On the surface, 2 Kings 23 looks like a story about reform, law, and destruction. But when you read it in the light of the whole Bible, it’s actually a powerful witness to the need for Christ and the kind of King He must be.
Let me walk you through it in a Christ-centered way.
Josiah and the Power and Limits of Godly Reform
2 Kings 23 presents Josiah at the very height of covenant faithfulness. The rediscovered Book of the Law doesn’t remain a private curiosity or a scholarly artifact. It becomes the public, governing word of the kingdom. Josiah reads it before the people, binds himself and the nation to it, and then acts on it with a thoroughness that is almost shocking. The chapter is a long, relentless catalog of destruction: idols smashed, high places defiled, pagan priests removed, false worship dismantled piece by piece. The king even reaches back into Israel’s tragic past, to Bethel and the sins of Jeroboam, and symbolically executes judgment there in fulfillment of the prophetic word spoken generations earlier. Nothing is spared. No sacred cow is protected. No compromise is allowed to remain.
The biblical narrator wants us to feel the weight of this. This is not half-hearted reform. This is not political posturing. This is a king who truly fears God and trembles at His Word. That’s why the Spirit includes that remarkable evaluation: “Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him” (2 Kings 23:25). Those words deliberately echo the language of Deuteronomy. Josiah is being described in the terms of the great commandment itself. Measured by the standard of kings, he stands at the top.
In other words, if ever there were a case study for what sincere, Word-driven, God-honoring reform looks like, this is it. The Law is honored. False worship is opposed. The covenant is taken seriously. Public life is reshaped by the Word of God. There is real moral and religious change. Scripture doesn’t downplay any of this. It celebrates it.
And then comes one of the most sobering sentences in the Old Testament: “Still the LORD did not turn from the burning of his great wrath…” (2 Kings 23:26).
That word “still” is devastating. It tells us that something fundamental has not changed. Despite the best king, despite the most sweeping reform, despite the most earnest return to the Law, the judgment remains. The exile is still coming. The sentence already passed on Judah because of her long history of rebellion—especially the sins of Manasseh—still stands.
This isn’t a narrative accident or a piece of bad timing. The Spirit is teaching us a deep theological lesson. Josiah’s reforms are real, but they are not redemptive. They can restrain sin, but they cannot remove guilt. They can cleanse the land, but they cannot cleanse the conscience. They can restore external order, but they cannot undo a corrupted heart or erase covenant-breaking written into the nation’s history.
Here we see both the power and the limits of godly reform. The power is real. God uses His Word to bring change. He uses faithful leaders to confront evil. He uses obedience to preserve and bless. None of that should be minimized. But the limits are just as real. Reform works from the outside in. Judgment, however, is not merely about present behavior; it is about accumulated guilt before a holy God. The Law can diagnose the disease and even restrain some symptoms, but it cannot cure the patient. It can command righteousness, but it cannot create it. It can expose sin, but it cannot atone for it.
Josiah can tear down idols, but he cannot change the hearts that keep making them. He can lead a Passover, but he cannot finally remove the curse that the Law pronounces on a disobedient people. He can model obedience, but he cannot supply righteousness for others. He can call Judah back to the covenant, but he cannot undo generations of covenant-breaking.
That’s why this chapter, for all its moral seriousness and reforming zeal, quietly but firmly points beyond itself. It creates a holy dissatisfaction. If this is the best king, and this is the best reform, and this still isn’t enough—then what is needed?
The answer is Christ.
Josiah is a good king, but he is not the King. He is a faithful reformer, but he is not a redeemer. He can enforce the Law, but he cannot save from the Law’s condemnation. He can call the people to love God with all their heart, soul, and might, but only Christ can actually fulfill that command perfectly—and then give that fulfilled righteousness to His people. Where Josiah’s obedience cannot turn away wrath, Christ’s obedience unto death does. Where Josiah can only delay judgment for a time, Christ bears judgment away forever.
