The State of Hardening

Hardening is that state of a person when he sins not out of ignorance and weakness but with consciousness and obstinacy, surrendering to depravity and heeding no good counsel and even deliberately acting against it and mocking the admonitions (2 Chron. 36:16). From the state of hardening there is a swift transition to a state of despair, when a person, contemplating on one hand all the weight of his sins, and on the other all the strictness of God’s justice, ordinarily conducts himself as though completely convinced that his ruin is inevitable, and therefore either fulfills the measure of his wickedness by surrendering to all desires of his corrupt heart, or hastens to end his life by suicide (Matt. 27:5).