Hardened Hearts and Free Will: John 12:37–40

A Position Paper  •  Bruce Mitchell  •  Agapao Allelon

“How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.” — Matthew 23:37, NASB95

A Brief Statement

I hold that when Scripture says God hardens a heart, it describes a judicial act that confirms a person’s settled refusal; it never cancels a will that was ready to believe. In John 12:37–40, the hardening of verse 40 follows the unbelief of verse 37: “though He had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him.”¹ God is sovereign over every heart (Proverbs 21:1), and human beings are genuinely responsible for their choices (Deuteronomy 30:19). Scripture teaches both, and so do I. Hardened Hearts and Free Will

The pattern holds across the canon. Pharaoh hardened his own heart before God hardened it (Exodus 8:15, 32; 9:12). Those who refuse the truth are “given over” to what they have chosen (Romans 1:24). And Jesus Himself named the will that resists Him: “you were unwilling” (Matthew 23:37). Divine hardening is God’s “yes” to a human “no.”

A Detailed Exposition

John 12:37–40 in Its Setting

John 12 closes Jesus’ public ministry. For eleven chapters He has offered signs: water into wine, the healing of the official’s son, the lame man at Bethesda, the feeding of the five thousand, the man born blind, and finally the raising of Lazarus. John now pauses to explain why so many signs produced so little faith. His explanation begins with the people, not with God: “But though He had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him” (12:37).²

The verb is ouk episteuon, an imperfect tense: “they were not believing,” an ongoing, settled refusal rather than a single moment of doubt. The evidence was abundant (tosauta sēmeia, “so many signs”), and it was given “before them,” in plain sight. John’s point is that the problem was never a lack of evidence. It was a will that would not receive it.

“For This Reason They Could Not Believe”

Only after establishing that refusal does John quote Isaiah: “For this reason they could not believe, for Isaiah said again, ‘He has blinded their eyes, and He hardened their heart, so that they would not see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and be converted and I heal them'” (12:39–40).³

The verbs are weighty. Tetyphlōken (“He has blinded”) is perfect tense, a completed act with lasting effect. Epōrōsen (“He hardened”) comes from pōroō, “to petrify” or “to make callous”, the same word Mark uses for the disciples’ own dull hearts (Mark 6:52; 8:17).⁴ This is real, and God does it. But it is a sentence passed on a refusal, not the cause of the refusal. “Could not” (ouk ēdynanto) in verse 39 describes the state that judicial hardening produced in people who first “were not believing” in verse 37.

The church’s earliest commentators read it the same way. Augustine, asked why they could not believe, answered in substance that they could not because they would not; John Chrysostom likewise explained “could not” as describing an unwillingness the people themselves had chosen.⁵

Not Universal, Not Final for All

The very next verses forbid reading John 12:40 as a blanket decree. “Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him” (12:42). And Jesus’ last public words in the chapter are an invitation: “I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness” (12:46). Only days earlier He had said, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself” (12:32). The hardening of some sits inside a gospel offered to all.

Isaiah 6: One Text, Read Both Ways

John’s quotation comes from Isaiah’s call (Isaiah 6:9–10). There God commissions the prophet to preach to a people already set in rebellion, and warns that his preaching will harden them further. The New Testament quotes this passage several times, and it does something revealing: it reads the same hardening as God’s act and as the people’s own act.

Passage	Who does the hardening?
John 12:40	God: “He has blinded their eyes, and He hardened their heart”
Matthew 13:15	The people: “they have closed their eyes”
Acts 28:27	The people: “they have closed their eyes”

Matthew and Acts follow the Greek Septuagint, which renders Isaiah’s words as a description of what the people did to themselves.⁶ John renders the same text as God’s judgment upon them. The apostles saw no contradiction. Both are true at once: the people shut their own eyes, and God confirmed the shutting. Any reading that keeps only one side of this has kept only half of the Bible’s own interpretation of Isaiah 6.

Pharaoh: Who Hardened Whom First?

