December 6, AD2011

“Hard Headed Woman” is the title of two songs, one made famous by Elvis and the other by Cat Stevens.

Maybe you’ve known a hard-headed woman—or a bull-headed man, as we sometimes call them here in the West. It’s the same condition, only with different names.

Such people just don’t listen to common sense or heed sound advice. And that includes many of us Christians.

“I warned her about going with that scuzzbag, but she’s a hard-headed woman. Now, she’s pregnant—and he’s nowhere to be found.”

“I told him to see his doctor about that cough, but you know how bull-headed he can be. Now, he’s in the hospital with pneumonia.”

“Hard-headed,” “bull-headed,” or just plain “stubborn”—call it what you want. The Bible calls it “hard-heartedness.” With the Christian, it is the sinful condition of a new heart that is functionally divided by sinfulness—doing things “my way” and how “I believe things ought to be,” rather than God’s way.

What Jesus taught about the heart
In my recent exposition, “What Jesus Taught About the Heart,” we studied His parable of the sower (Matthew 13), in which our Lord described three variations of heart conditions of non-Christians—the unregenerate or old, natural Adamic heart—and the new heart He came to give to His chosen ones. Jesus characterized those three types of unregenerate heart as the hardened heart, the shallow heart, and the worldly heart.

Jesus said the hardened heart is like hard soil, in which a seed (Word of God) cannot take root. However, seed can start to germinate in shallow soil, but cannot establish a good root system, and so it dies. The worldly heart is soil that gives growth to so many weeds and thistles (cares and worries of the world), that the good seed is choked out and dies.

While those conditions exist in the ontologically old hearts of non-Christians, they can also be found in the functionally divided, ontological new hearts of Christians.Understand that the new heart of the Christian, while capable of righteous living, can also fall victim to division of the soul chamber (mind, emotion, will) from the spirit chamber (life, indwelling Holy Spirit).

Such half-heartedness renders the functionality of the new heart to be much like that of the old heart. In other words, the Christian continues to live as he did before Jesus gave him a new heart. He can walk as if still in the flesh, he can walk as if still under Satan’s rule, he can walk as if still a slave of sin, he can walk as if still part of the fallen world system, and he can walk as one under the condemnation of God’s Law.

How hard-heartedness develops in the Christian
In my exposition, mentioned above, I gave you a cursory glance at three varieties of half-heartedness (there are more). Now, let’s take a closer, in-depth look at the first of those three variations: the hardened heart. (The shallow heart, worldly heart and others will be covered in future articles.)

The heart of stone and the heart of flesh
God promised in His New Covenant with His chosen ones that He would “remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of “flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). This promise was fulfilled in God’s chosen ones by Christ Jesus, at a time of His choosing. At that moment you were baptized into Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, and were given a new heart (Romans 6:3-6; Galatians 2:20; Ezekiel 36:26-27). This united you with Him in an everlasting relationship. Your petrified old heart was removed and replaced with a new spiritual heart that is alive spiritually as flesh is alive biologically.

All of that is to say you were taken out of Adam (and his family tree) and placed in Christ (and His family tree) (see Matthew 7:16-20; 1 Corinthians 15).

Now, as a Christian, you might not have sensed any difference in your inner being or heart until sometime down the road, when your spiritual ears and eyes were opened and your new spirit of faith (an attribute of the gift of agape love) was activated in your new heart through reading or hearing the Word of God. Furthermore, you probably did not know at the time that, along with your new faith, you had been given a new heart and a new spirit and were indwelt by the Spirit of Christ (though most evangelicals are aware of the latter). Sadly, the biblical doctrine of the new heart of the New Covenant is not taught or is taught in error in many of our churches today.

The ontological heart of stone
The heart of “stone” in Ezekiel 36:26 refers to the natural, old, Adamic unregenerate heart that is spiritually dead. Such an Adamic-hearted, sin-natured person has spiritual ears that cannot hear and eyes that cannot see spiritual truth and reality.

The ontological heart of flesh
“Flesh” here does not mean fallen nature or old heart, but refers to the new heart. And the Christian’s new heart is ontologically righteous and alive with Christ’s eternal life, and is energized unto functional holiness through the ministry of His indwelling Spirit. Through the new heart of flesh and the indwelling Spirit of Christ, God has established your relationship with Him through Christ, whereby you are capable of having fellowship with Him, to live righteously by faith, and to grow spiritually.

Conditional/functional hard-heartedness in Christians

Though all believers are substantively “soft-hearted,” we can, at any time, function hard-heartedly, as if we still had stone-dead hearts. In this regard, the writer of Hebrews commented on a commandment of God in a letter to his “brethren”:

[God commanded:] “Do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tried Me by testing Me, and saw My works for forty years. Therefore I was angry with this generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; and they did not know My ways’; as I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’” Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart, in falling away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end; while it is said, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me” (Hebrews 3:8-15; see also 4:7).

Hard-hearted disciples
On two occasions, the disciples experienced a conditional hardening of their hearts. The first came after the incident of the loaves and when Jesus walked on the water to reach His disciples in their boat. Mark wrote that, “they had not gained any insight from the incident of the loaves, but their heart was hardened” (Mark 6:45-52). The second incident came after the multitude of 4,000 was fed the fish and loaves, when the disciples discovered they had no bread left for themselves. Jesus 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).

Both of those incidents demonstrate that Christians can experience a conditional hardening of the heart. Functional hard-heartedness in the Christian refers to a hard-shelled soul with a closed and skeptical mind toward God and His Word. Due to this conditional (not ontological) hardness, the mind, emotion, and will are also closed to the enlightenment and filling of the Holy Spirit.

Hard-heartedness in the Christian can be a prolonged condition or episodic, particularly in times of distress. It can be of a “show me” “doubting Thomas” kind. It might reject certain aspects of God’s Word, such as His promises, prophecies, and commandments, as well as rejection of His love, faithfulness, and sufficiency. Such a person is a Hard-Hearted Christian who stubbornly clings to his own understandings, feelings, and desires. That is to say, God’s Word does not present things as the hard-hearted believer thinks they ought to be and wants them to be.

We need to be clear on this point: Hardness of heart, and thus functional division of the soul and spirit chambers, is a condition brought about by sin. Referring back to Hebrews 3:13, Paul warns us not to let our hearts become hardened by the “deceitfulness of sin.”

The Whole-Hearted Christ walks by faith as a new-hearted, new creation in Christ Jesus, in His light, in His love, in His kingdom, and in His grace.
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Quotes from Scripture in all my writings are from the New American Standard Version of the Bible unless otherwise indicated.
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