2 Chronicles 15 · a question people ask
"If you forsake him, he will forsake you" (15:2). Can someone who knows God be forsaken by him?
Azariah's words are close to David's to Solomon, "If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever" (1 Chronicles 28:9), and 1 Chronicles 28's honest question asks this of that verse. Here the words are spoken to "Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin" (15:2), and 2 Chronicles speaks the same verb as a verdict twice: "You have forsaken me, therefore I have also left you in the hand of Shishak" (12:5), and "Because you have forsaken the LORD, he has also forsaken you" (24:20). How warnings like 15:2 speak to Christians today is read in two main ways, the same two set out for 1 Chronicles 28:9. Both agree that "if you seek him, he will be found by you" (15:2) 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 15:2, like those of 1 Chronicles 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.
2 Chronicles 15:2 · 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
“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.”
“You, Solomon my son, know the God of your father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind; for the LORD searches all hearts, and understands all the imaginations of the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.”
“Now Shemaiah the prophet came to Rehoboam and to the princes of Judah, who were gathered together to Jerusalem because of Shishak, and said to them, “The LORD says, ‘You have forsaken me, therefore I have also left you in the hand of Shishak.’””
“The Spirit of God came on Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest; and he stood above the people, and said to them, “God says, ‘Why do you disobey the LORD’s commandments, so that you can’t prosper? Because you have forsaken the LORD, he has also forsaken you.’””