GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
ACTS 19:8-10
8 Paul entered the synagogue and for three months he spoke boldly, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. 9 But some of them became stubborn. They refused to believe and cursed the Way in front of the congregation. Paul left them. He took the disciples with him and spoke daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. 10 This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.
The Word of God has one of two effects on people. Either it motivates love, thanks, and obedience to God, or else it infuriates, hardens, and causes rebellion against God. The sinning believer is made aware of his sin, and he wants to make a change in his life and in his behavior. The gospel reassures him that he is forgiven, and he is thankful that he has a Savior. He finds ways to thank Jesus for his love and compassion. The sinning unbeliever is angered that God would dare to point a finger at him. He wants nothing to do with God’s judgment, dreading, deep down, that judgment will come, but doing everything he can to hold off that day or to tear himself away from God’s judgment through other religions or by having nothing to do with God in the least.
For the Jews of the Ephesian synagogue, their rage boiled over when they found that their obedience to the Law of Moses was not going to earn them a better place with God. This new message (to them) about Jesus was not a gospel of victory over the Romans, but a strange gospel of death and resurrection; a gospel of some kind of victory through weakness (“My power is made perfect in weakness” 2 Cor. 12:9). They began to curse this teaching, the Way, to Paul’s face and in the public forum of the synagogue itself.
Paul expected this by now. He had been preaching the gospel to his fellow Jews for almost twenty years, quietly in Tarsus and openly in Asia Minor and Greece. He had been attacked, imprisoned, rebuked, called names, and stoned and left for dead. He rolled up his scrolls and left the synagogue, taking the Ephesian disciples with him. Surely by now, after three months, these disciples amounted to more than the dozen he had met when he first arrived. They found a new place to meet, the lecture hall of a man named Tyrannus. We don’t know if he was a Christian with a lecture hall, a believer lecture hall that was converted into a Christian synagogue (church), or just a guy, whether Jew or Gentile, who was willing to rent out his hall.
The Way was the early word for the Christian church. I have speculated that the term comes from either Isaiah 35:8 (“the Way of Holiness”) or Jesus’ statement, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6). Another possibility is that it goes all the way back to the day Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, and God placed angels (cherubim) on the east of Eden “to guard the way to the tree of life” (Genesis 3:24).
When we consider the idea of “the Way” as a name for our faith, we might do well to remember the picture Jesus used: Fishermen catching fish. The “way” of the fish before or after it arrives in the net is not as important as the net and the one who draws the net up. Or if you want to think in terms of a hook and line (which were also used in the Bible, Isaiah 19:8; Ezekiel 29:4; Amos 4:2; Job 41:1): what choices or decisions does the fish make once the hook is in his lip? He fights it. His path can be drawn on paper by a two-year-old. But in the end, he is taken up by the fisherman who was in control all along. The Way of the Christian can be compared to that. Our sinful nature fights against the God who is drawing us toward himself. We might think that we’re in charge of our path, our way, but really, we’re not. And of course, God isn’t reeling us in to become dinner, but to dine with him forever at his table (Revelation 2:7).
Doctrine: Can a Hardened Person Still be Converted?
Verse 9 says, “some of them became stubborn. They refused to believe and cursed the Way.” The Bible talks about hardening as the condition of the sinner in which neither the preaching of the law nor the preaching of the gospel makes an impression on the heart. The hardened person falls under Jesus’ sad judgment: “You were not willing” (Matthew 23:37). The result is that the hardened person either opposes God with defiant hatred (“I knew how stubborn you were; the sinews of your neck were iron, your forehead was bronze” Isaiah 48:4) or else he shows scorn and contempt (often with delight) for God and everything God has said and done, rejecting all of it. There are those who say, “Let God hurry, let the plan of the Holy One of Israel come, so we may know it” (Isaiah 5:19). And there are others who say, “By the strength of my own hand I have done this, and by my wisdom, because I have understanding. I removed the boundaries of nations; I plundered their treasures” (Isaiah 10:13). And at the trial of Jesus, they said, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!” (Matthew 27:25).
But the question stands, can such hardened people who reject Christ still be converted? Let’s outline the doctrine briefly and then draw a conclusion based on the Word of God:
I. The Subject of Hardening: (a) Those who knew the will of God (but rejected it), (b) those who are cut off from the privilege of regeneration or conversion, (c) those who were never affected by the gospel. Isaiah: “Make the heart of this people calloused” (Isaiah 6:10). Also, (d) those to whom the gospel was never revealed because of their own sinful rejection or that of their parents and therefore, God “gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another” and other sins (Romans 1:24).
II. The Material of Hardening: The gospel and the law, including the natural law for unbelievers (Romans 2:12-17). For God does not work among us apart from his word and sacraments.
III. The Form of Hardening: Incurable (?) disobedience, resulting in furious resistance to God and even attacks on God.
IV. The Results of Hardening: At first, crimes and eventually very serious crimes, including blasphemy but also civil disobedience. Finally: Eternal damnation. “All will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness” (2 Thessalonians 2:12). “The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:49-50). Also Isaiah 66:24; Jude 7, and Revelation 20:15.
In the third point, I have questioned “incurable disobedience.” This is because of passages where Jesus or his Apostles pray for or preach to those who have already been proclaimed to be hardened. For example, in the first word from the cross, Jesus prayed: “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). And in Acts 3:15-17, Peter preaches to the Jews who had said, “Let his blood be on us and our children,” saying: “You killed the author of life,” and then, “Brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders.” Therefore we must conclude that the hardened person who dies is lost because of the condition of their faith: they rejected Jesus. But such hardening is not something that we, the living witnesses for Christ, should necessarily take as final and unchangeable while a person still lives. It is for God to judge, not man. So we can always live under the salvation motto, “While there’s life, there is hope.” We should continue to proclaim the law that exposes guilt and sin and the gospel that offers the only medicine for the guilty conscience. “At the present time,” Paul said, “there is a remnant chosen by grace” (Romans 11:5). Keep sharing the gospel of Jesus with the people you know and love, and keep praying that the word will work. If not today, then in whatever tomorrows remain.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Acts 19:8-10 Hardened hearts