ROMANS 11:25

“For I do not want you, brothers and sisters, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in;”

We have all known some hard-hearted people in our lives. They refuse any expressions of love you give and, if they feel they have been offended by you (whether or not it actually happened), they write you off. That makes it impossible to have any kind of relationship with them. This hurts even more when it’s family. Hard-heartedness is not of God. Can’t be. He is love and wants His children to love each other.

Paul uses a Greek word in verse 25 that is only used two other times in the New Testament (Mark 3:5 and Ephesians 4:18). We will take a look at those in a minute. Here in today’s verse, it is referring to the Jews who had rejected the Messiah, Jesus Christ, in favor of their religion which they felt gave them special privileges as God’s chosen people. God allowed this “partial hardening” for a reason – to open up the message to the Gentiles. We’ve been looking at that over the past several verses. The Greek word is ṓrōsis. HELPS Word-studies says, this is defined as “hardness (from pōros, a kind of marble, used later of a callus formed on fractured bones)…insensibility, numbness, obtuseness, dulling of the faculty of perception, deadness.”

APPLICATION

In Mark 3:5 the word is used to describe the hardness Jesus saw in the Pharisees’ reaction to Him healing the man with the withered hand. In Ephesians 4:18 Paul uses the word again to describe Gentiles who are “excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart;”

But here in today’s verse, ṓrōsis is combined with an adjective, meros, which means a piece or portion. This implies that the hardness exhibited by the Jews that was allowed by God was not intended to be a full, complete or final hardness. God always has intended for the Jewish nation to return to Him. We saw that over and over in the Old Testament. Now, with the message of salvation completed by Jesus, He is desirous of their return, thus the partial hardness.

Never give up on a hard-hearted person. Continue to pray for them. You may not be able to have a relationship how, but God can still move mountains. My wife and I have been praying about a matter for some time now that fits this verse so well. We continue to pray. We continue to believe. And in His time (that’s the hard part, isn’t it?) He will move hearts from hardness to tenderness. I can’t wait to see the final result. How about you?

Give me faith to believe You are working behind the scene in all the hard-hearted people of the world. 

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