Self-Will

Passages on this topic

From Nave’s Topical Bible (1896), a historical reference index. The groupings are Nave’s; the verses are shown in the text used across this site.

(Stubbornness)

Forbidden

• 2 Chronicles 30:8 Now do not stiffen your necks as your fathers did. Submit to the LORD and come to His sanctuary, which He has consecrated forever. Serve the LORD your God, so that His fierce anger will turn away from you.
• Psalm 75:5 Do not lift up your horn against heaven or speak with an outstretched neck.’”

Proceeds from

Unbelief

• 2 Kings 17:14 But they would not listen, and they stiffened their necks like their fathers, who did not believe the LORD their God.

Pride

• Nehemiah 9:16 But they and our fathers became arrogant and stiff-necked and did not obey Your commandments.
• Nehemiah 9:29 You admonished them to turn back to Your law, but they were arrogant and disobeyed Your commandments. They sinned against Your ordinances, by which a man will live if he practices them. They turned a stubborn shoulder; they stiffened their necks and would not obey.

An evil heart

• Jeremiah 7:24 Yet they did not listen or incline their ear, but they followed the stubborn inclinations of their own evil hearts. They went backward and not forward.

God knows

• Isaiah 48:4 For I knew that you are stubborn; your neck is iron and your forehead is bronze.

Exhibited in

Refusing to listen to God

• Proverbs 1:24 Because you refused my call, and no one took my outstretched hand,

Refusing to listen to the messengers of God

• 1 Samuel 8:19 Nevertheless, the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We must have a king over us.
• Jeremiah 44:16 “As for the word you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you!
• Zechariah 7:11 But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder; they stopped up their ears from hearing.

Refusing to walk in the ways of God

• Nehemiah 9:17 They refused to listen and failed to remember the wonders You performed among them. They stiffened their necks and appointed a leader to return them to their bondage in Egypt. But You are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in loving devotion, and You did not forsake…
• Isaiah 42:24 Who gave Jacob up for spoil, and Israel to the plunderers? Was it not the LORD, against whom we have sinned? They were unwilling to walk in His ways, and they would not obey His law.
• Psalm 78:10 They failed to keep God’s covenant and refused to live by His law.

Refusing to listen to (obey) parents

• Deuteronomy 21:18–19 If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and does not listen to them when disciplined, his father and mother are to lay hold of him and bring him to the elders of his city, to the gate of his hometown,

Refusing to receive correction

• Deuteronomy 21:18 If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and does not listen to them when disciplined,
• Jeremiah 5:3 O LORD, do not Your eyes look for truth? You struck them, but they felt no pain. You finished them off, but they refused to accept discipline. They have made their faces harder than stone and refused to repent.
• Jeremiah 7:28 Therefore you must say to them, ‘This is the nation that would not listen to the voice of the LORD their God and would not receive correction. Truth has perished; it has disappeared from their lips.

Rebelling against God

• Deuteronomy 31:27 For I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are. If you are already rebelling against the LORD while I am still alive, how much more will you rebel after my death!
• Psalm 78:8 Then they will not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, whose heart was not loyal, whose spirit was not faithful to God.

Resisting the Holy Spirit

• Acts 7:51 You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit, just as your fathers did.

Walking in the counsels of an evil heart

• Jeremiah 7:24 Yet they did not listen or incline their ear, but they followed the stubborn inclinations of their own evil hearts. They went backward and not forward.
• Jeremiah 23:17 They keep saying to those who despise Me, ‘The LORD says that you will have peace,’ and to everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart, ‘No harm will come to you.’

Hardening the neck (metaphorically)

• Nehemiah 9:16 But they and our fathers became arrogant and stiff-necked and did not obey Your commandments.

Hardening the heart

• 2 Chronicles 36:13 He also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God. But Zedekiah stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the LORD, the God of Israel.

Going backward and not forward

• Jeremiah 7:24 Yet they did not listen or incline their ear, but they followed the stubborn inclinations of their own evil hearts. They went backward and not forward.

Heinousness of

• 1 Samuel 15:23 For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance is like the wickedness of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, He has rejected you as king.”

Servants should

Be without

• Titus 1:7 As God’s steward, an overseer must be above reproach — not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not greedy for money.

Warn the people against

• Hebrews 3:7–12 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as you did in the rebellion, in the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers tested and tried Me, and for forty years saw My works. Therefore I was angry with that generation, and I said, ‘Thei…

Pray that the people may be forgiven for

• Exodus 34:9 “O Lord,” he said, “if I have indeed found favor in Your sight, my Lord, please go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our iniquity and sin, and take us as Your inheritance.”
• Deuteronomy 9:27 Remember Your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Overlook the stubbornness of this people and the wickedness of their sin.

Characteristic of wicked people

• Proverbs 7:11 She is loud and defiant; her feet do not remain at home.
• 2 Peter 2:10 Such punishment is specially reserved for those who indulge the corrupt desires of the flesh and despise authority. Bold and self-willed, they are unafraid to slander glorious beings.

The wicked do not cease from

• Judges 2:19 But when the judge died, the Israelites became even more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods to serve them and bow down to them. They would not give up their evil practices and stubborn ways.

Punishment for

• Deuteronomy 21:21 Then all the men of his city will stone him to death. So you must purge the evil from among you, and all Israel will hear and be afraid.
• Proverbs 29:1 A man who remains stiff-necked after much reproof will suddenly be shattered beyond recovery.

Illustrated

• Psalm 32:9 Do not be like the horse or mule, which have no understanding; they must be controlled with bit and bridle to make them come to you.
• Jeremiah 31:18 I have surely heard Ephraim’s moaning: ‘You disciplined me severely, like an untrained calf. Restore me, that I may return, for You are the LORD my God.

Exemplified

Simeon and Levi

• Genesis 49:6 May I never enter their council; may I never join their assembly. For they kill men in their anger, and hamstring oxen on a whim.

The Israelites

• Exodus 32:9 The LORD also said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and they are indeed a stiff-necked people.
• Deuteronomy 9:6 Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.
• Deuteronomy 9:13 The LORD also said to me, “I have seen this people, and they are indeed a stiff-necked people.

King Saul

• 1 Samuel 15:19–23 So why did you not obey the LORD? Why did you rush upon the plunder and do evil in the sight of the LORD?” “But I did obey the LORD,” Saul replied. “I went on the mission that the LORD gave me. I brought back Agag king of Amalek and devoted the Amalekites to destruction. The troops took sheep and c…

David

• 2 Samuel 24:4 Nevertheless, the king’s word prevailed against Joab and against the commanders of the army. So Joab and the commanders of the army departed from the presence of the king to register the troops of Israel.

Josiah

• 2 Chronicles 35:22 Josiah, however, did not turn away from him; instead, in order to engage him in battle, he disguised himself. He did not listen to Neco’s words from the mouth of God, but went to fight him on the Plain of Megiddo.

Zedekiah

• 2 Chronicles 36:13 He also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God. But Zedekiah stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the LORD, the God of Israel.

See Obduracy