So 2 Kings 23 doesn’t just tell us that reform is good. It tells us, more importantly, that reform is not salvation. It leaves us looking for a greater King—one who won’t merely clean up the ruins, but will deal with sin at its root; one who won’t only uphold the Law, but will fulfill it and satisfy its curse in the place of His people. And that King is Jesus Christ.
The Law Recovered and the Law’s Double Work
Everything in 2 Kings 23 is set in motion by the rediscovery of the Book of the Law. The narrative doesn’t treat this as a minor detail or a background curiosity. It is the engine of the entire reform. Once the Word of God is found and read, nothing can stay the same. The king tears his clothes. The covenant is renewed. The machinery of reform starts turning. Idolatry is no longer tolerated. False worship is no longer excused. The standard is no longer tradition, convenience, or political stability, but the written Word of God.
That alone is a profound lesson. God reforms His people by His Word. Not by charisma. Not by novelty. Not by cultural pressure. But by the recovery and proclamation of what He has already said. Josiah doesn’t invent a new program for Judah. He submits the nation to an old book—the covenant document that had been neglected, forgotten, and effectively silenced. When that book is heard again, it proves to be anything but tame. It interrogates the nation’s life. It names their practices as rebellion. It calls for decisive, costly obedience.
And Josiah responds exactly as a faithful king should. He doesn’t argue with the text. He doesn’t try to soften it. He doesn’t manage it for public relations. He takes it with utter seriousness. The Law demands exclusive loyalty to the LORD, and Josiah sets out to give it nothing less than that. The Word exposes sin, and he moves to cut it out. The Word condemns idolatry, and he dismantles it piece by piece. In this sense, the Law does what God always uses it to do: it reveals His holy will and presses that will upon His people with authority.
But 2 Kings 23 also forces us to reckon with something more searching and more uncomfortable. The same Law that drives this reform also stands as a witness against Judah. The chapter repeatedly ties what is happening not only to present obedience, but to past guilt—especially the sins of Manasseh. The verdict of judgment is not based on a momentary failure to get things right, but on a long history of covenant-breaking that has already placed the nation under the curse the Law itself had announced.
Here we see the Law in its double work. On the one hand, it shows the way of life. It tells Judah what faithfulness looks like. It defines true worship. It calls for obedience, purity, and loyalty to the LORD alone. On the other hand, it also functions as a prosecuting witness. It doesn’t merely guide; it judges. It doesn’t merely instruct; it indicts. It doesn’t only say, “This is what you should do.” It also says, “This is what you have not done—and here is the consequence.”
That tension runs all through the chapter. The Law is being obeyed more seriously than it has been in generations, and yet the Law’s sentence still stands. The reform is real, but the judgment is not revoked. The people are trying to conform themselves to the covenant, but the covenant itself testifies that they are already guilty. The debt is not theoretical. It is historical. It is cumulative. It is written into the story of the nation.
This is the classic Law/Gospel dynamic in narrative form. The Law holds up the standard: love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, and might. And Judah, even at her best moment under Josiah, falls short. More than that, she falls short with a long memory of failure behind her. Even when she tries to catch up, even when she reforms, even when she takes the Word seriously, the Law says, in effect, “The account is not empty. The record is not clean. The curse has not disappeared.”
Josiah’s obedience, sincere and exemplary as it is, cannot reach backward in time and erase guilt. It cannot undo the bloodshed, the idolatry, the covenant treachery of previous reigns. It cannot make the curses of Deuteronomy vanish. The Law that now guides his reform is the same Law that has already pronounced judgment. That’s the tragedy and the honesty of the text. It refuses to let us believe that moral improvement, even very real moral improvement, is the same thing as atonement.
And this is precisely where the chapter presses us toward Christ.
Josiah can read the Law to the people. Christ is the Word made flesh.
Josiah can enforce the Law. Christ fulfills it.
Josiah can call the people back to obedience. Christ provides the obedience they do not have.
Josiah can lead reform under the Law. Christ bears the curse of the Law.
