Symptoms of a Hardened Heart

"But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed." Romans 2:5

So many church members and Clergy have hardened hearts. I can't tell you how many people I have come across in my life as a Christian who feel no remorse or moral obligation in making things right that they have done wrong. Yes, professing Christians and Pastors. This has left me to believe their heart is like a rock. It is not longer convicted (if ever) by the Holy Spirit. It is impossible to be right with God and do others harm. It is impossible to be a Christian and not care for the welfare of others. I am going to list several symptoms of a hardened heart:

1. Their heart is not affected by the love of Christ. They will not express natural care or concern for their family, friends, or brothers and sisters in Christ. The welfare of their fellow man is based on prejudice. One has to agree with them in order to receive love. Otherwise, you are on your own. Loving one's enemies does not register with them. Their hardened heart is unable to become melted by the love of Christ and thus enabling them to love others. They secretly become your enemy and the enemy of the cross. Love is not felt as a reality. All emotions are held back and their stubbornness bottles up their feelings. which they cannot express. They are not horrified against cruelty and the destruction of lost souls in eternity. You talk to such people about their sins, and they say, "What have I done? Whom have I injured? I have wronged no man; I have paid all my debts; and I have done my duty to my neighbors and friends around me." Now in all this the hardness of heart prevents the person from understanding really what his duty is. He satisfied himself with not having defrauded, or with not having otherwise positively injured his neighbor. They are self deceived. 

2. Hardness of heart generally manifests in superficially confessing any wrong done to man or to God.

3. When they cause others to stumble or cause pain, they will take no remorse or any responsibility in setting things right by asking for forgiveness and repenting to another. 

4. The hard-hearted have no true brotherly love. They do not feel for Christ's people, or feel for Christ's church. They can see the church attendance is low, meetings poorly attended, but little of the spirit of prayer in the church, sinners remaining unconverted, and Christ dishonored in the house of his friends; and neither sigh nor cry in view of such a state of things.

5. Selfishness in trade is another effect and manifestation of hardness of heart. You will always observe that such men are difficult to get along with. Their rules are, "Take care of number one;" "Charity begins at home;" "Let every man look out for himself;" "My business is to make as good a bargain as I can."

6. God will be neglected; prayer will be neglected; praise will be neglected; obedience will be neglected; love will be withheld; confidence will be withheld; gratitude will be withheld; obedience from the heart will be withheld; and nothing will be present but cold formality and religious affectation.

7. The hardened heart is slow even to admit that it deserves damnation. It doesn't feel it.

8. Another of its effects and manifestations will be the absence of tenderness and kindness.  It will be unappreciative of the guilt of sin; it will not realize the nature of sin as consisting in the neglect of God, his rights, feelings, authority, well-being. The confession that this neglect is sin, will be cold, heartless, emotionless.

9. No conviction or guilt for harming others or disobeying God. 

10. The hardened heart cares not for the eternal state of human beings who have rejected Christ. Nor do they anguish or grieve for them.

Many seem really given over to hardness of heart and blindness of mind. This is an awful state to be in. It is awful to the subject of it.A hard-hearted person is in a most deplorable state; in a most unhappy state; in a most guilty state; in a state fatal to his salvation, if he abides in it. Again, it is an awful state in respect to all those connected with a hard-hearted person. What an awful thing it is for a church to have a hard-hearted minister! And it is an evil thing for a minister to have a hard-hearted church, and a hard-hearted congregation

Fanatics are always hard-hearted. Fanaticism is not to be confounded with enthusiasm. 
Persecutors are always fanatics, and they are always hard-hearted.

Fanatics feel, but not charitably, not kindly. Even in prayer, or conversation, or preaching, or exhortation, the very tones of the voice, the gestures, the looks, manifest the hardness of the heart. They do not speak tenderly or compassionately. If they have occasion to probe the conscience, to reprove or rebuke, they do not do it benevolently, but malevolently. They seem to take a pleasure in rebuke. They mistake their fanatical unkindness for Christian faithfulness. 

We see why it is that some people are always so full of fault-finding. They never seem to be kind, loving, forbearing. They do not yearn over those that are rebelling, and love them back to obedience;

Now, please remember that hardness of heart is a voluntary state of mind. It is a state of mind that continually resists the Holy Spirit; it is a self-justifying, cruel state of mind; it grieves, it dishonors God; it ruins the souls of men.

Pride and sin causes hearts to grow hard, especially continual and unrepentant sin. Now we know that “if we confess our sins, [Jesus] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9). However, if we don’t confess our sins, they have a cumulative and desensitizing effect on the conscience, making it difficult to even distinguish right from wrong. And this sinful and hardened heart go along with the “seared conscience” Paul speaks of in 1Timothy 4:1–2. Scripture makes it clear that if we relentlessly continue to engage in sin, there will come a time when God will give us over to our “debased mind” and let us have it our way. The apostle Paul writes about God’s wrath of abandonment in his letter to the Romans where we see that godless and wicked “men who suppress the truth” are eventually given over to the sinful desires of their hardened hearts (Romans 1:18–24).