Featured The subject of Hardenig in its connections

The classical example of hardening in scripture is the case of Pharoah. Pharoah is said to have hardened his own heart. Pharoah is said to have been hardened by God.

Israel is described as becoming hardened during the ministry of Christ.

What are you throughts on the subject of hardening?

 

My position is that hardening has to do with DEGREE of enmity toward God whereas total depravity simply means that our whole nature is INCLINED against God.

To illustrate this, the three persons raised by Christ were all EQUALLY dead but they were not all equally corrupt. Hardening has to do with the degree or corruption by sin and resistance to God.

All sinners are born totally depraved in all their faculties but hardening is a process in direct exposure to light.

God hardens people by simply exposing them to more light. Man hardens himself by his own reaction to light.

The same sun that melts the butter hardens the clay. Israel had been exposed to light more than any other nation. However, the more exposure to light a clay nature receives the more harder it will become.

On the other hand, make the tree good and the fruit will be good. Reborn persons melt under the same exposure that lost depraved sinners harden under.

 

One poster suggested, and I might add, rightly suggested that Israel during the time of Christ had come to a crisis point as a nation in their hardened condition against God revealed in their rejection of Christ.

That same poster implied that the nature of the Father's giving, drawing and teaching in John 6 is to be interpreted in light of the hardened condition of the Jewish audiance he was speaking to. I beleive he is implying that such a background would require a different treatment and application of John 6:36-65 and especially John 6:44-45. However, the utlimate goal, I believe was to suggest that this condition of hardening is a special argument that would deny that man comes into the world totally depraved in all of his faculties. Thus this made this audiance a special case different from Gentile sinners and thus may even deny the condition of the nature of man as they come into the world. If I am mistaken in this last drawn conclusion, then I am sure it will be pointed out.

However, I believe he is confusing the STATE of sin with the PROGRESS of Sin in the life of unbelievers. The STATE of sin is EQUAL regardless if you are an infant, adult, female, male, Gentile or Jew - Romans 8:7. However the PROGRESS of sin in the life of a person or nation depends upon the amount of light the fallen nature is exposed to. In regard to the nation of Israel and its individuals therefore, the exposure was far more than gentiles. They had become so hardened that God was going to give them up as a FAVORED nation and transfer the external covenant blessings of Israel to the New Tesament Church among the Gentile nations. The church would be the new public "house of God" with its public ordinances, and public ministry and public mission into all the world.

This was done to make Israel Jealous and prepare it for a later time of greater redemption as a nation (Rom. 11:25).

However, hardening does not effect the fallen nature at all. Rather it is the progression of its manifest sinfulness in response to light.

 

I am not suggesting that some Calvinists may interpret "hardening" as "total inability" but I certainly do not. So please do not attribute that definition to me.

Total inability has to do with the fallen sin nature which is EQUAL in extent in all fallen men. However, that does not mean all men are equally corrupt or equal in their progression of corruption.

Hardening is in DEGREES.

All lost men are equally spiritually dead but not equally corrupt in their sins. Total inability has to do with your NATURE whereas hardening has to do with your PROGRESSION IN SIN.

Hardening proceeds form a fallen nature but is not the fallen nature only its product in response to exposure to light. Pharoah hardened himself as a consequence to being exposed to light but his fallen nature was the source of that hardening.

 

Hardening was the reaction of his fallen nature to light of God through Moses. Therefore, God hardened his heart by merely exposing it to light while at the same time He hardened his heart in reaction to light.

This is always the reaction of fallen man to light (Jn. 3:19-20; Acts 7:51; Rom. 8:7-8) unless God intervenes by His grace.

 

Nothng prevents the salvation of the worst sinner but his own depraved determined will to resist. Hence, he has no one to blame but himself for condemnation and if God saves him in spite of himself he has no one to glorify but God's grace.

As the fallen nature is more exposed to light the more resistant it becomes (Jn. 3:19-20) as it will not come to the light. Only a divine act of God can change that direction of will.

