Micah 3:6a states, "For I, the LORD, do not change." This verse gives us great insight into the character of God. If God is unchangeable, then all of the things written about Him centuries ago in the Old Testament and New Testament are still true today. God often is described as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Ex. 3:6). The reason He is referred to in connection to these patriarchs is to reiterate the fact that He is the same God today as He was to those men so many years ago. This may seem overly simplistic, but it is a profound truth about God. When we read of God's faithfulness, mercy, compassion, love, justice, holiness, wrath, glory, power, majesty, etc, in the Scriptures, we can know without a doubt that God still holds those same characteristics today.
This knowledge of God's immutability (immutable is another word for unchangeable) should directly affect our lives. For example, if we know that God is faithful to answer prayers (for this is revealed in Scripture), then we should not worry over prayers that we don't see answered right away. God has been faithful to answer prayers in the past, and His unchangeable nature tells us that He will do the same today. This should squash any anxiety we experience when we don't see immediate results to our prayers. Take justice as another example. We see many unjust things take place in our world without seeing any consequences for these evils. However, because we know from Scripture that our God will punish injustice and wickedness, we don't have to worry over this. God has always punished evil, and He will continue to do this, because He is unchangeable. Therefore, we do not have to worry over whether or not evil people will be judged or try to take judgment into our own hands, because we know that God will take care of it in His time.
Additionally, if God is unchangeable, we know that He is not bound by time. We see this in Exodus when Moses asks God how he should reply when people ask him who his God is. In Exodus 3:14, God said to Moses, "'I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.' " Again, in John 8:58, Jesus states, "'I tell you the truth,'" Jesus answered, 'before Abraham was born, I am!'" What does this mean? It means that because God is unchangeable, He is outside of time. Hebrews 13:8 explains this well when it states, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."
Read what Charles Spurgeon said about this doctrine of God:
All creatures change. Man, especially as to his body, is always undergoing revolution. [...] But God is perpetually the same. He is not composed of any substance or material, but is spirit—pure, essential, and ethereal spirit—and therefore he is immutable. He remains everlastingly the same. There are no furrows on his eternal brow. No age hath palsied him; no years have marked him with the mementoes of their flight; he sees ages pass, but with him it is ever now.
There is much more I could say about the immutability of God, but I will stop there. This posting is a bit different than my previous blogs, but the purpose of it is to teach you to study doctrine and theology. We are not called to be ignorant Christians, but to know and study what the Bible says about God! I hope that this lesson on God's immutability will not only deepen your knowledge of Him, but will deepen your faith in Him as well.
