1 Chronicles 28 · a question people ask
"He will cast you off forever" (28:9). Can someone who knows God be cast off?
In the chapter these are David's words to Solomon, right after the LORD's promise about him (28:6-7): "If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever" (28:9). Later, when "The Spirit of God came on Azariah the son of Oded" (2 Chronicles 15:1), he told Asa and all Judah and Benjamin much the same, with the same three Hebrew verbs (seek, be found, forsake): "if you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will forsake you" (2 Chronicles 15:2). 1 Chronicles ends with Solomon on the throne (29:23) and doesn't tell what became of his heart. 1 Kings tells that "his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father was" (1 Kings 11:4), and its honest question on whether he turned back leaves that open. How warnings like 28:9 speak to Christians today is read in two main ways. Both agree that "If you seek him, he will be found by you" (28:9) is a promise, and both hear the warning as a call to keep seeking him.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
A real warning to all who hear it
Those who read it this way take the ifs of 28:9 as spoken to everyone who has known God, and hear the same kind of warning given to Christians: "Beware, brothers, lest perhaps there might be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God" (Hebrews 3:12), and "For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence firm to the end" (Hebrews 3:14). On this reading, someone who has known God can turn away from him, and the warning describes what can truly happen.
1 Chronicles 28:9 · Hebrews 3:12 · Hebrews 3:14
Those who are his are kept
Those who read it this way take the warning as real, and hold that those who truly belong to Jesus will not be finally cast off. Jesus says of his sheep, "I give eternal life to them. They will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand" (John 10:28), and Philippians says, "he who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6). On this reading, those who finally turn away show that they didn't belong: "They went out from us, but they didn’t belong to us" (1 John 2:19).
John 10:27-28 · Philippians 1:6 · 1 John 2:19
The verses
“The Spirit of God came on Azariah the son of Oded. He went out to meet Asa, and said to him, “Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin! The LORD is with you while you are with him; and if you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will forsake you.”
“Then Solomon sat on the throne of the LORD as king instead of David his father, and prospered; and all Israel obeyed him.”
“When Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father was.”