The Good News of God’s Unchanging Love

“For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’”

Malachi 3:6-7

Why are you still here? Why am I still here? I do not mean to ask you simply why are you still sitting in the pew in front of me, or why I am still standing behind this pulpit; but rather, why did you and I wake up this morning again? It was not inevitable that we should have. It was not inevitable for collective Jacob either.

What would have been Jacob’s end is described. If left to their own devices, this would have been them. The word כָּלָה is used, meaning “consumed,” yet in this form can more simply mean “cease” or be “cut off.”

There is no greater change than the change from either non-existence to existence, or else (what would be the case here) existence to non-existence. But what cries out for explanation here is how they are not consumed.

Everything said in the book thus far would give ample reason for the children of Jacob to be cut off. Yet here they are.

Doctrine. The immutability of God holds judgment back from us and brings us back to Him.

• The truth of divine immutability

• The grace of divine immutability

The Truth of Divine Immutability

God’s own words through the prophet reveal this truth about Himself: ‘I the LORD do not change’ (v. 6a). The Hebrew word for change (שָׁנָה) does feature some diversity in other passages, also having the sense of varying, disguising, repeating, or even striking. I used to illustrate the total mutability of time and matter by the striking of a chalk on the chalkboard, or, where the students could not see close enough, the striking of the board with the eraser to let the chalk-dust fly as a picture of what was happening even on the sub-atomic level.

The Psalmist approaches the same truth poetically, by comparing Creator to creation as if the latter were pairs of old clothes in a rapid process of deterioration as the immutable One passes through them, as if simultaneously revealing Himself through them and veiling Himself with them.

Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end (Ps. 102:25-27).

In the philosophy class I’m teaching right now, one of the ancient voices we have heard from was an obscure Greek philosopher who lived at about the same time that Malachi delivered his message. His name was Heraclitus, and he was famous for saying, “The only thing constant is change,” and “You can never step into the same river twice.” For him, everything was in a state of flux, so much so, that one of his disciples took things a step further and doubted if any of us have ever stepped into the same river even once. But this is not merely some scientific or philosophical problem. When we become most withered and cynical and bitter, we start to see all abyss and no solid ground under our feet. So for some, this truth that God does not change starts to sound like an abstraction. We need to know how it gives us a ground for life.

Some have no trouble with affirming that God does not change in His essential attributes, but that, “Surely He experiences changes of state or mind or position or something that allows Him to interact with people in real life. I need him to step into that river to get me out of it!”

The amount of errors this seemingly harmless statement commits would keep us here for a while if I were to explain each of them. But let us start with this: The Bible itself describes God’s unchanging nature as a total immutability, as admitting no change to His being or attributes, or as James describes God “with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (1:17).

He is unchanging in His plans or purposes:

God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? (Num. 23:19)

My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose (Isa. 46:10).

All his works were known to him from the beginning of the world (Acts 15:18).

Here especially we can see the place of this truth in Malachi 3:6. We want to know not only that God is like this in Himself, but this most solid ground is made ours.

The Grace of Divine Immutability

This truth is derived from the bulk of verses 6 and 7 and we can see a division into two graces because there are two problems. First, there is the problem of the peoples’ sin; and second, there is the problem of the need to return in repentance.

But what stands over both is the good news of God’s immutability. Because I do not change, God is saying, ‘therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed’ (v. 6b). This is an all-important THEREFORE.

Look at the contrast in that first problem. Remember, their first problem is that they have sinned: ‘From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them’ (v. 7a). The description of their sin is of a long-standing record of sin, a constant habit of sin, a story of sin that characterizes their whole history. You could say that Israel has been unchangeably sinful! If I may borrow again from Heraclitus of old: for God’s Old Testament people, the only thing constant was sin. This testimony remains through the time of Jesus, as Stephen accused them,

You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you (Acts 7:51).

So the first grace of divine immutability is that His determination to save and the good of His promises are not altered by our performance: “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Rom. 11:29). That is the LORD’s logic through the prophet here: I am immutable, therefore you are not consumed.

How does that make any sense if God is a consuming fire (e.g., Deuteronomy 4:24; cf. Hebrews 10:27; 12:29)—and immutably so—and their sin makes them so utterly consumable? It is because our God, who is immutably faithful to His holy intention to punish is also faithful to His gracious intention to forgive and to restore. Every divine determination is unchanging.

Now the second problem is always return. Even if we recognize our sin, what we do about it? ‘Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts’ (v. 7b). Now there is a right way to read this and a wrong way to read this. This is an imperative, an exhortation, an encouragement. This is not a speculative theological statement to be placed in opposition to the lofty theological statement that Malachi just relayed to us in verse 6. He just told us that God does not change. That is a direct statement about God’s nature. It may be objected,

“Well, maybe God does change after all! That the Lord’s ‘return’ to us is stated as if following our return to Him, and this implies that our return to Him causes Him to move back toward us. Does not James even say, ‘Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you’ (Jas. 4:8). Therefore, though we can affirm that God does not change in His own character, surely, as a personal agent, He at least moves in concert with our personal movements.”

