The Bible teaches that God hardened Pharaoh’s
heart and then held him responsible. How
can God do this and still be called “just?”
The Bible does not come out and answer this issue explicitly. But by putting other Bible passages together,
we do have a good answer.
There are two ways God could have hardened
Pharaoh’s heart: Actively or Passively.
By “active hardening,” we mean that God could
have directly intervened within the inner chambers of Pharaoh’s heart. God would intrude in Pharaoh’s heart and
create fresh evil in it. By doing this, it would insure that Pharaoh would
bring forth the result that God was looking for. It would also insure that God
would be the author and direct cause of Pharaoh’s sin.
I do not hold to this view. Nor do I believe the
Bible teaches this about God.
Instead, it’s the next view that makes better
sense –
God hardened Pharaoh’s heart “passively.”
Passive hardening involves a divine judgment upon
sin that is already present. All that
God needs to do to harden the heart of a person whose heart is already wicked
is to “give him or her over to their sin.”
In other words, God does not intrude into a person’s heart and create
sin, rather He simply retreats from the person leaving him to his own sin. In this second view, God acts as a restrainer
and removes the restraints. He is able
to restrain sin and keep it in check. By removing His restraints, God allows
the person to implode in his sin. When
this occurs it is an act of divine judgment.
Here is how the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is
recorded in the Book of Exodus:
4:21: “I (God) will harden his heart so that he
will not let the people go.”
8:15: “But when Pharaoh saw that there was
relief, he hardened his heart and did not listen to them as the Lord had said.”
8:19: “But
Pharaoh’s heart was hardened (by God and Pharaoh), and he did not listen to
them, as the Lord had said.”
8:32: “But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time
also, and he did not let the people go.”
9:12: “But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and
he did not listen to them.”
Do you see the connection? There are two types of passages listed here:
First, verses that show that Pharaoh’s actively
hardened his own heart.
Second, verses that show that God passively
allowed Pharaoh to hardened his own heart.
God was not active in hardening Pharaoh’s heart,
Pharaoh was. God was merely passive in that He removed His restraints from Pharaoh
which left Pharaoh to function within the parameters of his own sin to make his
own decisions.
Two Key thoughts are worth putting down:
1. Left to ourselves, we will be people most miserable and
doomed to implode in our own sin. God is
actively retraining evil. When the
restraints are removed, evil knows no limits (cf. Rom. 1:24-32).
2. Left alone, this world would be a miserable place to live.
God is restraining evil in this world from occupying priority in key
places. The Holy Spirit Himself is
called the “restrainer” (2 Thess. 2:7). The Spirit of God lives within the church, the
body of Christ, or better, all born- again believers. You can also say that the
church is used by God to restrain evil. This restraint will last as long as the
church continues to be around. When the church is removed from this world via
the Rapture, all hell will eventually break loose, and there will be a time
that Jesus called, “great tribulation, such as not occurred since the beginning
of the world until now, nor ever shall be” (Matt. 24:21).
In fact, Jesus
said that unless those days when God removes His restraining Spirit are cut
short, no life would be saved (v. 22).
When God removed His restraints from Pharaoh, his
heart was left to its own sin, which eventually imploded and he perish along
with the Egyptian army.
Why do you think the devil wants God out of
schools, government and other key places in society? So that spiritual restraints are then removed
and evil would have the freedom to flourish unhindered.
End of Part 4
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