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The Biggest “But” in the Bible (Ephesians 2:4)

By Jeremy Myers
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The Biggest “But” in the Bible (Ephesians 2:4)
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Trivia time! What’s the biggest but in the Bible? We will discover the answer to that question today in our study of Ephesians 2:4. I will also answer a quick question from a reader about the topic of Calvinism. Before that, however, I have a bit of news! I now accept Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies on my website, and if you follow some suggested steps, you can earn about $60 in free cryptocurrency, which you can then use to join my discipleship group, cash it out, or keep it invested.

How to Join My Discipleship for FREE and also get paid $50!

If you’ve been thinking of joining my discipleship group for a while, I have a way for you to get one month free and also get paid $50 extra in the process. If you’re already part of my discipleship group, you can do this also.

I now accept cryptocurrency as payment for my discipleship group. I am particularly excited to announce that I now accept Dogecoin. It’s my favorite Cryptocurrency. You may remember I talked about Dogecoin back in February, when Dogecoin was worth $0.07. Today it is worth $0.19. Bitcoin, by the way, is at about $32,000.

I want to make sure I tell you that I am NOT giving you financial advice. I am sharing what I did to buy a little crypto and get free crypto in the process, and how you can do it too.

If you don’t know what a cryptocurrency is, it is a digital form of money. You have probably heard of Bitcoin. It is the most famous cryptocurrency, but there are others as well. My favorite is Dogecoin. But anyway, just as you can pay with regular money to buy products and services from stores and business, you can also use digital money like Bitcoin or Dogecoin to buy the same products and services. And my website at RedeemingGod.com is one of the online stores that now accepts cryptocurrency as a form of payment.

Anyway, here is how you can get a free month of my Discipleship Group PLUS about $50 worth of free cryptocurrency. I have a link here that walks you through the process step-by-step of getting your free cryptocurrency, and then use some of it to join my discipleship group, but the basic steps are as follows …

  1. Set up a free Coinbase account using my referral link. Setting it up and getting verified took me about 30 minutes.
  2. Buy at least $100 of cryptocurrency and get $10 in free Bitcoin.
  3. Take all the Cryptocurrency “educational” courses from Coinbase. There’s quite a few of them. Each one takes about 5 minutes, but will pay you about $3-$10 in other forms of cryptocurrency. When I did this, it took me about 30 minutes, and I received about $50 in a variety of cryptocurrencies.
  4. So, after about an hour of work, I put $100 of cryptocurrency, and ended up with about $160 in cryptocurrency. Not a bad return for one hour of work.
  5. Personally, I took all the various cryptocurrencies in my Coinbase account, and convert them into one. Conversion is free on Coinbase. I chose Dogecoin because it’s my favorite, but you might choose Bitcoin since it’s the king of crypto right now, or one of the others, such as Ethereum or Litecoin.
  6. Anyway, at this point, you could do what you want with the cryptocurrency. You could sell it all and deposit it back into your personal banking account. Or, you could use $9 of it to join my discipleship group. My page on cryptocurrency shows you how to use crypto to join my Discipleship group. The process is about as simple as using your credit card.

Now, I know you have probably heard that cryptocurrency is risky and volatile. It is. So I am not giving you financial advice. However, one of the reasons I am interested in cryptocurrency is because I see the economic inflationary pressures that are in the world today, and believe that cryptocurrency is one way to protect against inflation. While the government can print trillions of dollars any time they want, there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. But of course, since Bitcoin is so scarce, that makes people unwilling to spend it. They would rather hold on to it. But Dogecoin was made to be spent. Many say that Bitcoin is like gold. You buy it and hold it. But Dogecoin is like dollars. You use Dogecoin for buying and selling.

Anyway, do your own due diligence and don’t invest too much into crypto, as it is volatile and risky. But if you wanted make a quick $60 in crypto and use some of it toward joining my discipleship group, that option is now available to you. You can, of course, use your crypto to get access to my Discipleship group for a full year, but it costs $89, so you wouldn’t be able to get the full year for free.

Anyway, let me know if you have questions about this. You can message me through my website or on Twitter.

