened his heart.”
Pharaoh wanted to reject the LORD and exalt himself. And in the poetic justice of the LORD, He gives Pharaoh exactly what he wants. This is the essence of God’s judgement – to “give us over” to our “lusts”, our “affections”, our “minds” (Romans 1:21-28). It is a mark of our heart-sick condition that “getting what we want” is such a terrible curse. Yet as Jesus says, all our fallen desires are death-wishes:
“All they that hate me love death.” (Proverbs 8:36)
We are in a desperate plight when our deepest natural inclinations are hell-bent.
But the LORD Jesus has a solution for us. It’s not in our hearts, for our hearts are naturally perverse. It’s not in our minds or our wills, for they are ruled by our fallen hearts. The solution is outside of ourselves. A new heart – a soft heart – that is the gift of Jesus by His Spirit:
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26)
Whatever Walt Disney tells you – Don’t trust your heart! The Hero does not lie within. Cry for help. Trust Jesus and He will transform you from the inside out.
