At first, I think most people's gut reaction is, "No, of course not. God wouldn't cause people not to see the truth." But then you come across a verse like John 12:40, and suddenly it feels like, “Wait. Maybe He does.”

It says: "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turn—and I would heal them" (NIV).

That sounds pretty direct, right? It seems as if God is actively blocking people from seeing the truth. Can that be the case?

Well, as with anything in the Bible, context is key. So, let's take a closer look.

First and foremost, understand that God desires all people to come to Him. 1 Timothy 2:4 tells us that God "wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (NIV).

We know God isn't looking to blind people for no reason. His heart is for us to see clearly and to know Him. However, when people persistently reject God, there are consequences.

When God created us, He gave us the ability to choose. We aren't robots, puppets, or muppets. We have been given by God the freedom to accept or reject Him. And with that freedom comes responsibility and consequences. When people repeatedly reject God, their hearts begin to harden, and the more someone ignores God's voice, the easier it becomes to tune Him out.

John Mark Comer puts it like this: "God is a God of choice. When people persistently choose darkness, God allows them to live in that darkness. It's not that God creates blindness but that He steps back and lets people walk down the path they've chosen."

Think about it like this: I recently read about this process in our brains called sensory adaptation. Long story short, sensory adaptation helps us tune out certain things—like an air conditioner's hum or a clock's ticking—so we stop noticing them. Our brains are wired to filter out what we perceive as background noise so we can focus on what we think is more important.

While this is helpful for everyday sounds, it becomes a problem when we start treating God's voice the same way. When we choose to ignore God's truth and correction, we gradually push it into the background. Over time, it becomes so distant that we can no longer hear it. But it's not that God stopped speaking—it's that we've trained ourselves to stop listening.

So, in John 12:40, when it says that God blinds their eyes, it's not because He forces blindness on them. It's because they choose blindness.

As Charles Spurgeon explains, "When the heart is hardened, the conscience becomes seared, and the light that ought to illuminate becomes darkness to the soul. This is not because God arbitrarily forces men into blindness, but because they have willfully rejected the truth.”

We see this clearly in the story of Pharaoh in Exodus. Pharaoh had several opportunities to release the Israelites, but each time, he chose to harden his heart and resist God's command. Eventually, the Bible says that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, but this wasn't God forcing Pharaoh into disobedience. Pharaoh had already decided to reject God, and in response, God allowed him to continue down the path he had stubbornly chosen.

Pharaoh's heart hardened because he rejected God's correction, and God's judgment allowed him to walk in that rejection.

And this isn't just a Pharaoh thing—it's a spiritual principle for all of us. The more we reject God's truth, the more our hearts harden.

When people choose to reject God over and over, it's not that God is actively blinding them; He's giving them the freedom to reject the light, and that rejection leads to darkness.

The good news is that even though God allows people to walk in the darkness they've chosen, that doesn't mean He gives up on them. 2 Peter 3:9 tells us that God "is not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance" (NIV).

God's heart is always for people to turn back to Him. And no matter how far someone has gone in rejecting God, there's always hope. Ezekiel 36:26 says, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh" (NIV).

God specializes in turning hardened hearts into soft, receptive hearts. His grace is always available, and He's always ready to welcome us back when we turn to Him.

God doesn't blind people out of nowhere or randomly harden hearts. But He does honor our choices, and if we persistently reject Him, He will allow us to experience the consequences of that rejection and walk down the path we've chosen.

But there's always hope. God's heart is for restoration, no matter how far we've wandered. His grace is endless, and He's never too far to hear the cry of a repentant heart. The moment we turn back to Him, He runs toward us, arms wide open, ready to forgive, heal, and restore.