Question About Calvinism

I found and read your explanation of John 6:41-47. I liked the way you explain it. Can I hear more about your ideas against the doctrines of TULIP?

Yes! I have a list of the articles I’ve written on Calvinism and the doctrines of TULIP.

I eventually want to finish that series of articles and turn them into a book, but I have about ten book projects that currently have higher priority… But eventually … Lord willing.

The Biggest But in the Bible (Ephesians 2:4)

Ephesians 2:4 contains the biggest “but” in the Bible. To see why this is, let’s quickly review what we have seen so far in Ephesians 2.

Ephesians 2 is all about how God solved the greatest problem in human history. The problem, as we saw in Ephesians 2:1-3, is that humans engage in endless cycles of violence against one another, and we do all of it in God’s name. These actions are the satanic spirit, the accusatory spirit, the spirit of this age. All of society and culture is based on violence against one another, and we humans know of no other way to live.

Paul wants to tell us how to fix this problem. He explains the solution to this problem in Ephesians 2:4-10. And Paul begins talking about the solution to this problem of human violence with the two important words … “But God … ”

But God Ephesians 2:4

BUT God…

Sometimes the smallest words in Scripture are the most important. And this little word “But” is one of the biggest buts in Scripture. The word is a conjunction, and in this case, and adversative conjunction, showing a contrast between what Paul has just said, and what he is going to say next.

The contrast here is between how we behave as humans and how God does.

Remember, one aspect of the greatest problem we humans have is that when we engage in violence against others, we do it in God’s name. This means that when we march off to war, we do it with prayers and blessings from our pastors and priests. We engage in “Holy War” or “Just War” against our enemies. We think that when we seek to harm, stop, or even kill our enemies, we are doing God’s will.

Even when our enemy is just a neighbor or a coworker, we do this. Hopefully we don’t want to kill them or harm them, but when we have conflict with a neighbor, coworker, or even a family member, we tend to view the other person as morally inferior. They are the sinners. They are greedy and arrogant. We are the righteous ones. We are only standing up for truth and justice. Our stand for righteousness requires us to call them out, condemn their sin, and maybe even get them in trouble.

love your enemiesThat is the way we all behave almost all of the time. Our actions are justified and righteous, and the actions of those who oppose us are evil and wicked.

And since our actions are righteous, this means that God is on our side. And since God is on our side, this means He is against our enemy, just as we are. We assume that God wants to see them punished just as much as we do. And sometimes, we might push things a little bit to see that our enemies do receive the punishment they deserve.

But God…

Do you see why these two words are so important?

But God.

This is the way we behave and we think God is on our side … but God.

You could stop right here and almost fill in the rest yourself. If we hate our enemies, condemn our enemies, and want to see our enemies destroyed, and we think God is on our side on this, … but God … what do you think comes after that?

But God is not on our side the way we think.

But God wants nothing to do with our violence and hatred against others.

But God loves our enemies and wants to see them rescued and loved just as much as we do.

But God views our enemies the same way He views us … as objects of His love and affection, worthy of nothing but grace, mercy, forgiveness, and acceptance.

And indeed, in Ephesians 2:4-10, Paul goes on to say very similar things as we have just guessed. Indeed, right here in Ephesians 2:4, Paul mentions that God is rich in mercy, and that He acted out of His great love for us.

We must be careful to recognize that these terms of mercy and love apply to everyone in the world. We must not think that God is only rich in mercy toward us, and that He only extends His great love toward us, while in the meantime, He hates our enemies. No, the love and mercy of God are universal in their extent. They apply to all of us. To the entire human race.

And the word for love that Paul uses here, by the way, is agape. So this is God’s unconditional love for all of us. We will learn next time that God loved us even while we were in our sin. God does not wait for us to become righteous and holy before He loves us. God loves us while we are still sinners (Ephesians 2:5, Romans 5:8). There are no conditions to God’s agape love. He simply loves because He IS love and because we are objects of His love. He loves all humans all the time, regardless of what they have done, who they are, or even if they love God in return.

Here is what this means:

We hate our enemies and want to see them ruined, but God loves our enemies and wants to see them succeed.

We want to see our enemies “face justice,” but God extends mercy to them.

