Part 1: Stated | Part 2: Why?

The fact that God doesn’t change makes a difference to his people, and to everyone else. Let’s talk about that.

Trustworthiness

God keeps his promises. Sometimes we make promises with the best of intentions, but changing circumstances prevent our keeping them. I’ve done that multiple times, once with a big promise, to my daughter.

That doesn’t happen to God. As I noted at the beginning of this series, God told Moses at the burning bush that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—and the point of that observation is that now, in Moses’ day, he’s going to keep the promises he made to those patriarchs centuries earlier.

As he states in the Law of Moses,

God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? (Nu 23.19).

And again in the Prophets,

The LORD of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand (Is 14.24).

That means that he’s not like anybody else you know. He’s not like an unfaithful spouse or a deserting parent. Horrific experiences like those can change the way we think about every aspect of life; but we cannot conclude that God will act similarly.

Mercy

One consequence of keeping promises is mercy. When my wife and I got married, we made promises to one another. And because we intend to keep those promises, she has repeatedly shown me mercy, forgiving my transgressions.

God does the same thing. If you are his child, he shows you mercy.

Many of us, knowing our ongoing sinfulness, feel as though we can’t run to our heavenly Father. That’s exactly the wrong feeling. Because he keeps his promises—even when we don’t—he will show us mercy. He is exactly the person to whom we should run.

After all of Israel’s failings, God told them,

I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed (Mal 3.6).

Confidence

And that means that we can expect him to keep his promises. That is not presumption; it’s faith. It’s exactly what he wants us to do. The Psalmist writes,

The counsel of the LORD standeth forever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations (Ps 33.11).

Governments and economies fail. Relationships sour. Joys disappear. But God does not change.

Fear

This one is obviously a shift in tone, but it needs to be said.

God cannot fail, and thus he cannot be overthrown. Those who defy his will, who reject his character, who denounce his ways, will not prevail—and that places them in an infinitely precarious situation, like that of Jonathan Edwards’s famous spider. Apart from repentance, they will be crushed. And yes, they should be afraid. The wisest man who ever lived wrote,

I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him (Ec 3.14).

Victory

But for his people, God’s certain victory is a source of great joy and anticipation. God will never be defeated; his plans will be accomplished; and his people will be delivered.

The Scripture ends with a dazzling presentation of the glory of God the Son, who says to his closest friend on earth,

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, … which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty (Re 1.8).

That friend, John the Apostle, writes,

And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead (Re 1.17).

And then John says,

And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: 18  I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death (Re 1.17-18).

We can rest in this almighty, unchangeable God.

Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash

Part 1: Stated

So why do things change? Why do people change? There are many reasons, but I think we can summarize them in a few basic causes.

Maturation

As I noted in the previous post, all of us have experienced change as part of growing up. As we mature, we gain knowledge by observation and education, and we gain skills because our bodies and our brains increase their capacity for work. We get better by practice. And one of the great joys in life is to see that improvement happen—to realize that we can do things that we couldn’t do before, that we understand things that were a complete mystery to us.

Growth is a delight, because it means improvement.

But God isn’t like that. He knows all things; he can do all things; he’s already perfect, so he doesn’t need to improve—in fact, it’s impossible for him to improve. If you’re on the mountaintop, any movement is downhill. For God, any change would be a decline—which would be unthinkable.

Does his perfection deprive him of “one of the great joys in life,” the joy of learning and improving? Au contraire, mon ami. His perfection—or I should say his perfections—are greater joy to him, and to us, than mere improvement could ever be. His attributes—love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control, and all the rest—bring him utter satisfaction. And part of that satisfaction, I suppose, comes from our satisfaction in those same attributes as we experience them from him, perfect, unfailing, always sufficient.

No need to grow or learn or improve. Perfect.

Changeless.

Decay

Everything in this world—and every physical thing everywhere else in the universe—is on a determined course to the landfill. Your shiny new car will one day take a trip through a crusher, to either rust away as a nondescript hunk of metal or be recycled into something else. Your house, after some undetermined number of renovations, will fall to pieces and be demolished so the lot can be used for something else—even if along the way it achieves temporary status as a historical landmark.

And don’t even think about that swing set in the back yard; it’ll be nonfunctional far sooner than you can imagine.

Your body, and your mind, will fall into disrepair, if the Lord tarries, and “you” will be placed in a box and laid to rest.

All things must pass.

Except.

God is not like that. He does not decay; he does not even tire or sleep. He is the very definition of life and strength and vitality.

Changeless.

Irresistible Outside Influences

Sometimes change is forced upon us.

Years ago I was on a business trip to Puerto Rico. My task—a delightful one, I might add—was to drive around the island, visit the Christian schools I knew about, and look for any others along the way. (What a great gig!)

As it happened, a hurricane—Georges by name—had been through several weeks earlier. Recovery had been long, slow, and painful. Everywhere I drove I saw evidences of its destructive force. Roofs torn off. Powerlines—and poles—down. Fruit trees heavily damaged.

And this wasn’t “the big one.” Twenty years later Hurricane Maria came through, causing 15 times as much damage, damage that has still not been completely repaired.

People who think they want to ride out a hurricane are just not, um, right in the head. These are forces well beyond our ability to control or resist.

There are other such forces. House fire. Financial setback. Dissolution of relationships. We know how it goes. Sometimes it’s all just too much.

God is never in that situation. There are no forces greater than he is. He has no enemies who can frustrate, stymie, or even delay his plans. Even the greatest evil act of his greatest enemy—the assassination of Messiah—not only didn’t frustrate his plan, but was actually a key part of its accomplishment.

God is that great.

Changeless.

Next time: so what?

Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash

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 4^th, 5^th, 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th 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