kingdomready.org

Proverbs 16: 2
All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight,
But the LORD weighs the motives.

And Jesus, aware of this (discussion about not having bread), said to them, “Why do you discuss the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet see or understand? Do you have a hardened heart? Mark 8: 17

In our modern use of idioms in English “hardheartedness” means a lack of care or compassion for others. Although the Bible addresses the sin of not being merciful, “hardness of heart” refers biblically to a different reality, the lack of receptivity to really perceive the gospel. The Pharisees were guilty of this type of hardheartedness along with many in Israel during the earthly ministry of the Messiah.

In our times, almost two thousand years later, one can easily see how hardness of heart afflicts “Christians” to the end that they do not receive the message with childlike humility (Matthew 18: 1-4.) This is not to point fingers at any individual or group; many of us know what it means to be delivered from a hardened heart entrenched for years or decades in doctrines rooted in dispensational theories, Gnostic thinking, or some other theology that builds a structure around a few verses (extracted from their context and interpreted) at the expense of the clarity of hundreds or even thousands of relevant passages. Many of us have perhaps sought God’s deliverance from having our hearts closed from a true understanding of repentance, salvation, the reality of the coming kingdom, and other critical issues, even though we assumed at one time that we had a “rightly divided” package of truth. I’m reminded of Proverbs 14: 12, “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”

The fruit of hardheartedness eventually becomes clear; it is “earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing.” (James 3: 15-16) Christians should be continually vigilant regarding the temptation to place confidence in intellectual pride, ability to debate, obsessions with carnal religious ideas, and movements that exalt human perspectives, etc. Strife and contention are not the fruit that characterize the wisdom that comes from above (from God.) God delivers those who humbly seek His intervention in areas of spiritual blindness that could persist in any of our hearts. Are we meek toward the true God, or are we hardhearted?

Here is a note on translation from William Barclay’s translation of the New Testament:

HARDNESS: The phrase “hardness of heart” occurs several times in the gospels (Mark 3: 5; 6: 52; 8: 17; John 12: 40.) The noun for “hardness” is porosis, and the verb “to harden is poroun. “Hardness” as a translation can be a little misleading. The hardness is not the hardness of cruelty or lack of sympathy. It is the hardness of impenetrability. These words can used of a callus, of hardened skin, which has lost its feeling. They can be used of the new bone formation which knits a fracture and which is harder than bone itself. They can be used of rock or marble which is so hard that no impression can be made upon it. In the New Testament hardness of heart is not the cruelty which we usually associate with the expression hard-hearted; it is the utter impenetrability and insensitiveness into which the truth cannot gain an entry.