God loves you

This is the beginning of the radical message Paul outline in Ephesians 2:4-10. He explained the problem humanity faces in Ephesians 2:1-3, and now he begins to unfold the solution to this problem. And the first initial and shocking truth is that when it comes to how we view our enemies, God is NOT on our side. Well, He is on our side, but He’s on their side too, and He doesn’t have the same view of our enemies as we do. His view of our enemies is radically different.

Do you see why this is the biggest “But” in the Bible?

Paul has described the greatest problem we humans face, and now Paul says “But God … ” is not part of this problem the way we humans think He is. Quite to the contrary, God wants to bring an end to all the violence and hatred.

When Paul says But God, he is saying that God stepped in to initiate a process of brining an end to the problem that human face. That’s why these two words are so important. They are central to the good news message about why God sent Jesus to this earth. God sent Jesus to show the world the way forward out of the human problem of violent sin.

Martin Lloyd-Jones once preached an entire sermon on these two words (See God’s Way of Reconciliation, 59). Near the beginning of the sermon, he said this:

With these two words we come to the introduction to the Christian message, the peculiar, specific message which the Christian faith has to offer to us. These two words, in and of themselves, in a sense contain the whole gospel. The gospel tells us what God has done, God’s intervention; it is something that comes entirely from outside us and displays to us that wondrous and amazing and astonishing work of God which the apostle goes on to describe and to define in the following verses.

Yes, these two words are a hand grenade thrown into everything we think we know about God and His role in our life when it comes to dealing with our enemies. God has a completely different plan for how to deal with our enemies than we do. And this plan was revealed in Jesus Christ, which Paul goes on to describe in the following verses. And that is where we will pick up in our next study.

God is Redeeming God, Redeeming Scripture, Redeeming Theology, z Bible & Theology Topics: bitcoin, Calvinism, cryptocurrency, dogecoin, Ephesians 2:4, grace, justice, love, mercy, TULIP, violence

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What is the Sealing of the Spirit? (Ephesians 1:13-14)

By Jeremy Myers
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What is the Sealing of the Spirit? (Ephesians 1:13-14)
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What is the sealing of the Holy Spirit? What does it do, how is it received, and how can you know that you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit? These are the questions we answer in this study of Ephesians 1:13-14. But first, let us consider a question from a listener about Calvinism and the fear of changing theological beliefs.

Does Changing My Beliefs Make Me an Apostate?

I have been reading your posts about Calvinism with much interest. For a while now I think I don’t believe it to be true. I have to say, the church we are members of is not very heavy on this, they never or rarely use the TULIP lingo I have been raised in a classic reformed, heavily legalistic family. I have always been afraid of not being chosen. What if I thought I believed in Jesus but just kidded myself? It hampers my own life and my witness to others. I would love to see many come to Christ, but the line: “God loves you,” is nearly impossible, because I cannot see in the counsel of God. Also, changing my view on for example Sunday being the Sabbath, makes me panic, because does changing my view on such an important matter mean that I am on my way to become apostate (or in Calvinistic terms, to have the proof that I wasn’t one of them after all). Does it make sense?

This does make sense, and is exactly one of the reasons I write. I have faced many of these identical fears in my past, and I know that millions of other Christians are facing the same fears as well. I want to write to help liberate people from their bondage to bad ideas about God and bad theology that creates fear in the minds of so many.

Here are a few principles I have learned along the way that helps with these sorts of questions, issues, and fears:

  1. God has not given us a Spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). If you have beliefs that lead you to fear for your future or fear that you might not have eternal life, then that belief is not of the Holy Spirit.
  2. God invites us to reason together with Him (Isaiah 1:18). Questions are invited and welcomed by God! Going back to 2 Timothy 1:7, God wants us to be of sound mind. This means that He gave us a mind and wants us to use it. It is wrong to avoid questions and doubts. Look, if what you believe is true, then that truth can stand up to any and all questions. But if what you believe is not true, then the only way you can discover the truth is by questioning what you believe. Either way, you will come to know the truth and the truth will set you free.
  3. Until we come to realize #1 and #1 above, we will NEVER progress as a disciple of Jesus because we will always be afraid to doubt or ask questions. Learning that we are fully loved and fully free is the first step in true Christian discipleship.