Where Josiah turns to the LORD “with all his heart and soul and might,” Christ does so perfectly, without sin, without remainder, without failure. Where Josiah’s faithfulness can only stand as an example, Christ’s faithfulness stands as a substitute. And where Josiah is powerless to remove the judgment the Law has already declared, Christ steps under that judgment and exhausts it in His own death.
So 2 Kings 23 shows us the Law in all its seriousness and all its limits. It is holy. It is good. It is necessary. It exposes sin. It calls for obedience. It drives reform. But it cannot save. It cannot justify. It cannot undo guilt. It can diagnose the problem with perfect clarity, but it cannot provide the cure.
That cure is Christ alone. He doesn’t merely bring the Law back into view. He brings the Gospel. He doesn’t merely tell us what righteousness looks like. He becomes our righteousness. And He doesn’t merely announce the curse. He bears it, so that those who trust in Him are no longer under condemnation, but under grace.
The True Cleansing: From Idols to Hearts
The reforms of Josiah are nothing if not dramatic. The language of 2 Kings 23 is intentionally harsh and physical. Idols are smashed to pieces. Shrines are torn down. Pagan priests are removed. Bones are burned on altars to desecrate them. The land is treated almost like a polluted body that must be aggressively purged of disease. This is not gentle or symbolic reform. It is forceful, comprehensive, and uncompromising. In many ways, it looks like a holy war against false worship, a determined effort to bring every visible expression of Judah’s idolatry under the judgment of the Word of God.
And Scripture does not criticize Josiah for this. On the contrary, it presents these actions as obedience. The king is doing what the Law requires. False worship is not to be tolerated. Idolatry is not to be managed. It is to be destroyed. There is a necessary place for this kind of decisive, outward obedience. Public evil does require public correction. Corrupt worship does need to be removed. Structures that promote sin really do need to be dismantled. In that sense, Josiah’s work is both righteous and necessary.
But the story itself quietly exposes the limits of this approach. For all its thoroughness, this cleansing is external. It deals with places, objects, and institutions. It can remove idols from hills and temples, but it cannot remove idols from the human heart. And the proof is in what happens next in the history of Judah. Within a generation, the nation collapses back into the same patterns of unbelief and rebellion. The high places can be destroyed, but the high places of the heart remain. The shrines can be torn down, but the loves, fears, and trusts that produced them in the first place are still there.
That tells us something crucial about the real problem. The deepest issue in Judah was never merely architectural or ceremonial. It was spiritual. It was not just that there were wrong objects of worship in the land; it was that there were wrong objects of worship in the people. Idolatry in Scripture is never only about statues and rituals. It is about misplaced trust, disordered love, and rival loyalties. You can smash a carved image in a day. You cannot smash a sinful heart into righteousness by force.
This is where 2 Kings 23 begins to preach Christ in a deeper way. Josiah can cleanse a land. Jesus cleanses a people. Josiah can deal with the symptoms of idolatry as they appear in public life. Jesus deals with the root of idolatry as it lives in the human heart. The prophets had already promised this kind of deeper work: a new heart, a new spirit, a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone. That is precisely what Christ comes to give.
Jesus does not wage His war primarily against buildings, shrines, and statues. He wages it against sin, unbelief, and corrupted desire. He does not merely call for better behavior; He creates new creatures. He does not simply demand true worship; He makes true worshipers. He does not only expose false gods; He breaks their grip by replacing them with Himself as the supreme treasure of the heart.
That difference is the difference between reformation and redemption. Reformation changes structures, habits, and outward practices. And in its proper place, that is good and necessary. But reformation alone cannot save. It cannot justify. It cannot give life. Redemption, on the other hand, goes to the root. It deals with guilt before God. It deals with the power of sin. It deals with the heart’s deepest loyalties.
Josiah can command, threaten, and enforce obedience—and for a time, it works. The nation conforms. The idols disappear from public view. The worship looks right again. But Christ does what no king of Judah ever could. He forgives sinners. He justifies the ungodly. He sends His Spirit to dwell within His people. He writes God’s Law not merely on tablets or in books, but on human hearts. What Josiah tries to achieve by the sword and by decree, Christ accomplishes by His cross and by His Spirit.
