Have you ever wondered if 2 Chronicles 7:14 applies to us today? Many misinterpret this verse, thinking it ties modern disasters to our failures. This article unpacks its true meaning in the light of God’s grace and the New Covenant, offering a refreshing perspective on forgiveness and blessings in Christ.
Does 2 Chronicles 7.14 mean that God is sending disaster upon the world? Well, of course not. First of all, we have to locate that scripture. It's in the Old Testament.
It's under the Old Covenant, and quite candidly, it's about the consecration of the temple, and there's the killing of oxen and the killing of sheep, and it has to do with the consecration of that temple. Many, many thousands of years ago, before the cross of Christ, before His resurrection, and before the beginning of the New Covenant era. So when we think about the context of 2 Chronicles 7.14, the whole thing gets a whole lot clearer.
Maybe you've heard it quoted, "If my people will fall down on their faces and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will forgive them, and I will heal their land." Very quickly, we apply that to the United States of America, or maybe the church in America. Somehow, someway, we apply it and basically end up with the idea that all of the tragedy that's around us is our fault: the natural disaster that hit Louisiana, the fires that hit California, or the terrorism in New York long ago.
Do you see how we have a tendency, the religious leaders that are, to get on the airwaves and proclaim that these sorts of things are our fault and they wouldn't happen if we would just get down on the ground and beg and plead and ask for forgiveness and seek His face. I've got some great news for you. You already sought Him, and you found Him, and your sins have already been forgiven.
If you're in Christ, you're a totally forgiven person, past, present, and future. Hebrews 10:14 says you've been made perfect forever.
You're not consecrating any physical temple. You're the temple of the Holy Spirit, and you live under a brand new covenant, inaugurated at the death of Jesus Christ. We need to find the context for passages like these and recognize how important that context really is.
When it comes to living under God's grace, we don't have to ask and beg and plead and hope and wait for more forgiveness. When it comes to expanding our territory or blessing our lands, we need to realize that we've already been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus. We're part of a kingdom, not a physical kingdom, but a spiritual kingdom. We are already a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of God's own possession. We can look back and study 2 Chronicles 7:14. We can understand that it's the inspired word of the Lord, like every verse from Genesis to Revelation. But there is a surprise ending in the gospel.
We are dead to the law. We're not under the law. Christ is the end of the law for us because he fulfilled the law for us. When we realize that reality, we put Old Testament scripture in a new covenant context and it makes all the difference.
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Originally published Wednesday, 22 January 2025.