None of this really answers the questions about Calvinism of the Sabbath, but the three principles above will free a person up to begin thinking clearly about these two topics. And if you want to know what I have taught on the two subjects, here are some links for further study:

  • Calvinism: The Words of Calvinism and the Word of God
  • Genesis 2:1-3 – The Sabbath (Part 1)
  • Genesis 2:1-3 – The Sabbath (Part 2)
  • Should Christians Observe the Sabbath?
  • Luke 6:1-5 – Going Against the Grain on the Sabbath
  • Luke 6:6-11 – Jesus Gives a Hand on the Sabbath

What is the Sealing of the Spirit (Ephesians 1:13-14)?

In the previous study of Ephesians 1:13, we discussed the differences between the sealing of the Holy Spirit and the filling of the Holy Spirit. In this study, we will take a closer look at what exactly the sealing of the Spirit is.

So what is this sealing of the Holy Spirit that Paul writes about in Ephesians 1:13? Paul says we have been marked with a seal.

In Paul’s day seals were used in at least four ways. First, seals were sometimes put on letters to guarantee that it was genuine and that it was written by who it claimed to be written by (1 Kings 21:8; Esther 8:8). Kings might seal their letters with a signet ring. We do something similar when we get a document notarized.

A seal was also sometimes placed on goods or merchandise that was traveling from one place to another to indicate who they belonged to and where they were going. It indicated ownership (2 Corinthians 1:22; Revelation 7:2; 9:4). Again, we do this with our possessions today all the time. We write our names in our books, or on our kid’s clothes when they go to camp. Ranchers brand their cattle. They are placing a mark on it to show ownership.

The third way seals were used in Paul’s day was to show something was authentic and approved (John 6:27). Sometimes when we buy clothes, in one of the pockets will be a little piece of paper saying it has been inspected and approved by someone.

The fourth type of seal was for protection or warning. Remember when Jesus was put in the tomb, Pilate told the soldiers to put his personal seal upon the tomb (Matthew 27:66; Ephesians 4:30). This was to protect the tomb and warn everyone to stay away and keep out!

So Paul says here that God has placed a seal upon us as well. It is to guarantee that we are genuine, it shows ownership, who we belong to, it shows that we are approved, and it provides us with protection or security.

Now, is this mark visible to you and I? No. We cannot see it. We cannot put our finger on it and say “Here it is.” Neither is it revealed by some sort of spiritual manifestations like being slain in the spirit or speaking in tongues or laughing hysterically. The sealing of the Spirit is invisible to us in the physical realm.

According to Galatians 5:22, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So if a person has some or all of these, it is a good indication that they also have the Holy Spirit. We cannot see the wind, but we can see what the wind does. It is the same with the Spirit.

So this sealing of the Spirit is an invisible mark. We cannot see it or feel it, but we can know we have been sealed.

We can know this by learning a bit more about the sealing of the Holy Spirit.

The Seal and Deposit

The only other book in the New Testament that talks about the sealing of the Holy Spirit is Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 1:22) So the question arises, “Why did Paul only mention this sealing in these two letters?”

The reason has to do with the towns of Ephesus and Corinth themselves. Both Ephesus and Corinth were great centers of the lumber industry in ancient times.

A raft of logs would be floated from the Black Sea and when they got to Ephesus or Corinth, the different lumber merchants would come and look over the logs and make their selections of which ones they wanted. One would say, “I will take these,” and another, “I’ll buy those over there.”

Then they would do two things. They would cut a certain wedge upon each log that they had bought which marked that log as bought and paid for and to show who it belonged to. This was called the seal.

The second thing they would do was to put a down payment on the logs – a deposit – and when the logs were delivered or picked up, they would then pay the rest of the money.

Paul talked about this seal in Ephesians 1:13, and look what he mentions now in Ephesians 1:14.

Ephesians 1:14. who (this is the Holy Spirit) is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.

The Holy Spirit is a seal and a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance. It is just like those logs.

The Holy Spirit will provide us with new bodies and an inheritance when we finally get to heaven, but we have a sealing in the Holy Spirit right now which promises and guarantees that this inheritance is ours and is waiting for us.