Pharaoh is the Bible’s classic case of a hardened heart, and the narrative order matters. God foretells the hardening at the outset (Exodus 4:21; 7:3); He knows how the story will end. But in the telling of the plagues, Pharaoh’s heart is first said to “be hardened” with no agent named (7:13, 22; 8:19), and then Pharaoh is the explicit subject: “But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and did not listen to them” (8:15); “But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also” (8:32). Only at the sixth plague does the text first say, as narrated fact, that God acted: “And the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart” (9:12).⁷

The Hebrew sharpens the picture. Three verbs carry the theme: ḥāzaq (“to strengthen, make firm”),  kābēd  (“to make heavy”), and qāšâ (“to make hard”).⁸ When Pharaoh hardens himself in 8:15 and 8:32, the verb is kābēd: he made his own heart heavy. In 9:12, God acts with the verb ḥāzaq: God strengthened what Pharaoh had already resolved. God did not plant a refusal in a willing man. He gave a defiant king the firmness to carry out the defiance he had chosen.

Paul cites this history in Romans 9:17–18: “For this very purpose I raised you up… So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.” The God who hardens is sovereign, and His purposes are not frustrated. But the Pharaoh He hardens is the Pharaoh who had already hardened himself.

“God Gave Them Over”

Paul describes the same pattern in Romans 1. Humanity “suppress[es] the truth in unrighteousness” (1:18), knows God yet refuses to honor Him (1:21), and exchanges the truth for a lie (1:25). Three times Paul then writes that “God gave them over” (paredōken, 1:24, 26, 28) to the very things they had chosen.⁹ The handing over is real judgment, but it is judgment by consent: God releases people to the path they insisted on walking.

Second Thessalonians 2:10–11 says it with striking clarity: “because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false.” The “because” comes first. The refusal of truth is the ground; the deluding influence is the sentence.

Romans 9 is the hardest text for any view, and it deserves honesty rather than a quick answer. Paul insists that God “has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires” (9:18), and he silences the objector who would accuse God of injustice (9:19–20). Faithful Christians in the Reformed tradition read this as God’s unconditional choice. I read Romans 9 alongside its conclusion in Romans 10–11, where Israel’s unbelief is described as their own (10:21), and God holds out His hands “all day long… to a disobedient and obstinate people.”¹⁰ In either reading, no one in Romans 9 is hardened who was pleading to believe.

The Human Will in Jesus’ Own Words

If the question is whether Scripture treats human beings as genuine choosers, Jesus answers it Himself. Weeping over Jerusalem, He said, “How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling” (Matthew 23:37). The Greek sets two wills side by side: ēthelēsa (“I wanted, I willed”) and ouk ēthelēsate (“you did not will”).¹¹ The Son of God desired one thing; the city chose another; and He honored their choice with tears.

He said the same to the religious leaders: “and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life” (John 5:40). Again the verb is Ethel. And the wider witness of Scripture rests on the same premise:

• “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
• “Choose for yourselves today whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15).
• “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezekiel 33:11).
• The Lord is “not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
• “Men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil” (John 3:19).

An invitation to choose presumes a real chooser. A command to repent presumes a real capacity to turn. And judgment for unbelief presumes that unbelief was, at some point, a person’s own.

Honest Engagement with Other Views

This question has divided faithful Christians for centuries, and I hold my view with conviction and charity. The Reformed tradition, following Augustine and Calvin, emphasizes God’s sovereign and unconditional choice; the Arminian and Wesleyan traditions emphasize prevenient grace that enables every person to respond. Many careful scholars, including D. A. Carson, argue that Scripture affirms both divine sovereignty and human responsibility without fully resolving how they fit together.¹² I share that conviction. What no orthodox reading of John 12 allows is the claim that God blinded people who were reaching for the light. The text says the opposite: the Light came, and they would not come to it.

Practical Implications

Ministry Emphasis: Apologetics / Evangelism

First, this doctrine guards our message. We never tell a seeker that God may have blinded him against his will. The Light has come into the world, and “everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness” (John 12:46). The invitation is real, and it is for him.

Second, it sobers us. Hardening is not arbitrary, but it is real. A person who keeps refusing the light can reach a place where God confirms the refusal. That is why Scripture says, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” (Hebrews 3:15). The gospel’s urgency is not manipulation. It is mercy.

Third, it shapes how we argue. If unbelief is ultimately a matter of the will, not evidence, then no argument, however well documented, will open a closed heart. Our task is to tell the truth clearly and lovingly, to answer honest questions honestly, and then to leave the heart to God. We plant and water; God gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6). This is why we can lose an argument with grace and still be faithful.

Finally, it humbles us. Every believer once “loved the darkness rather than the Light” (John 3:19). If our eyes have been opened, it is grace, not cleverness. We speak to those who still resist as people who know exactly where they stand, because we stood there too.

