The Almost King: A Study in Half-Hearted Obedience Text: 2 Chronicles 25:1-4
Introduction: The Deception of the Almost
We live in a world that loves the almost. We celebrate near misses. We applaud good intentions. Our culture is saturated with the idea that as long as your heart is generally in the right place, and as long as you are making some kind of effort, then all is well. This is the religion of moralistic therapeutic deism, where God is a cosmic grandfather who just wants you to be a nice person. But the God of the Scriptures is not the god of the almost. He is the God of the absolute. He is not interested in partial obedience, because partial obedience is just a polite word for disobedience.
The story of King Amaziah is a cautionary tale for the modern church. It is a portrait of a man who did many of the right things, who ticked many of the correct boxes, but whose heart was not fully surrendered to God. He is the patron saint of the almost-Christian, the man who looks good on the outside but is hollow on the inside. He did what was right in the sight of Yahweh, but not with a whole heart. This is a terrifying epitaph. It is a description of a man who was so close, and yet so far. His life serves as a stark warning that it is possible to be externally conformed to the law of God while being internally estranged from the God of the law.
In these first four verses, we see the pattern of Amaziah's reign established. We see a commendable adherence to the letter of the law in one area, juxtaposed with a fatal flaw in his fundamental orientation toward God. This is not just ancient history; this is a diagnostic tool for our own souls. It forces us to ask the uncomfortable question: Are we serving God with a whole heart, or are we, like Amaziah, simply going through the motions, doing what is right in order to achieve our own ends, with a heart that remains divided, un-surrendered, and ultimately idolatrous?
The world is full of almost-kings, men who want the crown without the cross, the kingdom without the King. They want the blessings of obedience without the cost of submission. Amaziah's story shows us the tragic end of such a path. It is a path that begins with outward conformity and ends in ruin, because God is not interested in renting out a room in your heart. He bought the whole house, and He intends to occupy it completely.
The Text
Amaziah was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Jehoaddan of Jerusalem.
And he did what was right in the sight of Yahweh, yet not with a whole heart.
Now it happened as soon as the kingdom was strong in his grasp, that he killed his servants who had struck down the king his father.
But he did not put their sons to death, but did as it is written in the law in the book of Moses, which Yahweh commanded, saying, “Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor sons be put to death for their fathers, but each shall be put to death for his own sin.”
(2 Chronicles 25:1-4 LSB)
The Divided Heart (v. 1-2)
We begin with the summary of Amaziah's reign, which contains both a commendation and a devastating qualification.
"Amaziah was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Jehoaddan of Jerusalem. And he did what was right in the sight of Yahweh, yet not with a whole heart." (2 Chronicles 25:1-2)
The Chronicler gives us the basic facts: his age, the length of his reign, his mother's name. But the crucial information is in verse 2. "He did what was right in the sight of Yahweh." On the surface, this is high praise. This is the language used for godly kings like David and Josiah. It means he maintained the temple worship, he opposed overt idolatry, he followed the ceremonial law. If you were to make a checklist of the king's duties, Amaziah would appear to be doing quite well. He was not a wicked king like Ahab. He was, by all external measures, a good king.
But then comes the hammer blow: "yet not with a whole heart." The Hebrew for "whole heart" is levav shalem. It means a complete, perfect, loyal, and undivided heart. It means integrity. It means that the inside matches the outside. Amaziah's problem was not that his actions were always wrong, but that his heart was not right. His obedience was external, calculated, and ultimately self-serving. He was willing to obey God when it was convenient, when it aligned with his own political ambitions, but his fundamental allegiance was to himself.
This is the essence of hypocrisy. It is not necessarily about committing gross, public sin. It is about maintaining a public facade of righteousness while nursing a private rebellion. It is doing the right things for the wrong reasons. It is a religion of performance, not of devotion. This is precisely what Jesus condemned in the Pharisees. They tithed their mint and dill and cummin, they were meticulous in their external observance, but their hearts were far from God (Matthew 23:23). They were whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside, but full of death on the inside.
A divided heart is a fundamentally unstable thing. As James tells us, a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways (James 1:8). You cannot serve two masters. You cannot have one foot in the kingdom of God and one foot in the kingdom of self. Sooner or later, your true allegiance will be revealed. For Amaziah, his initial obedience was a means to an end, a way to consolidate his power. But once he felt secure, as we see later in this chapter, his heart's true idolatry came gushing out. The lesson for us is stark: God is not fooled by our church attendance, our Bible reading, or our moral behavior if our hearts are not wholly His. He searches the heart and tests the mind (Jeremiah 17:10). He desires truth in the inward parts.
Consolidation and Justice (v. 3)
The first act of Amaziah's reign is to bring justice to the assassins of his father, King Joash.