It is like a deposit, says Paul. God has made a purchase, and just to prove that He is going to follow through on His purchase. He has made a down payment. He has given a deposit in the form of the Holy Spirit.

When we buy a car or a house, we make a deposit. We give a down payment. This tells the seller that we are promising to buy it. That is what God has done here. He has given a deposit to us. He has promised that what He has begun, He will finish.

It is also interesting to note that the Greek word here for deposit is the modern Greek word for an engagement ring. And we all know what an engagement ring means. it is like a deposit. It means that two people are promised to each other or pledged to be married. God has promised to come for us and make us heirs of Himself. This deposit guarantees our inheritance in heaven. The deposit is a little bit of heaven here on earth.

The Wind Holy Spirit

Also in Ephesians 1:14, there’s the inheritance that awaits us in heaven, and there’s the redemption of our bodies. We looked at redemption previously when we considered Ephesians 1:7, and Paul is just reminding us of the similar idea here. We are heirs of God and co-heirs with Jesus Christ. We have been redeemed from our captivity to sin, and because of the sealing of the Holy Spirit, we will also experience the redemption of our bodies. We have been delivered from the penalty of sin, the power of sin, and ultimately, finally, eventually, when we receive our new bodies in eternity, we will be delivered from the presence of sin.

As great as the gift of the Holy Spirit is, He is only a deposit, a foretaste, a small glimpse of the beauty, glory, greatness, and majesty that awaits us in eternity with the redemption of our bodies.

So how do we receive the sealing of the Spirit, and how can you know that you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit?

We looked briefly at both of these questions last time in our study of Ephesians 1:13. When we believe in Jesus for eternal life, we are instantly and permanently sealed by the Spirit. The sealing happens the moment you believe in Jesus for eternal life. And though you cannot see it or feel it, you can nevertheless know you have been sealed by the Spirit because God does not lie.

Holy SpiritJust as you can know that you have eternal life because Jesus does not lie to us, we can know we have been sealed because God does not lie to us. If you have believed in Jesus for eternal life, then you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit. You can take it by faith because it is a promise of God and God does not lie. The indwelling Holy Spirit is a deposit in your life that God has given to you in advance of your final glorification, redemption, and new resurrected body in eternity.

God has placed His mark on you, His seal of ownership, and has guaranteed that you will be glorified with Him in eternity. This is something to be grateful and thankful for.

This is the end of Paul’s one long sentence which opens Ephesians. So next, in Ephesians 1:15, Paul begins to explain what he hopes we will do with the blessings, riches, and inheritance we have received from God. This is where we will pick up in our next study.

God is Redeeming God, Redeeming Scripture, Redeeming Theology, z Bible & Theology Topics: 2 Corinthians 1:22, Bible Study Podcast, Calvinism, Ephesians 1:13, Ephesians 1:13-14, Ephesians 1:14, Holy Spirit, podcast, Sabbath, sealing of the Spirit, TULIP

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“The Re-Justification of God” is now on iTunes, B&N, Google

By Jeremy Myers
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“The Re-Justification of God” is now on iTunes, B&N, Google

I know that many of you have already purchased my newest eBook from Amazon, but if you don’t have Kindle (or the Kindle app for a different device), I am happy to announce that The Re-Justification of God is now available on the following platforms:

Google Play
Google Play
Apple iTunes
Apple iTunes
Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble
Amazon
Amazon

So if you haven’t bought The Re-Justification of God already, but want to get it for your Apple or Android device (or whatever else you have) feel free to get it from one of the platforms above.

And hey, if you have already bought and read the book, would you mind leaving a review of it on Amazon? Go here to leave a review. Even 2-3 sentences would work. Thanks!

God is Redeeming Books Bible & Theology Topics: Books by Jeremy Myers, Calvinism, election, justification, predestination, Re-Justification of God, Romans 9, TULIP

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Understanding the Potter and the Clay in Romans 9

By Jeremy Myers
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Understanding the Potter and the Clay in Romans 9

potter and the clayWestern theology has committed a terrible disservice to this imagery of a potter and clay by making it seem as if God is a deterministic puppet master up in heaven pulling the strings of people and nations down here on earth.

