Does God Change? Rethink

Recently we've been reconsidering many of the things we thought we understood regarding doctrine and faith. We have begun to question certain beliefs, church structures, and practices of the western church. Too often we have discovered what we think are unbiblical doctrines and activities. This causes us concern. We have deemed this our “Rethink.”

Our questions include, how did we arrive at our doctrines? Does the Bible really teach what we think it teaches? Why do churches do what they do? What is the biblical basis of church leadership structure? Why do certain traditions get entrenched?

It's easy to be spoon fed the conventional wisdom, but it's an entirely separate thing to search these things out for one's self. In the past we have read the Bible with these unexamined understandings and interpreted what we read through those lenses. We were too lazy about our Bible study, assuming that pastors and theologians were telling us the truth, but we rarely checked it out for ourselves.

Therefore, these Rethinks are our attempt to remedy the situation.

We should note that there is more than one way to interpret doctrine, more than one way to think about the faith, and more than one way to read the Scriptures. We would not suggest that our way is the only way, or the right way; we are not Bible scholars. But we believe that one doesn't need to be in order to rightly divide the Word of God.

Introduction

It s common to describe God as unchanging. The theological term is immutability. The word, like the doctrine, is unnecessarily arcane and pretentious. We have found this pretentiousness too often in our studies of doctrine. Impassibility, soteriology, regeneration, aseity, decretive will, hypostatic union, immanence, middle knowledge... the list of obtuse theological terminology goes on and on to no one's profit.

Though certainly God is way above our understanding (Ro. 11:34), at the same time there is an elegant simplicity to His nature. We should be able to talk about God, learn about Him, and worship Him with conventional terminology and everyday phrases. He is faithful, He knows everything, He can do anything He wants, He is everywhere, He is loving, merciful, holy, and just. 

In fact, most people just don't have difficulty describing God.

But theologians do. It seems that theologians are intent on systematizing Him, parsing every detail, and creating obfuscating words for every aspect of His nature. They seem to want to reduce Him to binary equations. By this we mean, if we describe God as good for example, then binarily it would require that God never causes hurt, disease, or disaster. Those things are bad, which contradicts good. The rationalization that comes from this is something like: "God doesn't cause sickness, but He will use it for His purposes." 

But God does cause all sorts of calamity, disaster, and catastrophe:

Ps. 119:75 I know, O LORD, that your laws are righteous, and in faithfulness you have afflicted me.

Is. 45:7 I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.

Je. 11:11 Therefore this is what the LORD says: ‘I will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape. Although they cry out to me, I will not listen to them.

God destroyed, on purpose, the whole of mankind except Noah and his family (Ge. 6:13). He promised to send all sorts of bad things upon Israel if they were disobedient (Le. 26:14-39). The point is, the binary equation good/bad is inadequate to describe God. He is good, even while causing calamity. 

He does things for His own reasons, reasons which we might not be able to know or reconcile. So when we come to the unchanging nature of God, He is beyond binary equations. Thus He is good and yet it does not violate His character to bring trouble. Similarly, He does not change, but He does change, as we will discover below. 

However, we are not going to undertake to resolve these seeming conflicts. Rather, we want to explore these ideas without preconceptions.

Common Scriptures

Let's examine a few of the common proof texts regarding immutability.

• He. 13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.

This beloved verse expresses a profound truth about our Savior. We immediately desired to consult Strong's to find out the Greek word meanings. We were a bit surprised at what we found.

"Same" is autos, which means self. We would use the term in words like "autobiography" (self-story), "autonomy" (self-governance), or "automatic" (self-operating).  

Literally, Hebrews 13:8 is Jesus Christ, yesterday and today, is self... This is reminiscent of Jesus' jaw-dropping statement, "Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM." [John 8:58] So the writer of Hebrews is actually telling us that Jesus Christ is. Jesus is before, He is now, and He is tomorrow.

Therefore, autos does not really mean "the same." 

An alternative word that the writer of Hebrews could have used at this point is ametathetos This word is actually found elsewhere in Hebrews, 6:17-18:

17 Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear... 18 God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie...

Ametathetos means immutable, unchangeable, which directly conveys the concept being described by the doctrine of immutability. But in these verses His purpose is what is unchanging. They don't describe His nature. And crucially, the author of Hebrews didn't use this word in Hebrews 13:8.

We would conclude that Hebrews 13:8 does not really describe Jesus as being immutable, but rather that Jesus is who He is.

• Ja. 1:17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

"Change" is fickleness or variableness. He is not arbitrary. This concept is more specifically a statement of trustworthiness.

• Mal. 3:6 “I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.

These two sentences almost seem unrelated. How do the statements connect to each other? And how are they relate to the narrative of the verses that lead in, where God was speaking to Israel about His intent to judge their sins?

The Hebrew word for "change" is shanah, which means to repeat, to do again, to say again. Here Shanah is coupled with the word lō, which means "not." God is not going to repeat, or not do again, or not say again. 

We like the last one, which would read

Mal. 3:6 I the LORD will not speak again. So you, O descendants of  Jacob, are not destroyed.

Interesting how this makes the verses understandable. God was previously speaking judgment against Israel, but decided not to continue speaking, and because He did this Israel was not destroyed.

So in actual fact, this verse is not about God not changing. 

• Ps. 102:26-27 They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded. 27 But you remain the same, and your years will never end.

"Remain" is continue, abide. This has more to do with God's eternality than with Him changing.

Changing His Mind

There is a Hebrew word found in certain places in the OT, all of which use the same word for "change," nacham, which means to be sorry, to console:

Nu. 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind.

1Sa. 15:29 He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind.”

Seems pretty clear. God does not change His mind. But now we come to a doctrinal controversy of sorts, since the same Hebrew word nacham is used here:

Ge. 6:6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

And also here: 

Ex. 32:14 Then the LORD relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

So the Lord is not a man who would change His mind. But He did relent from bringing disaster, and He regretted making man. The God that does not change His mind does change His mind. Yet there is no conflict between the two statements.

Other verses:

2 Sam. 24:16 And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented from the calamity and said to the angel who was working destruction among the people, “It is enough; now stay your hand.” And the angel of the Lord was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.

Jo. 3:10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.

Conclusion

God is not easily quantifiable. He does not change, but He can change without changing. These kinds of paradoxes delight us, and cause us to worship Him in wonder and awe. As soon as we free our minds from our western culture and our linear, logical way of thought, we begin to think like spiritual men, and we can then set our minds on things above, not on earthly things (Col. 3:2); we can be made new in the attitude of our minds (Ep. 4:23).