So 2 Kings 23 teaches us to be grateful for outward reform, but never to confuse it with inward renewal. It teaches us to appreciate the destruction of idols, but to long for something more radical: the death of idolatry in ourselves. And it teaches us, above all, to look to a greater King than Josiah—one who doesn’t just clean up the worship of a nation for a season, but who makes His people new forever.
The Passover and the Greater Exodus
Right in the middle of Josiah’s sweeping reforms, the narrative pauses to highlight something deeply significant: the celebration of the Passover. We’re told that there had not been a Passover like this one since the days of the judges. That is an astonishing statement. It reaches back over centuries of Israel’s history—over the time of the monarchy, over David and Solomon, over periods of both faithfulness and decline—and says, in effect, that nothing in all that time compared to this moment. The point is not that Passover had never been observed before, but that it had never been observed with this kind of seriousness, fullness, and conformity to the written Law.
That detail matters because the Passover is not just another religious festival. It is the foundational redemption story of Israel. It reaches back to the night when God struck Egypt, passed over the houses marked by blood, and brought His people out of bondage with a mighty hand. To keep the Passover is to retell, to relive, and to confess that story: we were slaves, God judged our oppressor, God spared us by blood, and God brought us out to be His own people.
So when Josiah restores the Passover, he is doing more than fixing a neglected ritual. He is deliberately calling the nation back to its identity as a redeemed people. He is saying, in effect, “Remember who you are. Remember how you were saved. Remember that you exist because God judged and God spared.” In the middle of judgment warnings and covenant renewal, the Passover stands as a proclamation of grace in Israel’s history—a reminder that the LORD is the God who delivers His people by blood and by power.
And yet, for all its beauty and seriousness, this Passover cannot do what the first Passover itself could not ultimately do. It cannot stop Babylon. It cannot cancel the exile. It cannot finally deal with the sin that has accumulated over generations. The chapter makes that painfully clear. Even after this great act of covenant obedience, the Lord’s wrath is not turned away. Judgment still comes. The story still moves toward destruction and captivity.
That doesn’t mean the Passover is empty or meaningless. It means it is provisional. It is a shadow. It is a sign pointing beyond itself. The blood of lambs in Egypt spared Israel from one night of judgment, but it did not remove sin from the human heart or guilt from the conscience. The annual repetition of Passover in Israel’s life kept the memory of redemption alive, but it also quietly testified that something more was needed—something final, something decisive, something that would not have to be repeated.
This is where the line from Josiah’s Passover runs straight to Christ.
The New Testament doesn’t leave us guessing about this. It tells us plainly that Christ is our Passover. He is not merely another participant in the story. He is its fulfillment. The lamb in Egypt was a substitute, but only in a temporary and symbolic way. Jesus is the true substitute. His blood does not merely cause judgment to “pass over” for a night; it satisfies God’s justice once and for all. His death does not merely rescue from an earthly tyrant; it rescues from sin, death, and the wrath of God itself.
Think about the contrast. The Passover in Egypt brought Israel out of physical slavery, but many of those same people died in unbelief in the wilderness. The Passover under Josiah called Judah back to its redeemed identity, but within a generation the nation went into exile anyway. But the Passover fulfilled in Christ brings a greater exodus. It delivers not just from a place, but from a state. Not just from bondage to a nation, but from bondage to sin. Not just from temporal judgment, but from eternal condemnation.
Josiah can restore a feast. He can command the people to remember. He can organize the celebration and ensure that it is done according to the Law. And that is good and right. But Jesus does what no king of Judah ever could. He becomes the Lamb. He provides the blood. He is both the priest who offers and the sacrifice that is offered. And because His work is perfect, His Passover does not need to be repeated. It does not merely point back to an old redemption; it accomplishes the final one.
