The Never-Changing God
“I am the Lord and I do not change...” - Malachi 3:6
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” - Hebrews 13:8
“You were God, You are God, You will always be God” – are the simple but profound words in a worship song by the Nigerian Gospel artist Dunsin Oyekin. God never changes; from everlasting to everlasting, He is God. While everything else in all creation changes, God remains the same. Nothing from within Him or outside of Him has the power to change Him. This points to His absolute supremacy, absolute timelessness, absolute eternity; He is infinitely unfailing, completely sufficient, and many other attributes. No wonder He is before all things, and in Him, everything holds together. Let us worship Him for who He is!
That He is never-changing has implications for who we say He is and how we relate to Him. In 1 John, the apostle John belabors the point that God is light and in Him, there is no darkness at all. The words light, love, truth, and life often recur in reference to God to drive home the point that there is absolute inerrancy in Him. He is the absolute standard of what is right, what is good, and everything associated with these. It is ludicrous to think false teachers and prophets of that day, and many today could imagine that one could carry on in their sin and yet claim to belong to Him. They thought that they could throw off their moral restraints because what they did in the physical world did not really matter! However, God’s unchanging nature was demonstrated through Christ’s pure life here on earth. The apostle John admonishes us to live our lives as Christ did (1John 2:6).
Since God is unchanging, all the attributes we have discussed in our AFReG devotionals and the ones we will consider going forward will never change. It means we can depend on this never-changing God. For instance, it means nothing could ever change His love and compassion toward us. The prophet Jeremiah, who came toward the final days before Judah was taken into captivity, reflects on this in the middle of the book of Lamentations in chapter three:
22 Because of the loving devotion of the LORD, we are not consumed, for His mercies never fail.
23 They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness!
Even when God’s righteous judgment fell on His people Israel because of their constant rebellion and sin, it was not from a place of vindictiveness. He sent many prophets with messages to turn them back to Him. To remain consistent with His righteousness, God could not ignore their sin and, in His mercy, allowed the consequences to come. God disciplines the son He loves to draw Him back from distraction. It has been said that pain creates the ground upon which the flag of truth can grow in the rebellious heart. Yet even as the Israelites experienced judgment, we see through the Old Testament the hope of the Savior of the world through whom God would redeem, not just His people Israel, but people from every nation.
We can trust this unchanging God to adjudicate the affairs of this evil world even as He holds out His nail-pierced hands toward all of humanity.