“Yet to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to know, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear.”
Evident from Isaiah 6:9-10 and Jeremiah 18:11-13, this type of spiritual blindness in God’s people from judicial hardening is attributable to a failure to properly respond to His grace. With all of the signs and wonders shown to Israel, their status was inexcusable. The problem with Calvinism, though, is that it takes such passages out of context and incorporates them into a general systematic whereby everyone is born blinded and hardened and cannot respond to God unless He has elected them to receive regeneration. The truth is that they can and should respond to God [Editor’s note: by his enabling grace], and He is indignant when they say they cannot: “‘But they will say, “It’s hopeless! For we are going to follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.” Therefore thus says the Lord, “Ask now among the nations, who ever heard the like of this? The virgin of Israel has done a most appalling thing.”’” (Jeremiah 18:12-13) When people properly respond to God, the veil of ignorance is taken away (2nd Corinthians 3:14).
[This post has been excerpted with permission from Richard Coords, Calvinism Answered Verse by Verse and Subject by Subject, © 2024.]