On the contrary, as the great Puritan theologian, Stephen Charnock, wrote, “observe that when God is said to draw near to us when we drawn near to him (James 4:8), it is not by local motion or change of place but by special and spiritual influences, by exciting and supporting grace.”1

And beyond that, the Psalmist says,

“Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether” (Ps. 139:4).

These statements are not teaching us that we have causal power over God. The reason for the expression that joins God’s return to ours is by way of analogy so that we can understand it. God does not “return” in the same way as us to begin with, as if He had gone off somewhere. That would be us who wandered!

This is all good news about God. Notice I did not say that there was good news about these people. For the majority of them, their hardened hearts remain. Notice the closing words that transition to the next section: ‘But you say, ‘How shall we return?’ (v. 7c), as if He had just communicated to them in riddles. He had just told them that the HOW of the return rests in God. God is not merely willing to meet them halfway. God has remained, throughout time, with His eternal arms opened wide. As time and their sin both fall away like sawdust off the blade of an eternal goodness, God had been immutably good toward them: “I spread out my hands all the day to a rebellious people” (Isa. 65:2).

By these words, they are defiantly choosing to close their eyes and bury their hearts further and further into the sinking sands of time.

Practical Use of the Doctrine

Use 1. Correction. To those most difficult objections that God’s purposes must be changeable since Scripture often communicates what are called “counterfactuals”—i.e., some description of what did not happen, or what would have happened if past events had occurred differently contrary to the facts—usually in the context of a call to repentance, such as when Moses interceded for Israel at Mount Sinai or with the Ninevites in response to Jonah’s message.

As Charnock summarizes it:

The decree itself was eternal and immutable, but the thing decreed was temporary and mutable. As a decree from eternity does not make the thing decreed to be eternal, so neither does the immutability of the decree render the thing so decreed to be immutable.2

As to why God would speak in this way, Charnock adds,

that though God does not punish, his will is not changed, because his will was to declare the demerit of sin and his right to punish upon the commission of it.3

And as I always say when discussing this subject or when working through a text containing one of these counterfactuals, Rule Number 1: Need to Know Basis. When God calls to repentance and faith, He has not called a philosophical symposium for us to offer models of the ordering of His decree. He has cleared a path for us to escape the wrath to come. No one sentence in any book or from any speaker is speaking about everything all at once: imperatives and indicatives are not to be confused with each other. This doesn’t magically change when God is the speaker.

Use 2. Instruction. Man is utterly different than God when it comes to change: “for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19); and about all creatures, if God should “take away their breath, they die, and return to their dust” (Ps. 104:29). No one needs an immutable Being to exist more desperately than beings that are nothing but mutable. If we are made of that same river that you can’t step into twice, then, we of all things need something that abides and does not ebb and flow. If God were not immutable in His knowledge or His will, we would not be able to trust in any of His promises. If He changed in His love for us because of how we perform every day, His commitment to us would surely sink.

Use 3. Admonition. If God never changes, then the knowledge, holiness and justice of God never change; and that means that His offense against all particular sins never changes. The only question will be whether that is punished in the sinner in a fire that is never quenched, or on a Substitute who is able to absorb such wrath on behalf of sinners. But unrepentant sinner, know this: there is no time that can the eye of God from your sin, no space that can remove the presence of God from your sin, no performance of actions that can change the scales of His justice against the weight of your sin. Apart from Christ, each and every sin is unchangeably more known to His mind as an object of His loathing than was before your mind when first proposed as an object of your love.

Use 4. Consolation. For us who believe, this therefore is a gospel therefore. It is good news that God is immutable. “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you” (Jer. 31:3). But this immutable hope passes through not just a river, but a sea, of change that tempts us to despair. Even something as sure as that sunrise we take for granted loses its predictability for us. As our dreams come and go, as loved ones fall away, and things we thought we could count on count us out, even the familiar starts to grow unfamiliar.

I will give Charnock one more parting word:

The time of trial is appointed by his immutable will (Dan. 11:35); it is not in the power of the sufferer’s will to shorten it, nor in the power of the enemies’ will to lengthen it. Whatsoever does happen has been decreed by God (Eccles. 6:10): ‘That which has been is named already.’ Therefore, to murmur or be discontented is to contend with God, who is mightier than we, to maintain his own purposes.4

Remember this gospel therefore that follows from the God who never changes. Everything about our salvation and what we are being saved unto has this same unchanging and unchangeable quality. So our perseverance is rooted in God’s immutable election (2 Tim. 2:19), that our names are written in heaven (Lk. 10:20); that God’s strength to save is immovable (Isa. 26:4), and the same of His kindness (Isa. 54:10), and that our hopes must be anchored in that “kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Heb. 12:28).

It may be that we never step into the same river twice down here, but even that must have its source and end, and you will see that it is God who has remained.

_______________________________________

1. Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, Volume I (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 491-92.

2. Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, I:490.

3. Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, I:510.

4. Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, I:532.