“For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’ So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.” – Romans 9:17-18
The question of how God hardened Pharaoh’s heart is incredibly important if the justice of God is to be defended. The truth that God can harden people’s hearts can be difficult for Christians to accept but the answer is that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart with patience and grace.
God did not need to send Moses to Pharaoh on multiple occasions to invite Pharaoh to repent of his sin and free the Israelites. God did not need to perform miracles in front of Pharaoh to prove His power and sovereign rule over even Pharaoh.
Furthermore, God knew that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened and that, in asking him to repent and come under the leadership of the real God, Pharaoh would only grow angrier and more hardhearted. Therefore, it was grace that hardened Pharaoh’s heart, like heaping burning coals on the head of one’s enemies, as Jesus said.
Subsequently, God remains gracious and is not unjust. The responsibility for the hard heart is ultimately the unrepentant, sinful Pharaoh, who repeatedly rejected God’s offer of grace. Thus, the truism of the Puritans rings true that “the same sun that melts the ice hardens the clay.” The author of Hebrews, along with Paul in Romans 9, is warning us that we are each like Pharaoh when we harden our own hearts.
In tomorrow’s devotional, we will discuss whether or not the audience of the book of Hebrews had hardened their hearts like Pharaoh had.
Looking back on the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus 4:21 and Romans 9:14-18, what personal lessons can you learn about your own heart from the hardening of his heart in response to God’s repeated correction of and consequence for sin?
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