They Will Not and They Cannot

 In our passage this week from John 12 we saw John refer to the Old Testament prophecy of Isaiah to help the church of his day, and ours, understand the massive rejection of Jesus by the Jews.  John explains rejection of Jesus explained in two ways:

First the people don’t recognize Jesus because they will not.  They refuse to believe.                  

When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them. Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

     “Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,

     and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” (Quoted from Is 53:1)

Second, the people will not see and believe in Jesus because they cannot.  God has hardened their hearts.  John is clear: “the reason” they could not believe” is because of God’s judicial hardening.

     Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,

     “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart,

     lest they see with their eyes,

     and understand with their heart,

     and turn,  and I would heal them.”  (Quoted from Is 6:9-10)

     Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. (Jn 12:36-41)

The following blog was posted on GospelCoalition by Tony Reinke.  He quotes D.A Carson’s very helpful reminders of God’s faithful purposes in the hardening of human hearts.

Does God actively harden the hearts of sinners? And if so, why?

Without question, the answer is yes, he does. The Bible speaks of God's active agency in hardening hearts with unmistakable bluntness.

Maybe the clearest example is Pharaoh at the time of the Exodus. God hardened his heart in obstinacy on purpose. "Not once in Exodus 4-14 is the assertion of God's hardening of Pharaoh grounded in any attitude or act of Pharaoh. Instead, again and again the reason given for the hardening is God's purpose to demonstrate his power and magnify his name," as Paul explains in Romans 9:17 (John Piper, The Justification of God, 174).

We find another example in John 12:36-43, showing Jesus unmistakably connecting unbelief in his day with the hardening of God.

But before we go much further it's vital to hear four key qualifications from D. A. Carson on this text:  

If a superficial reading finds this harsh, manipulative, even robotic, four things must constantly be borne in mind:

(1) God's sovereignty in these matters is never pitted against human responsibility;

(2) God's judicial hardening is not presented as the capricious manipulation of an arbitrary potentate cursing morally neutral or even morally pure beings, but as a holy condemnation of a guilty people who are condemned to do and be what they themselves have chosen;

(3) God's sovereignty in these matters can also be a cause for hope, for if he is not sovereign in these areas there is little point in petitioning him for help, while if he is sovereign the anguished pleas of the prophet (Is. 63:15-19)—and of believers throughout the history of the church—make sense;

(4) God's sovereign hardening of the people in Isaiah's day, his commissioning of Isaiah to apparently fruitless ministry, is a stage in God's "strange work" (Is. 28:21-22) that brings God's ultimate redemptive purposes to pass. [Carson, John, 448-9]

God has his ways and his prerogatives in divine hardening, and those prerogatives are just and right (Rom. 9:14-24).

At the same time, a hardened heart always reflects the willful, self-hardening, and rejection of God by the sinner (Rom. 1:26-28). Pharaoh hardened his own heart (Ex. 8:15). God also hardened Pharaoh's heart (Ex. 7:3) for God to display his wrath and power.