So the Passover in 2 Kings 23 is both beautiful and bittersweet. It is a genuine return to the story of grace. It is a sincere act of covenant obedience. But it also stands there, in the flow of the narrative, as a reminder that the old story is not yet finished—that the true deliverance, the true sacrifice, the true exodus is still to come.
And when Christ comes, He doesn’t just give Israel a better Passover. He gives the world the Passover the old one was always pointing toward.
The Tragedy of a Good King and the Hope of the Perfect One
The closing movement of 2 Kings 23 is meant to be felt, not just read. After all the energy of reform, after the sweeping purges, after the renewed covenant and the great Passover, the story does not resolve with lasting peace or spiritual stability. It resolves with death. Josiah, the best king Judah has had in generations, is killed. And the narrative moves, almost inexorably, toward exile. The tone shifts from hope to inevitability. The reader is left with a sobering realization: even this was not enough.
That is not accidental. The Spirit is teaching us how to read the whole history of Judah’s kings. Josiah is held up as the high-water mark. The text itself tells us there was no king like him before or after him, in terms of turning to the LORD with all his heart, soul, and might. If any king could have turned the nation around, humanly speaking, it would have been this one. If any program of reform could have worked, it would have been this one. If any season of obedience could have reversed Judah’s course, it would have been this one.
And yet it doesn’t.
Josiah’s death is therefore not just a sad historical detail. It is a theological statement. It tells us that the problem Judah faces is deeper than bad leadership, deeper than neglected worship, deeper than poor policy or weak enforcement of the Law. The problem is sin under judgment. The problem is accumulated guilt before a holy God. The problem is a curse that has already been invoked by covenant-breaking and cannot be wished away by even the sincerest late obedience.
There is something profoundly tragic here. A good king dies. A faithful reformer falls. And the nation he loved and served continues on the path to destruction. It forces us to confront a hard truth: even the best king is still only a man. Even the most sincere obedience is still imperfect. Even the most thorough reform cannot reach back in time and undo guilt, or reach deep enough into the human heart to cure it, or reach high enough into heaven to silence divine wrath.
In that sense, Josiah’s story is meant to leave us unsatisfied. It is meant to create a holy ache. We are supposed to walk away thinking, “If this is the best, then we need something more. If this is as far as a godly king can take us, then we need a greater King.”
And that is exactly where the story of Scripture goes.
Josiah points the people back to Moses, back to the Law, back to the covenant document that defines Israel’s life before God. And that is right and good. But Jesus does not merely point back to Moses. He stands as the One Moses himself pointed forward to. He does not simply call the people to obey the Law. He fulfills it in His own life with perfect, unbroken obedience. Where Josiah loves the Law and seeks to live by it, Jesus embodies it. He is everything the Law requires, in human flesh, without sin, without failure, without compromise.
Josiah cleanses the land. He purifies worship sites. He removes idols from public life. But Jesus does something far greater. He cleanses His people. He does not merely deal with contaminated places; He deals with contaminated hearts. He does not only reform external practice; He renews the inner person. He does not simply command repentance; He grants it. He does not merely demand righteousness; He gives it.
And most crucially, where Josiah cannot turn away the wrath of God, Jesus walks straight into it.
That line in 2 Kings 23 is devastating: the LORD did not turn from the fierceness of His great wrath. The judgment remains. The sentence stands. The exile is coming. Josiah, for all his faithfulness, cannot change that. He can delay consequences. He can restrain evil. He can call for obedience. But he cannot remove wrath. He cannot absorb judgment. He cannot satisfy divine justice.
Jesus can—and does.
He does not merely confront God’s wrath from a distance. He drinks it to the dregs on the cross. He does not merely acknowledge the curse of the Law. He becomes a curse for His people. He does not merely warn about judgment. He bears judgment in His own body. What stands over Judah at the end of 2 Kings 23 falls on Christ at Calvary. And because it falls on Him, it does not fall on those who are in Him.
