“But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the LORD had spoken to Moses.”
-Exodus 9:12

“But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them, as the LORD had said.”
-Exodus 8:15

This is one of those classic, difficult episodes in the Bible which finds its concentrated battlefield in Romans 9 where Paul succinctly states that God has “mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.”  (verse 18)  So…which is it?  Did God harden Pharoah’s heart because Pharoah hardened it first?  Or did Pharaoh harden his heart as a result of God’s hardening it?  I’ve long since learned that the wrong approach to answering any question like this is to focus on one set of verses that support your conclusion while ignoring those which seem to contradict it.  The Bible explicitly states both truths in the question at hand.  God is said to be the hardener of Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus 4:21, 9:12, 10:1, 11:10, 14:4, and 14:8.  But its said that Pharaoh hardened his own heart in Exodus 8:15, 8:32, and 9:34.  Both are true.  But this begs a really, really, REALLY weighty question: which came first?  (For the sake of clarity, it is clear that both Pharaoh and God had a role to play in hardening Pharaoh’s heart.  For the purposes of this entry, whenever I refer to Pharaoh hardening his heart or God hardening Pharaoh’s heart, I’m referring to the one who hardened first, i.e. the reason for the hardened heart.)

From the content of Romans 9 (along with more numerous examples), it is definitely understandable why one side would see the scales tipping in the direction of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart.  Romans 9:14-18 for example doesn’t exactly leave a taste in your mouth of God acting in response the actions of a historical figure but rather determining by his own will how that figure will play into his own pre-ordained course of history.  Yet that doesn’t exactly seem fair.  It seems to impugn our free will and relegate us to puppets.  God obviously holds us accountable for our actions, and again, Scripture does also say that Pharaoh hardened his heart.  Hence the reason for the other side which says that as beings accountable for our actions, God can only have hardened Pharaoh’s heart as a result of Pharaoh’s free, willing, and sinful choice to harden his own heart by disobeying God.  So here we have two sides with valid points and each with Scriptures to back it up.  Again, which is it?

Honestly, I don’t believe the question of which came first even matters.  “How can you say that?  Of course it’s important!” one might respond.  After all, if God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, then there are tremendous implications about God’s sovereignty.  Not only does he guide history according to his own pleasure, but included in this guidance is his choice over who will or will not be saved.  On the other hand, if Pharaoh hardened his heart, this would seem to make man the ultimate determiner of his eternal destiny.  This side says that Pharaoh must, like every other person in the world, choose God of his own free-will.  God can’t force him to make a choice, lest it cease to be a choice.  Therefore, Pharaoh freely chose to reject God, and only then did God respond by hardening Pharaoh’s heart.  These are two very different options, so where do I get the idea that who hardened this guy’s heart is ultimately irrelevant to the issue at hand?  Because whichever side you land on, whichever path you choose to walk on, I think you’re bound to end up at the same destination.

Let’s say that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.  God spoke to him through Moses, commanding him to let his people go and Pharaoh, through his own free will, chose to say no.  God gave him several more chances to obey but he refused to do so.  So as a result, after numerous offerings to repent, God decides to harden the heart of Pharaoh.  Now at this point it must be asked what that means.  In what way does God harden hearts?  I like the way Jonathan Edwards puts it:

“When God is here spoken of as hardening some of the children of men, it is not to be understood that God by any positive efficiency hardens any man’s heart. There is no positive act in God, as though he put forth any power to harden the heart. To suppose any such thing would be to make God the immediate author of sin. God is said to harden men in two ways: by withholding the powerful influences of his Spirit, without which their hearts will remain hardened, and grow harder and harder; in this sense he hardens them, as he leaves them to hardness. And again, by ordering those things in his providence which, through the abuse of their corruption, become the occasion of their hardening.”

So God didn’t actively create unbelief in Pharaoh’s heart.  He either withheld his own influence from Pharaoh, or he orchestrated circumstances in which Pharaoh would harden his heart.  To illustrate the latter, the Puritans had a great saying: “The same sun that melts the ice hardens the clay.”  In other words, preaching the Gospel will melt the hearts of some causing them to believe, and it will further aggravate others and drive them further from God.  Both elements of hardening that Edwards mentions are probably at work here.  God withholds himself from Pharaoh, and sends Moses to preach to him and further harden the clay.