In regard to Isarel, they had been exposed to the light more than any people on earth and they had come to the point of judgement by God when they rejected the "light" of the world living among them.

 

I am not a supralapsarian Calvinist. I make a distinction in the decrees of God in regard to permissive will toward sin and will of good pleasure toward righteous intents. I reject election to damnation but see election to salvation and vessels of mercy presuspposing the fall and the just condemnation of men.

I believe the will of man is as free as the will of God. So all your arguments listed do not apply to me. Sorry but I don't fit a classification.

Look at my post in Revmitichells "Can we know the Mechanics of Salvation"
where I lay out my view of salvation if you want to understand my perspective.

 

Total inability has to do with the STATE or CONDITION of the fallen nature that is the SAME in all fallen men. Hardening is a consequene of that state and is PROGRESSIVE and not the same in all fallen men. More exposure to light increases hardening but makes no change to the total inaiblity or fallen nature.

John 6:44 and the words "no man can come to me" is the assertion of universal spiritual inability that has no other solution but to be drawn. Therefore prior to being drawn all human beings are without spiritual abiltity.

This has to do with man's fallen NATURE. Hardening has to do with the REACTION of the fallen nature to light. More light on a fallen nature more hardening due to the negative nature of man toward God (Rom. 8:7).

The description of the fallen nature is as follows:


Eph. 4:18 Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:

This is another description of inward spiritual inability which is not reversed by anything other than by the creaive command of God through the gospel:

For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. - 2 Cor. 4:6

 

Try being response-able to this command:

"Be ye therefore perfect EVEN AS God is perfect"

"Be holy EVEN AS I am Holy"

These are commandments of God and we are held accountable for obedience to them but we do not have the ability to obey these commandments apart from sinless perfection - 1 Jn. 1:8-10.

Second, to argue we are not accountable for our own inability is to argue we are not responsible for our sinful condition but God is. If we are responsible for our inability then no one is to blame but the sinner (Rom. 5:12-19). The whole human nature existed in Adam and Eve and they acted as the respresentatives of humanity just as Christ acted in behalf all who are in him as the "second man" or second Adam. Mankind sinned in Adam just as Levi paid tithes in Abraham (Heb. 7).

 

Partial repost found in another thread:

I would simply add to the above at this precise point where you left off that God's purpose of election is to salvation not to damnation as the very expression "election to salvation" and "vessels of mercy" presuppose the fall and that all men are justly condemned to eternal hell and are totally depraved due to the fall (Rom. 5:12-19).

Therefore, Christ did not come into the world to condemn the world because the world was "condemned already." Therefore, according to justice all men equally are condemned "already" and deserve hell and their mindset is at enmity with God and is not subject to the law of God and neither indeed can be." Thus if God simply left all men alone in their sins that would be perfectly just. However, if God sovereignly elected some to salvation it could not possibly be due to anything found in them as they are no different from those who continue in their sin. Hence, neither justice upon the non-elect or mercy upon the elect makes God a respector of persons as both equally deserve condemnation and neither deserve mercy.

However, God has equallly chosen the means to bring the elect to salvation and it is "through the sanctification of the Spirit (setting apart by regeneration) and belief of the truth of the gospel. God has also chosen the foolisness of preaching to save his chosen people from their sins. Whenever we preach the gospel we are victorious whether men receive it or reject it as it glorifies God when they reject it as much as when they receive it:

2 Cor. 2:14 Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place.
15 For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish:16 To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things?

We preach the gospel to all men calling them to repent and beleive in Christ but the gospel comes to the elect NOT IN WORD ONLY as it does to others, but "in power and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance" (1 Thes. 1:4-5).

However, all men under the sound of gospel preaching are equally responsible and called by the gospel to repent and believe and the only thing that prevents any man from doing so is His own refusal to do so due to his own depraved nature due to his own sin in Adam (Rom. 5:12-19). Nothing prevents the most depraved sinner from coming to Christ but his own resistant will (Rom. 8:7).

Therefore, all who go to hell have none to blame but their own choice and none who go to heaven have anything to boast about but the grace of God.