Bible Synapse
Does God forgive sins, when Joshua said he will not?
Hard question · Who God is · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.”
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
In the new covenant: “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
If God’s people humble themselves, pray and turn from their wicked ways, “then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin”.
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
Joshua: “Ye cannot serve the Lord”, for “he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins”; if they serve strange gods, he will consume them.
And Joshua said unto the people, Ye cannot serve the Lord: for he is an holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. If ye forsake the Lord, and serve strange gods, then he will turn and do you hurt, and consume you, after that he hath done you good.
Of the angel God sends before Israel: “he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him”.
Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him.
The Lord proclaims himself “forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin”, yet one who “will by no means clear the guilty”.
And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.
The objection
John says that if we confess our sins God is “faithful and just to forgive us our sins”, and through Jeremiah God promises, “I will forgive their iniquity”. But Joshua told Israel, “Ye cannot serve the Lord: for he is an holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins.” Either God forgives sins or he does not.
The answer
Joshua was not saying that God never forgives. He was warning a people who were promising too lightly. Israel had just said, “God forbid that we should forsake the Lord, to serve other gods” (Joshua 24:16), and yet some of them still kept idols (24:23). Joshua answers with a jolt: you cannot serve him like that. The next verse explains what he means: “If ye forsake the Lord, and serve strange gods, then he will turn and do you hurt” (24:20). His verb is nasa (H5375), ‘to lift, carry, take away’, the common word for bearing or taking away sin. Joshua means that God will not pass over a covenant broken for other gods, or treat idolatry as a small thing, while his people cling to it. God had said the same of the angel he sent before Israel: “he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him” (Exodus 23:21).
This fits the very passage in which God describes himself, with the same verb, as “forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin”, while he “will by no means clear the guilty” (Exodus 34:6–7). God forgives the sinner who turns back; he does not excuse the one who goes on in rebellion. So 2 Chronicles 7:14 joins forgiveness to humbling oneself and turning “from their wicked ways”, and 1 John 1:9 joins it to confessing sin. Joshua’s warning led to exactly that. The people answered, “we will serve the Lord”, and Joshua told them to put away the foreign gods among them and turn their hearts to the Lord (Joshua 24:21–23). Keil and Delitzsch, following J. H. Michaelis, take ‘ye cannot serve’ to mean ‘not as you are now, by your own resolve, without true repentance and a clean break from idols’.
Other answers Christians give
‘Ye cannot’ as a call to depend on grace
Gill and others also read Joshua’s words as a reminder that no one can serve a holy God perfectly in his own strength, so that Israel had to rely on God’s grace and not on its own promises. On this reading too, Joshua was humbling the people, not shutting the door of mercy.
Still open
Commentators differ on whether Joshua meant mainly to test the sincerity of Israel’s promise, or also to foresee the idolatry that would later bring judgment on the nation (Judges 2:11–15). On either reading he was not denying God’s mercy to those who repent.
From the classic commentators
Joshua adds, "Ye cannot serve Jehovah," sc., in the state of mind in which ye are at present, or "by your own resolution only, and without the assistance of divine grace, without solid and serious conversion from all idols, and without true repentance and faith" (J. H. Michaelis).Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on Joshua 24:19 (1857–78), at Bible Hub
The general rule is that sins repented of will be forgiven.J. W. Haley, Alleged Discrepancies (1874), p. 241