This is exactly the opposite of what Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Paul meant by using this terminology.

The Potter and the Clay in Jeremiah 18

In Jeremiah 18, for example, while God is equated with the potter, God calls upon Israel to turn from her wicked ways and obey His voice so that they, as the pot which God is fashioning, will not be marred (cf. Jer 18:8-11).

God calls upon Israel to come into conformity to the work of His hands. If they do not, they will become marred, and He will have to reform the clay again into another vessel (Jer 18:4). He does not destroy or discard the clay; He simply forms it into another pot which will be used for a different purpose.

A similar understanding is seen in Isaiah 54 and Romans 9.

The Potter and the Clay is not teaching Determinism

There is no deterministic message in the image of the potter and the clay in Isaiah 54, Jeremiah 18, or Romans 9. If we accept the deterministic perspective of these texts, just imagine for a moment what sort of God is being portrayed. H. H. Rowley sums it up best:

Neither Jeremiah nor Paul had in mind an aimless dilettante, working in a casual and haphazard way, turning out vessels according to the chance whim of the moment … To suppose that a crazy potter, who made vessels with no other thought than that he would afterwards knock them to pieces, is the type and figure of God, is supremely dishonoring to God. The vessel of dishonor which the potter makes is still something that he wants, and that has a definite use … The instruments of wrath … were what the New Testament calls ‘vessels of dishonor,’ serving God indeed, but with no exalted service. They were not puppets in His hand, compelled to do His will without moral responsibility for their deed, but chosen because He saw that the very iniquity of their heart would lead them to the course that He could use (Rowley, Doctrine of Election, p. 40-41)

potter and the clay

Neither Isaiah, nor Jeremiah, nor Paul had in mind a potter who purposefully created pots just so that He could smash them. No potter would do that, then or now. Instead, God is the wise potter who works with the clay to form useful tools. The vessels of “dishonor” are not vessels which are destroyed, but vessels which will be used in “ignoble” ways. They still serve important purposes and help with vital tasks, but they are not vessels of honor.

Typically, vessels of dishonor do end up being destroyed (which is not necessarily hell!), but this is not because the potter made them for such a purpose, but because unclean vessels, when they have served their purpose, are usually not useful for anything else.

potter and the clayAnd what makes one vessel clean or unclean? As H. H. Rowley pointed out above, God allows humans to determine what kind of vessel they will be, and then He uses those who have made themselves vessels of dishonor.

A careful reading of Romans 9:22 reveals this very point. W. E. Vine, in his Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, says that the word “destruction” is used “metaphorically of men persistent in evil (Rom 9:22), where ‘fitted’ is in the middle voice, indicating that the vessels of wrath fitted themselves for destruction” (Vine’s Expository  Dictionary, 2:165)

None of this Relates to  Person’s Eternal Destiny

Again, none of this has anything to do with whether or not a person goes to heaven or hell after death. The way a vessel is used refers primarily to how God uses individuals, kings, and nations in this life. Marston and Forster add this:

The basic lump that forms a nation will either be built up or broken down by the Lord, depending on their own moral response. If a nation does repent and God builds them up, then it is for him alone to decide how the finished vessel will fit into his plan … God alone determines the special features / privileges / responsibilities of a particular nation (Forster & Marston, God’s Strategy, 74).

To read more on Romans 9, get my book The Re-Justification of God.

If you want to read more about Calvinism, check out other posts in this blog series: Words of Calvinism and the Word of God.

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Bible Study, Books by Jeremy Myers, Calvinism, election, potter and the clay, Re-Justification of God, Romans 9, Theology of Salvation, TULIP, Unconditional Election

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Why did God harden Pharaoh’s Heart?

By Jeremy Myers
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Why did God harden Pharaoh’s Heart?

did God harden Pharaohs heartIn Romans 9, Paul writes about the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart for the purposes of making God’s glory known. This seems rather harsh to some.

What does Paul mean?

Who Hardened Pharaoh’s Heart First?

In this debate, Calvinists say that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart first from eternity past because God needed a vessel of destruction through whom to reveal His wrath. They say that the text is quite clear in teaching that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Exod 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:4, 8).