God hardens no willing heart. He confirms a refusal, and He keeps the door open while it is still “Today.”

Biblical, Exegetical, Theological, and Historical Notes

Scripture quotations are from the NASB95 unless otherwise noted.

1. John 12:37: tosauta de autou sēmeia pepoiēkotos emprosthen autōn ouk episteuon eis auton. The imperfect episteuon with the negative marks continued, settled unbelief. The genitive absolute (“though He had performed so many signs”) sets the abundance of evidence against the persistence of refusal. On God’s sovereignty over the heart, see Proverbs 21:1.
2. John arranges his Gospel around selected signs and states their purpose plainly: “these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31). The signs were given to produce faith, not to prevent it.
3. John 12:40 quotes Isaiah 6:10 in a form that matches neither the Hebrew text nor the Septuagint exactly. In Hebrew, the prophet is commanded, “Render the hearts of this people insensitive” (hašmēn, literally “make fat”), so his preaching becomes an instrument of judgment. John attributes the hardening directly to God, consistent with that commission.
4. Pōroō, “to harden, petrify, make callous,” is used of Israel (Romans 11:7; 2 Corinthians 3:14) and, strikingly, of Jesus’ own disciples (Mark 6:52; 8:17). Its noun appears in Romans 11:25, where the hardening is “partial” (apo merous) and temporary, “until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.”
5. Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, Tractate 53, on John 12:37–43, answers the question “why could they not believe?” by pointing to their will. John Chrysostom, in his homilies on John 12, likewise reads “could not” as an expression of a chosen unwillingness. Both affirm God’s foreknowledge and judgment without making God the author of unbelief.
6. The Septuagint of Isaiah 6:10 reads, “For the heart of this people has grown dull… and they have closed their eyes” (ekammysan). Matthew 13:15 and Acts 28:27 quote this form, placing the act on the people. John 12:40 places it on God. The New Testament thus preserves both perspectives on the same event.
7. God announces the hardening in advance (Exodus 4:21; 7:3), which affirms His foreknowledge and sovereign purpose. In the narrative of the plagues, however, the first statements are either agentless (7:13, 22; 8:19) or name Pharaoh as the one who hardens (8:15, 32). The first narrated statement that the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart comes at 9:12. G. K. Beale argues for the primacy of God’s purpose in these texts; the narrative order nonetheless shows that Pharaoh’s own will was fully engaged.
8. Ḥāzaq (“be or make strong, firm”), kābēd (“be or make heavy”), and qāšâ (“be or make hard, stubborn”). In Exodus 8:15 (MT 8:11) and 8:32 (MT 8:28), Pharaoh is the subject of kābēd; in 9:12 the LORD is the subject of ḥāzaq.
9. Paredōken, from paradidōmi, “to hand over.” The same verb describes the Father handing over the Son for us (Romans 8:32). In Romans 1 it describes judgment that releases people to the consequences of their own choices.
10. Romans 10:21, quoting Isaiah 65:2. Paul also writes that hardened Israel “will be grafted in, if they do not continue in their unbelief” (Romans 11:23), which shows that hardening in Paul’s argument is neither universal nor necessarily final.
11. Matthew 23:37: posakis ēthelēsa episynagagein ta tekna sou… kai ouk ēthelēsate. Both verbs are forms of Ethel, “to will, to desire.” The parallel in Luke 13:34 is identical in this respect.
12. A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension, argues that Scripture consistently holds that God is fully sovereign and that human beings are fully responsible, without reducing either truth to the other.

Select Bibliography

Augustine of Hippo. Tractates on the Gospel of John. Tractate 53.

Beale, G. K. “An Exegetical and Theological Consideration of the Hardening of Pharaoh’s Heart in Exodus 4–14 and Romans 9.” Trinity Journal 5 (1984).

Carson, D. A. Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension. Atlanta: John Knox, 1981.

Carson, D. A. The Gospel According to John. Pillar New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991.

Chrysostom, John. Homilies on the Gospel of John.

Evans, Craig A. To See and Not Perceive: Isaiah 6:9–10 in Early Jewish and Christian Interpretation. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989.

Köstenberger, Andreas J. John. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004.

Moo, Douglas J. The Epistle to the Romans. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.

Morris, Leon. The Gospel According to John. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995.

Ryrie, Charles C. Basic Theology. Wheaton: Victor Books, 1986.