"Now it happened as soon as the kingdom was strong in his grasp, that he killed his servants who had struck down the king his father." (2 Chronicles 25:3 LSB)
This was a necessary and righteous act. The king is God's minister of justice, appointed to bear the sword against evildoers (Romans 13:4). To allow the murder of the previous king to go unpunished would be to undermine the rule of law and invite anarchy. It would signal that treason is a viable path to power. So Amaziah, in executing these regicides, was doing his duty. He was upholding the stability of the kingdom and fulfilling the demands of justice.
Notice the timing: "as soon as the kingdom was strong in his grasp." This shows a certain political shrewdness. He waited until he was secure on the throne before acting. This could be interpreted as prudence, but in light of verse 2, it might also hint at his calculating nature. His actions, even when righteous, seem to be filtered through a lens of political expediency. He did the right thing, but he did it when it was safe to do so. A man with a whole heart for God does what is right because it is right, regardless of the political calculus.
Obedience to the Letter (v. 4)
Here we see Amaziah's most commendable act, an instance of clear and deliberate obedience to the written Word of God.
"But he did not put their sons to death, but did as it is written in the law in the book of Moses, which Yahweh commanded, saying, 'Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor sons be put to death for their fathers, but each shall be put to death for his own sin.'" (2 Chronicles 25:4 LSB)
In the ancient Near East, it was standard practice for a new king to eliminate not only his rivals but their entire families. This was called liquidating the bloodline. It was a brutal but effective way of preventing future rebellions and blood feuds. By the political wisdom of the world, killing the sons of these assassins would have been the smart move. It would have been the pragmatic thing to do to secure his dynasty.
But Amaziah refrains. And the reason is explicit: he obeyed the law of Moses. He is directly quoting Deuteronomy 24:16. This is a landmark principle of biblical justice. Guilt is individual, not generational. God may visit the iniquities of the fathers on the children in terms of consequences, but not in terms of judicial guilt. Each man stands or falls before the law on the basis of his own actions. This principle is a direct assault on the collectivist mindset of paganism and, I might add, a direct assault on the collectivist mindset of modern identity politics, which seeks to assign guilt and privilege based on group identity rather than individual responsibility.
This was a moment of genuine, laudable obedience. Amaziah had the power, he had the political justification, but he submitted himself to a higher authority: the written Word of God. He allowed Scripture to restrain his power. This is the very definition of a just ruler. And yet, we must remember the context. This righteous act was performed by a man whose heart was not whole. This demonstrates a crucial theological point: it is possible to obey the Bible in one area while disobeying it in another. It is possible to be orthodox in your doctrine of justice while being idolatrous in your heart's devotion.
This is why we cannot judge the state of a man's soul by one or two good deeds. A single act of obedience, however commendable, does not prove a heart is whole. Judas was one of the twelve. He cast out demons and preached the gospel. But his heart was full of greed. Amaziah's obedience here is a bright spot, but it is a bright spot on a canvas that is ultimately gray. It shows us that the battle for our souls is not won by occasional acts of righteousness, but by the settled, constant, and complete surrender of the heart.
The Gospel for the Half-Hearted
The story of Amaziah is a mirror, and when we look into it honestly, we all see a reflection of ourselves. Who among us can claim to have a perfectly whole heart? Who can say that their motives are always pure, their devotion never divided, their obedience never tinged with self-interest? "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). Like Amaziah, we do some things that are right. We obey, but our obedience is flawed. We love, but our love is imperfect. We are all, to some extent, the almost-kings.
If the standard is a whole heart, a levav shalem, then we are all disqualified. Our best deeds are stained with sin. Our righteousness is as filthy rags. If our salvation depended on the wholeness of our own hearts, we would be utterly without hope. But this is precisely where the glory of the gospel shines brightest.
There was only one king who ever reigned with a truly whole heart. There was only one man who did what was right in the sight of the Lord, perfectly, completely, and without any shadow of a divided motive. His name is Jesus Christ. He is the true King, the Son of David, whose heart was always and only bent on the will of His Father. He obeyed perfectly, not just in the letter, but in the spirit. His entire life was a seamless garment of righteousness.
And here is the good news. Through faith, His whole-hearted obedience is credited to our account. God looks at those who are in Christ and sees not our divided, faltering hearts, but the perfect, whole heart of His Son. "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). We are saved not by the perfection of our obedience, but by the perfection of His.
This does not mean we are content with our divided hearts. Not at all. The gospel does not just pardon our half-heartedness; it begins to heal it. The Holy Spirit is given to us to perform a divine heart transplant. As God promised through Ezekiel, "I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26). The Christian life is the process of God making our hearts whole. It is a process of sanctification, of learning to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We will not reach perfection in this life, but we press on toward the goal, knowing that the one who began this good work in us will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6).