So the end of Josiah’s story is meant to do more than make us sad. It is meant to make us look up. It tells us that the Old Testament’s best king is still not enough, and that is not a failure of God’s plan but part of its design. The entire history is pressing us forward, creating expectation, sharpening longing, preparing us for a King who will not merely reform, but redeem; not merely teach, but save; not merely rule, but lay down His life for His people.
Josiah is a beautiful signpost. Jesus is the destination. And 2 Kings 23 leaves us standing at the end of the road of human kings, ready—whether we realize it or not—for the coming of the perfect one.
In Summary
2 Kings 23 proclaims Christ precisely by showing us the very best that life under the Law can look like—and then by showing us, with almost painful clarity, that even this is not enough.
If you want to know what sincere, Word-shaped, covenant-minded obedience looks like in the Old Testament, you find it here. The Law is recovered. The Word of God is read publicly. The king humbles himself under it. Idolatry is not excused or managed but destroyed. Worship is reformed. The covenant is renewed. The Passover is kept with a seriousness not seen for generations. And over it all, the Spirit Himself gives this stunning verdict: there was no king like Josiah, who turned to the LORD with all his heart, soul, and might, according to all the Law of Moses.
In other words, this is not a half-hearted attempt. This is not shallow religion. This is not mere outward conformity. This is as close as the Old Testament gets to a picture of what wholehearted obedience under the Law looks like in a fallen world.
And yet—despite all of that—the judgment still stands.
The Lord does not turn from the fierceness of His great wrath. The exile still comes. The story still moves toward loss, ruin, and displacement. The best king cannot save the nation. The most thorough reform cannot erase accumulated guilt. The most serious return to the Law cannot undo the curse the Law itself has pronounced on covenant-breakers.
That is not a failure of Josiah. And it is not a failure of the Law. It is the Law doing exactly what God gave it to do. It shows us what righteousness looks like. It exposes how far short we fall. It can restrain sin, name sin, and condemn sin—but it cannot atone for sin. It can command life, but it cannot give life. It can describe holiness, but it cannot create holy hearts. It can reveal God’s will, but it cannot reconcile sinners to God.
So 2 Kings 23 leaves us standing at a kind of theological edge. We have seen the best case scenario under the old covenant: a godly king, a recovered Bible, serious reform, renewed worship, and real obedience. And still, it is not enough. Something deeper is wrong. Something heavier remains. Something only God Himself can fix.
That is why this chapter doesn’t just teach us about Josiah. It makes us long for Christ.
It leaves us longing for a King who doesn’t merely reform what is broken on the surface, but redeems what is ruined at the root. It leaves us longing for a King who doesn’t only command obedience, but provides the obedience God requires. It leaves us longing for a King who doesn’t simply announce judgment or delay it for a time, but actually bears it away in the place of His people.
Josiah can point the people back to Moses. Jesus is the One Moses was pointing forward to. Josiah can love the Law and live by it. Jesus fulfills the Law perfectly and completely. Josiah can cleanse the land. Jesus cleanses His people. Josiah can lead a Passover. Jesus becomes the Passover Lamb. Josiah cannot turn away God’s wrath. Jesus steps under that wrath and exhausts it on the cross.
So when we say that 2 Kings 23 proclaims Christ, we don’t mean that it does so by a simple prediction or a hidden code. It proclaims Christ by showing us the limits of even the best human obedience and the deepest need of the human heart. It shows us that if salvation depends on reform, we are lost. If it depends on kings like Josiah, we are still under judgment. If it depends on our returning to the Law strongly enough or sincerely enough, we will always come up short.
But if it depends on a greater King—one who obeys in our place, suffers in our place, and satisfies God’s justice in our place—then there is real hope.
Josiah is a beautiful signpost. He points us in the right direction. He shows us what faithfulness looks like in shadow form. But a signpost is not the destination. Jesus is. And 2 Kings 23, for all its focus on reform and obedience, ultimately leaves us looking beyond Josiah, beyond Judah, beyond the Law itself, to the only King who can truly save.
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