“…because of the hardness of
their heart.” (Eph. 4:19).
This
can be a difficult thing to think about when we love and care about others but
don’t understand that there are two types of people on the planet, those who
are alive in Jesus Christ and those who continue to live in spiritual death. We
all know people who are kind, benevolent, thoughtful toward others, practice
moral and ethical principles, and have a sense of decency. Many of these people
are more enjoyable to be around than the average professing Christian who is
often undistinguishable from the world, unless they are distinguished by self-righteousness,
religious sectarianism, and cultural and political identification – as opposed
to being identified with the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ.
It
is important to remind ourselves, that as God told Samuel, “Man looks on the
outward appearance, but God looks on the heart” (1Sam. 16:10). At the core of
our being is the issue of whether Jesus Christ is the True and Living God and
whether we need to confess our sins, repent of the way we are living, and trust
in Jesus Christ for new life and salvation. This means that we not only
repudiate the sins we have committed, we repudiate who we are without Jesus
Christ and, by God’s grace, exchange our death for His life, His Nature for our
nature, His glory for our shame – all by His enabling and mercy.
Now
then, who is more likely to come to grips with this inner reality, a person whose
sins are out in the open for all to see or a person who is living what appears
to be an upright and moral life? A person who has hit rock bottom or a person
who is enjoying much of what life has to offer? A person who is pleased with
himself or a person who is enabled to see the depth of sin and the wickedness
of his heart?
There
is a passage in John Chapter 8 that may help us see how “hardness of heart”
manifests itself within religion. The chapter begins with the woman caught in
the act of adultery and Jesus saying, “He who is without sin among you, let him
be the first one to throw a stone at her.”
“When
they [the accusers] heard this, they began to go out one by one, beginning with
the older ones, and He was left alone, and the woman, where she was, in the
center of the court.”
John
then writes, “Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the Light of the
world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the Light of
life…You judge according to the flesh [the way things appear]; I am not judging
anyone. But even if I do judge, My judgement is true; for I am not alone in it,
but I and the Father who sent Me.” (See also John 5:30).
In
John 7:24 Jesus says, “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with
righteous judgment.”
Now
let’s recall that the setting for this is the temple in Jerusalem (8:2). In a
place that is supposed to be holy and a house of prayer, the scribes and
Pharisees come with a woman (note the absence of the male adulterer) with murder
in their hearts – in a place that should echo life the religious leaders are
after death, both the death of the woman and the death of Jesus. We know from
the Gospels that only the Roman government could issue and exercise the death
penalty, therefore if Jesus adheres to the Law of Moses and says that she should
die, they can go straight to the Roman authorities with an accusation against
Jesus. In other words, they are accusing the woman so that they can accuse
Jesus, they are using the woman and her anticipated death to destroy Jesus.
On
the other hand, if Jesus says that she should not die, then they can accuse Him
of not teaching and obeying the Law of Moses. On the one hand they can accuse
Jesus to the Jewish people, on the other hand they can accuse Jesus to the
Roman authorities.
Why
are the scribes and Pharisees doing this? Because of the hardness of their
heart. Do we see what hardness of heart can look like within us? It can lead us
into wanting the death of others to achieve our own ends. It can lead us to
using others to achieve our goals. It can seduce us into thinking that the end
justifies the means.
Looking
at verses 19 - 30 note the following:
“You
neither know Me nor My Father; if you knew Me, you would know My Father also.”
“You
will seek Me, and will die in your sin; where I am going you cannot come.”
“You
are from below, I am from above, you are of this world, I am not of this world.”
“Therefore
I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am,
you will die in your sins.”
What
do you think about Jesus’ words? If you were listening to Him in the temple on
this particular day, and if you had been living a good religious life with the
Pharisees, if you had observed the religious practices of that day, how might
you have responded to Jesus? If you were looking pretty good on the outside of
your life, what might you be feeling when hearing Jesus speak?
Note
verse 30, “As He spoke these things, many came to believe in Him.”
But
what does this mean? How long did this belief last? Is this an example of
Matthew 13:4, or of 13:5, or of 13:7, or of 13:8?
We’ll
pick this back up in the next post in this series, in the meantime you might
want to read the rest of John Chapter 8 and ponder the trajectory of this
passage.
How
does the chapter begin? How does it end? What do you see?
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