Proverbs 28:14. Blessed is the one who fears the Lord always, but whoever hardens his heart will fall into calamity.
One of the most important things we must remain faithful to do is to guard our heart. In the Old Testament, your heart is the inner part of you that loves, and cares, and desires, and trusts. When your heart gets hardened, you stop trusting God’s grace alone, you stop fearing the Lord.
In Exodus, the story of Pharaoh is a tragic tale of a person who hardened their heart. Do you remember the story? The Israelites were slaves in Egypt when God sent Moses to tell Pharaoh, “Let my people go!” Pharaoh, of course, refused to listen to God. He hardened his heart. Plagues ensued. Pharaohs heart was still hard. More plagues. Sadly, Pharaoh never listened to God. He never turned from his pride. He never did what was right. As a result, he fell into calamity, literally drowning in the Red Sea.
Maybe Pharaoh seems like a very extreme case of hard heartedness to you, but the truth is that any of us can let our hearts become hard like he did. In fact, if we don’t keep preaching the gospel to our own hearts and allowing others to do the same, then, inevitably, our hearts will also grow more and more hardened. We will stop trusting God to direct our path through Christ, and start living for whatever WE think is best. Like Pharaoh, we will become selfish, choosing the wisdom of power over the wisdom of Christ.
Paul vividly describes the danger of hard heartedness in Ephesians.
Ephesians 4:17-24. 17Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
The hard heart darkens our understanding and alienates us from the life of God. It leads to a vicious cycle of addiction that makes us callous and sensual at the same time so that nothing is ever enough, and we become greedy to practice impurity. Don’t naively think this isn’t happening in you at times. It is. That’s why Paul warns us about it.
What is the solution to the hard heart? Renewal in the Spirit of our minds and putting on the new self. What proverbs calls the fear of the Lord, Paul calls renewal in the Spirit of our minds – allowing the Spirit to change how we think. Then, from the renewed mind, we put on the new self. The self that is united to Christ. This is a conscious choice that we must make daily.
Notice how everything we do flows from what Christ has already done. Union with Christ has granted to us the Spirit and the new self. The Holy Spirit has created in us a new heart that is “soft” like Jesus’ heart, and not hard like Pharaoh’s. From his heart we can love what Jesus loves and choose what Jesus chooses. All without fear of calamity.
You: Can you identify any hardness of heart in you?Resistance to God’s grace? The addiction cycle?
You in Christ: Do you “put on” your union with Christ daily? What prevents this?
Christ in you: What might the heart of Christ look like today at work? Home? Church?
Pray: Jesus, keep my heart soft like yours through the gospel message. I want to live from the wisdom of grace and love, not power and pleasure. Amen.
To Live is Christ 