Then Joshua said to the people, “You will not be able to serve the LORD, for He is a holy God. He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your transgression or your sins. Joshua 24:19, NASB
When my faith was young, Joshua’s statement in Joshua 24:19 seemed puzzling. Of course, I was a member in some churches that did their best to ignore anything resembling deep theological study. I remember a Q&A session with one of my former pastors in which this passage was read (not by me) then he was asked to explain it. The answer was that this was just an abstraction not to be taken literally and not to be applied to the Church age. Let’s take a closer look.