There are seven people in the Bible who said the words: “I have sinned.” Five of them were insincere, and only two of them said it out of a heart of genuine repentance.

The first person that comes before us is Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and he is an example of the hardened sinner. We see in him the mystery of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility.

On several occasions it is said that “he hardened his heart” (8:15; 9:34). However, we also read God’s statement to Moses about Pharaoh: “I have hardened his heart” (10:1). The apostle Paul uses this story of Pharaoh as an example of God’s sovereignty to have mercy on whom He wills or to harden whom He wills (Rom. 9:17–18). How can we explain this? We cannot—other than to say God’s sovereignty and the active will of man and his responsibility work together. The same thing can be seen in the crucifixion of Christ: God’s eternal purpose working together with man’s responsibility (Acts 2:23). These men were not puppets when they nailed Him to the tree, yet God’s counsels were fulfilled.

Pharaoh at times appears to repent after a plague falls upon Egypt, but then he quickly reverts to his opposition to God. C. H. Spurgeon has said about this, “The repentance that was born in the storm died in the calm. Like the sailor who became pious in the storm at sea became wicked when back on terra firma. Cholera [a deadly disease which was common in Spurgeon’s day] fills our churches and the end of the pestilence empties them.”

This reminds me of September 11th, 2001, when grieving and alarmed Americans filled the churches, only to abandon them later. Beware of hardening your heart to God; if there is repentance, it must be genuine.