A couple of years ago I wrote a series here on how we deal with change. I’d like to supplement that by focusing on a balancing and steadying truth—that however much change we find in our circumstances, we belong to a God who does not change. I’d particularly like to explore the reasons for his changelessness.
We experience change in life circumstances from our earliest days. Some of these are changes we anticipate eagerly; as a child grows, he looks forward to every new skill, every new level of freedom. He moves from elementary to middle school (well, in my day we called in junior high …) and then to high school, and then, probably, to college, and maybe even to graduate school. When he’s 16 he can get his driver’s license; when he’s 18 he can vote; when he’s 21 he can rent a car—and do a bunch of other stuff that he really shouldn’t; when he’s 25, his car insurance rates go down, because his prefrontal cortex has finally developed.
But there are other changes that we don’t want. Someone we love moves away or dies; parents separate; a child becomes a stranger; finances fall apart.
When I was boy, and my father’s employment situation was a little tenuous, we moved several times as he followed the work. By the time I was 6, we had lived in at least 5 places in southeastern Washington State, finally ending up in Greenacres, out in the Spokane Valley. But 5 years later we moved away again, and this time all the way across the country, to Massachusetts.
That was hard. New schools in 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. And a longing for a sense of home.
Change unsettles us, takes us off our game.
And we all know that it helps a lot if we have elements of stability throughout the times of change. After the cross-country move I noticed that in Newtonville, MA, we lived a block from the Mass Pike, or I-90—and in Greenacres we’d lived within a mile of the same interstate. So, I joked, I’d moved across the country and still lived on the same street. More seriously, I’m glad that when my houses and friendships were changing during those early years, I had parents and siblings who were with me throughout; there was always family.
We need stability.
By far the greatest source of that stability is God himself. Our experience of him may change over time—Job was certainly aware of that—but he is always the same; he does not change.
How do we know that?
Well, the Bible tells us so. :-)
I find it noteworthy that this stability is implicit in his name—his personal name, that is, what Americans might call his “first name.” When Moses asks God what his name is, God tells him, “I am who I am” (Ex 3.14). Through the centuries, and across the cultural gaps, God remains who he is. And he demonstrates that to Moses there at the burning bush by calling himself “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Ex 3.6). Four centuries earlier he had made promises to those patriarchs, and now he’s going to keep those promises by bringing their descendants out of slavery in Egypt and into a land of their own, the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey.
Because he keeps his promises. He doesn’t change.
And today, when we call him Yahweh, or Jehovah, or the great I Am, we remind ourselves of that fundamental characteristic. We can count on him.
But Scripture does more than imply God’s changelessness; it states it outright. Both Numbers 23.19 and 1Samuel 15.29 say that God doesn’t lie or repent. James tells us that God has no variation or shifting shadow (Jam 1.17 NASB); and the Hebrew Scriptures end with the direct statement that “I the Lord do not change” (Mal 3.6).
And, perhaps surprisingly, this characteristic is attributed to the Son, Jesus, as well. The author of Hebrews quotes Psalm 102.26-27 and applies it to the Son:
Thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail (He 1.12).
And he repeats the concept at the end of the book:
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever (He 13.8).
Even as he became a man, he did not change.
Now. Why does God not change? I’d like to explore that a little bit by looking at why change happens to us and to our world, and then positing that those factors do not apply to God.
Next time.
Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash
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