Non-Calvinists respond that in the Exodus account, the text frequently states that Pharaoh hardened his own heart before God hardened it (Exod 8:15, 32; 9:34). There are also several references which state that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened without giving indication about the source of this hardening (Exod 7:13, 14, 22; 8:19; 9:7, 35).

hardening pharaohs heartBut in response to this, Calvinists argue back that although the text says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart before God hardened it, before Moses even went to speak to Pharaoh, God told Him that He planned to harden Pharaoh’s heart (Exod 4:21; 7:3).

As one is reading all the exegetical and theological arguments surrounding this debate about who hardened Pharaoh’s heart first, it begins to sound a bit like the question of which came first: the chicken or the egg.

It Doesn’t Matter Who Hardened Pharaoh’s Heart First!

Rather than summarizing all the exegetical and theological arguments on both sides of this debate, it seems best to avoid all the rhetoric and cut through to the main question which neither side seems to be asking.

The real question is this: “What does it mean for Pharaoh’s heart to be hardened?”

pharaohs heart hardenedThe issue is not about who hardened Pharaoh’s heart first—though that is where most of the ink has been spilled—but rather about what it means for Pharaoh’s heart to be hardened.

People on both sides of the debate often assume that the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart means that Pharaoh was solidified in his status as an unregenerate person headed for hell.

But what if the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart doesn’t mean this at all? What if it simply refers instead to the resolve in Pharaoh’s heart to keep the Israelites as his slaves, and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Pharaoh’s eternal destiny?

What if God, in His desire to make His glory known to both the Israelites and the Egyptians, made certain that Pharaoh would resist the will of God to deliver the people of Israel from Egypt, so that all those who witnessed and heard of these events would know that the God of Israel alone was God?

Could not God, in His gracious sovereignty, harden Pharaoh’s heart without affecting whatsoever Pharaoh’s ability to believe in God’s promises and thus become part of God’s redeemed people?

Of course He could!

Dr. J. Sidlow Baxter makes a similar point:

The awesome words to Pharaoh can be faced in their full force—“Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show My power in thee, and that My name might be declared throughout all the earth.” The words “raised thee up” do not mean that God had raised him up from birth for this purpose: they refer to his elevation to the highest throne on earth. Nay, as they occur in Exodus 9:16, they scarce mean even that, but only that God had kept Pharaoh from dying in the preceding plague, so as to be made the more fully an object lesson to all men. Moreover, when Paul (still alluding to Pharaoh) says, “And whom He will, He hardeneth” (Exod 9:18), we need not try to soften the word.

God did not override Pharaoh’s own will. The hardening was a reciprocal process. Eighteen times we are told that Pharaoh’s heart was “hardened” in refusal. In about half of these the hardening is attributed to Pharaoh himself; in the others to God. But the whole contest between God and Pharaoh must be interpreted by what God said to Moses before ever the contest started: “The king of Egypt will not” (Exod 3:19). The will was already set. The heart was already hard. The hardening process developed inasmuch as the plagues forced Pharaoh to an issue which crystallized his sin. … Pharaoh’s eternal destiny is not the thing in question (Baxter, Explore the Book, VI:88-89).

This means that the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, whether it is done by God or Pharaoh, or by some symbiotic combination of the two, has absolutely nothing to do with Pharaoh’s eternal destiny.

Even if the Exodus account laid all the responsibility for the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart upon God Himself, and none upon Pharaoh, this still would tell us nothing about whether or not Pharaoh concluded His life as one of God’s redeemed.

did god harden pharaohs heartPharaoh’s eternal destiny is not under discussion in Exodus or in Romans, and so Pharaoh’s heart can be hardened so that God’s purposes are achieved, while still leaving plenty of room for Pharaoh to believe in God’s promises and become one of God’s people.

If you want a longer and more detailed explanation of why God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, check out my new book: The Re-Justification of God.

If you want to read more about Calvinism, check out other posts in this blog series: Words of Calvinism and the Word of God.

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Bible Study, Books by Jeremy Myers, Calvinism, election, Pharaoh, Romans 9, Theology of Salvation, TULIP, Unconditional Election

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