God doesn't want to forgive!
Mark 4:10-12 has the apostles asking Jesus about his
parables and he says, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given
to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so
that, 'They may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing
but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven.' "
What are we to make of that? The surface and shallow
reading of the text would say that Jesus didn't want them to repent
because he didn't want them to be forgiven and that's why he taught in
parables. There are those who take just that view and don't mind saying
so. Their claim is that before he created humankind God determined that
the entire human family (after Adam) would be born morally and
spiritually blind and deaf and incapable of turning to God. Out of the
entire human family, we're told, God decreed that he would work a moral
miracle on a tiny minority and not only would they be able to turn to
God they would be unable to resist turning to God. The rest would remain
morally and spiritually incapable of wanting to repent and therefore
incapable of wanting to be forgiven. This text is used to support that
awful doctrine.
Whatever else we are to say about that doctrine and how
it uses this text, at least we have a clear picture: God doesn't want
these people to repent because he doesn't want to forgive them. Make
up your mind to this: the doctrine insists that before he made them God
ordained them to be sinners and didn't want them to turn from sin
because he didn't want to forgive them!
But if the doctrine were true Jesus would be making no
sense. On a sheerly surface reading Jesus thinks his teaching in
parables is what disables these outsiders. If the above doctrine were
true, even if Jesus had spelled out the truth in baby-language with full
explanation for every phrase, these people still couldn't have
heard him because God ordained them incapable of it even before he made
them. Jesus might as well have been talking to a stone wall. Parables
or no parables they were born incapable of receiving truth and they were
born that way because God purposed before he created them that they
would be born that way.
The OT text Jesus works with here is Isaiah 6:9-10 and it is addressed to a nation that has chosen
its treachery and its wickedness and has no intention of turning from
it. 6:9 is laced with irony and we know that because God is commanding
them to sin! God is commanding them to sin! [The speech is in
command form—J.A Alexander.] Jesus in Matthew 23:32 scathes the worst
kind of Pharisees and says, "Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of
your forefathers." On the surface we have Jesus ordering these men to
sin (he uses an imperative) when it's clear that no such thing is
happening. He knows what they will do because he knows them and though
it saddens him without limit (23:37) he says to them, "Well, get on with
it then!" God commands no man to sin! James won't even allow us to
believe that God tempts men to sin (James 1:13) so you know
Isaiah 6:9 is God speaking to a people bent on wickedness and he's
saying something like, "Go ahead! Ruin yourself!"
When Zechariah sums up the past history of his people
under the prophets before the fall of Jerusalem he says they stubbornly
stopped their ears and hardened their hearts and wouldn't listen
(Zechariah 7:7-11).
There is nothing in these texts (Mark 4 or Isaiah 6)
about eternal reprobation and election for they are both dealing with
people who have chosen to reject the word of God that called
them to obedience. It's the case that when God sends a word to a sinner
or a sinful people to repent or to obey in some matter that God knows
how they will react and yet he sends the command. In sending the command
God provokes a moral crisis in the one to whom the command is sent and
for that reason the result is laid at God's feet. "Let my people go!" he
said to Pharaoh even though he knew Pharaoh would refuse. But Pharaoh's
refusal was Pharaoh's choice and not God's choice for
Pharaoh. God has the sovereign and moral right to demand that Pharaoh
obey even though he knows Pharaoh will refuse and that God will use his
refusal to serves his own good purposes.
But no case of hardening in scripture refers to a
pre-creation purpose of God. Hardening has nothing to do with eternal
reprobation and election. God hardens only sinful nations or individuals
that have freely chosen to be sinful.
Every good gift comes from the Holy Father and those who
are blessed with faithful hearts have been blessed by him and all who
those who hear the gospel of the kingdom and are "outside" are "outside"
because they would have it so and not because God doesn't want to
forgive them!
Notice in Mark 4:11 that Jesus said to those on the
outside "everything is said in parables." The fact is that that wasn't
literally the case—you only have to read the Gospels to see he wasn't
speaking literally. He might well have been saying, "With hearts like theirs even plain speech isn't clear."
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com.