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37 Even after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him. 38 This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet: “Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”
39 For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere: 40 “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.” 41 Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him. ~ John 12:37-41
Miracles do not create faith. Confronted by the message and miracles of the Lord Jesus, most of Israel chose unbelief. He was crucified and their hearts still were not changed. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him, as Messiah. Israel's unbelief aided the fact that the Lord Jesus came to die in our place and make salvation possible for the whole world.
The fact that God blinded the eyes and hardened the hearts of Israel does not take away or contradict their personal responsibility to believe and receive the free gift the Lord Jesus came to offer. The Lord Jesus said in John 3:18, “Whoever believes in me is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” Israel could have believed, in fact some of them did, but all of them didn't. And, they bare the guilt of their choice.
In our text, the Apostle John quotes the prophet Isaiah. John could have left Isaiah out and simply said: the unbelief of Israel was planned by God and their hardness and blindness is owing to His sovereign choice. But what he did was quote two different places in Isaiah.
In John 12:38, John quotes Isaiah 53:1. And in John 12:40 he quotes Isaiah 6:10. Isaiah 53 is a description of the suffering servant, whom we know now as the Lord Jesus. And the two verses that follow go like this: “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men” (Isaiah 53:2–3).
So the point is that Isaiah prophesied that this suffering servant would be rejected. Israel would not believe on Him. Which is why John says in John 12:38, “Who has believed?” Why did they not believe? Because He was simply not the kind of Messiah they wanted.
Then, in John 12:40, John quotes Isaiah 6:10 which describes what was going to happen when Isaiah preached the vision that he saw of God’s glory. God told Isaiah that when he preached this great message the people would not believe. They would, in fact, be blinded and hardened. Why? Because they did not want to hear such a message.
God blinded and hardened them by sending a savior who was not what they expected. He sent a lowly servant, knowing that they would despise and reject Him. He didn't make them reject Him, He knew in advance how they would respond to Him. The problem was not Him, it was them, their pride and ignorance.
The Lord Jesus didn’t deserve to feel the shame of sin, but He did. He didn’t deserve the humiliation of the cross, but He did. He had never sinned, yet was treated like a sinner. He became sin, so that His perfection could be deposited into our account. This gospel changes hearts, some hearts.
