John 12:39 Commentary and Bible Study

This is now from Isaiah 6. One of the great mysteries we learn, when we trace this through the experience of Pharaoh at the time of the exodus, is that God hardens hearts when people harden their own hearts to him. So we read in the history of Pharaoh, ‘Pharaoh hardened his heart’, and then we read, ‘God hardened his heart’, so that the window of opportunity was closed so that he would never turn.God also hardened the heart of so many of the chief priests and the scribes and the Pharisees. They hardened their hearts, and then after due time, there was no further opportunity for them: he hardened their hearts. Of course, there was an obvious reason why God should do that. They had had their opportunity and they did not receive it, and they carried on in obstinacy and wickedness and vindictiveness toward Christ. So they were punished by judicial hardening of their hearts. But there was also another reason: it was important that they should crucify Christ, and they should hate him to the end and shout for his execution, because his suffering and death was the will of God. In mercy he would make that atoning substitutionary sacrifice for sinners.It doesn’t mean that the leading Jews, and the Pharisees, and the chief priests, couldn’t believe because God had ordained that they would not believe. It doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t believe because Isaiah said they would not believe. It means this: just as Isaiah the prophet had spoken of the future and the obduracy of their hearts, and their obstinate refusal of him, so, in line with that prophesy, that would turn out to be true. They would be obstinate; they would refuse him of their own volition. It would be their refusal of him.