Of course, Edwards’ explanation of how God hardens hearts rests on a large assumption: that man, on his own, without God’s influence, will not choose God.  And I do mean “will not,” as in “no possible way.”  This certainly flies in the face of popular opinion concerning free will both in the church and in the public sphere.  I’ve often heard that God is voting for me and Satan is voting against me, but I am the one who must cast the deciding vote.  But this too rests on a large assumption.  It assumes that man is essentially a blank slate, with equal capacity for choosing God and choosing what is against God.  The Bible isn’t so optimistic though.  Paul for example writes that “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” (Romans 8:7)  Even our wills and desires are corrupted by sin, so we can’t just choose God on a whim.  We must choose him because we want him, but wanting him is the obstacle.

I have no real problem with saying that Pharaoh hardened his own heart first and that God in turn responded by hardening Pharaoh in that he gave him exactly what he wanted.  But here’s why I believe that the question that titles this entry is ultimately irrelevant: the passage isn’t so much concerned with how Pharaoh got a hard heart as it is with what God did in response.  However it is that we harden our hearts, even if we have done so by the unrestrained, unbridled exercise of our autonomous wills, God doesn’t have to rescue us.  If we reject him, he can do what he did with Pharaoh and abandon us to our own selfish ways.  Or in his incredible mercy he can choose to intervene and give us a new heart which does desire him.  We are all born sinners, hostile to God and his ways and without desire to turn from our ways and surrender to him.  All we can do in response to God is harden our hearts, for how can we want him whom we hate?

All have sinned and are falling short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).  We are all in a sense Pharaoh.  However we got a hard heart is irrelevant to the question at hand.  The point is that a hard heart we have, and therefore we need help.  God can harden our hearts by giving us exactly what we want causing us to drift further and further away from him.  Or he can have mercy and collide with us.  Whatever he does he does out of his own good pleasure.  To say this all in another way: the point isn’t how we got ourselves into the mess we’re in.  The point is that God alone gets people out of it by his own mercy which he can choose to have or not.  We have only ourselves to blame for our separation from God, and we have only God to praise for our reunion with him.  If you believe that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart only as a result of Pharaoh hardening it first, you still have to swallow the fact that God could have had mercy on him, but he chose not to (Romans 9:18).  To those who have hardened their hearts (all of us), God can choose to have mercy on us or to further harden us.  Salvation is God’s gift to dispense as he will.  We can’t comprehend it.  It’s offensive to our sensibilities.  But it’s actually pretty liberating when we accept it.

If you know him, praise him for having mercy on you.  If you don’t but you want to, praise him for taking the first step and putting that want in you.  Then confess that Jesus is God’s own Son, sent into the world to be the penalty for your sins so that you won’t have to suffer for them.  Confess that Jesus’ righteousness is the righteousness that makes you acceptable to God so that you reap the rewards of the one man who lived a perfect life.  All who come to God through Jesus will be welcomed by God in Jesus.  He’ll turn none away.

“So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.”
-Romans 9:18

“‘All that the Father gives to me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.’”
-John 6:37

__________________________________________

A Couple O’ Extra Thoughts

There’s a couple o’ thoughts I want to throw on here for clarification.

1.  I intentionally shied away from using the term above, but the theology I promote in this entry is straight-up, unapologetic Calvinism.  I believe that a lot of the American Church’s rejection of Calvinism (though it has certainly been on the rise in recent years due to popular preachers like John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller, and Matt Chandler) is due to a misunderstanding of what it really teaches.  That was my case before I came to accept it as biblical.  I tried to smooth some of those misconceptions out in this entry, but feel free to check out an entry I wrote a while back specifically addressing them.

2.  I talk more about this in the link posted under the first point, but God’s determination of who he will and will not save does not negate choice.  In hardening sinners, God leaves them to a life of choosing whatever their sinful hearts desire.  In having mercy on sinners, God gives them new hearts which desire him and thus freely choose him.  The idea that Calvinism means God saves people against their will or that some people who follow Jesus don’t get into heaven because they aren’t on God’s “elect list” is a distortion of what Calvinism really teaches.  God will NEVER turn away a sinner who repents.

3.  Loraine Boettner wrote down in a helpful paragraph what I’ve fleshed out into a couple of pages here:

“The hearts of the wicked are, of course, never hardened by the direct influence of God, – He simply permits some men to follow out the evil impulses which are already in their hearts, so that, as a result of their own choices, they become more and more calloused and obstinate.  And while it is said, for instance, that God hardened the heart of Pharaoh, it is also said that Pharaoh hardened his own heart…One description is given from the divine view-point, the other is given from the human view-point.  God is ultimately responsible for the hardening of the heart in that He permits it to occur, and the inspired writer in graphic language simply says that God does it; but never are we to understand that God is the immediate and efficient cause.”