Malachi 3:6 NKJV
“For I am the Lord, I do not change; therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacobs.
Philosophers ‘vaguely’ define God as the unmovable mover, to imply that He doesn’t move and yet causes things to move. We can also rightly refer to him as the Unchangeable Changer; to imply that God can effect change without him having to change his very being. And that is who God is.
The seemingly two images we have of God in the bible can easily lead one to believe that God is schizophrenic; that one moment he is very good and the other mood he is an outrageous killer. And yet God is giving us hints and clues about his very nature even before the coming of his son; he tells us that he does not change (Malachi 3:6). The coming of Jesus crowns it all for us for He is the express image of God (Heb. 1:3). Thus, for us to have the unaltered and uncorrupted knowledge about God, we look to Jesus. Jesus is the Truth about the Father.
When Jesus comes, he reveals to us a God who has been good from the start. John the Baptist was even in shock that Jesus was a friend of sinners and healing them; and had to send his disciples to confirm whether Jesus was the messiah or not (Matt. 11:2-3). This is because the image he had of God was one who punishes sinners and one who would ‘cleanse’ the peoples by eliminating the unrighteous. And sadly, this is the image of God that has stuck even after Jesus revealing the very nature of God. The image most people hold of God is so blurred that even humans are better compared to God. We have parents who care more about their children than God does for his own. We have parents who would never punish their kids with an ailment and God would literally enjoys punishing his children with misfortunes and illnesses just to teach them a lesson. See? That is how flawed our image is of God. Thank God for Jesus who has shone light to us about the true nature of God.
God doesn’t change. He is good, gracious, merciful, righteous, loving, light, healer, provider, forgiving, holy, pure; and his nature will never change. Thus, for the believer today, when we respond ‘All the time’ to the confession that ‘God is good…,’ we are proclaiming and acknowledging the unchanging nature of God. God is unchanging from everlasting to everlasting; he is ever faithful and never failing, as a one Sinach puts it in her song ‘Unchanging God’. The unchanging nature of God is of paramount significance to the believer today.
As believers today, we can be more than assured that because God is unchanging, everything he has freely given to us in the son is unchangeable too. We know that the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable (Rom. 11:29). We have been called to believe in Jesus. And because we have believed, we are more than sure that our belief in him can never change. We have been born of God (refer to the articles ‘Spirit, Soul and Body 1 & 2’) and that cannot be undone. We have been made holy, pure and sanctified; and that cannot be undone. We have been made righteous – we are now in right standing and relationship with God, and that too cannot be undone. God has forgiven us all our sins; past, present and future sins; and nothing we do can ever change that because as He lives, He has chosen to remember not our sins (Heb. 8:12). God dwells with and in us and that too cannot be changed. We have been sanctified, redeemed and these too cannot be changed. For the believer, every finished work of Jesus on the cross cannot be changed because it comes from the very nature of God.
Dearly beloved saint, God doesn’t change and he will never change. He is good all the time (that famous chorus proclamation we say without ever meaning it). It is you and I that need to have a paradigm shift. We need to have our minds renewed so that our perception of Him can be aligned with his very nature as revealed to us by Jesus. When we begin to behold God as he truly is, we will then begin to see how transformative the manifestation of his nature will be in our very lives. We are in fellowship with a good God whose nature will never change. We can rest in that and enjoy the relationship we have with our good good Father. You are blessed, pure, holy, sanctified, forgiven, healed, prosperous, full of grace, righteous, anointed, full of power, and have the whole of God living with and in you. Grace and shalom to you.
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