Why do we change?
Do you ever think about why you’re not the same person you were ten years ago. Not whether you’ve changed, you obviously have. But, why. (Insert Ryan Reynolds meme)
You’ve aged, for a start. Your body has done things you didn’t authorise. You’ve learned things, picked up skills, been handed experience you didn’t ask for. You’ve been moulded by events that you had no control over: a job that ended, a friendship that soured, a diagnosis, a birth. You’ve seen enough of the world to see it differently. And if you’er a Christian you’re also being sanctified, changed by the Holy Spirit into something more and more like Jesus.
Every single one of those reasons has the same thing underneath it. You change because you’re not finished.
We change because we’re small, and time moves, and we don’t run the universe. We change because we can be acted on. We change because we have to. Honestly, if we stopped changing altogether, we have a word for that, it describes when we stop stop.
Psalm 102
I was reading Psalm 102 this morning:
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. The children of your servants shall dwell secure; their offspring shall be established before you.'
Psalm 102:25-28 ESV
The heavens, the actual sky, the whole physical universe, is described the way you’d describe a hoodie. It wears out. It goes threadbare. God changes it like a robe, takes it off, puts a new one on, and the old one passes away.
The universe is the thing that changes in this picture; God remains.
My old model
For years my mental model, or maybe assumption, of “God doesn’t change” was basically this: God is resolute. He’s made up his mind. He said he’d do a thing and he’ll do it because of his integrity & character.
Now, that’s not wrong, but it’s also not complete.
Because that version of unchanging is still a version where change is on the menu and God simply declines it. It’s a God who could shift, and chooses not to. Which quietly makes his consistency into an act of will, something that his personality is driving….
But, what would He change into?
This is what landed on me this morning.
God doesn’t change because there is nothing for God to change into. There’s no direction for it. No vector.
Think about what would have to be true for God to change. He’d have to learn something, but he already knows everything. He’d have to gain power, but he’s already almighty. He’d have to mature, but he’s not becoming anything, he already is. He’d have to be acted on by something outside himself, but there was nothing outside himself before he made it. He’d have to age, and he has no years to count.
Every road that change could travel down turns out to be closed, and not because God has locked the gate. There’s no road there in the first place.
Character, not personality
I think this is the distinction I’d been fumbling for.
When Scripture says God doesn’t change, it isn’t telling us his moods are stable. It’s telling us what he is.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Hebrews 13:8 ESV
if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.
2 Timothy 2:13 ESV
He remains faithful not because he’s gritting his teeth through our unfaithfulness, but because he cannot deny himself. For God to become unfaithful, he’d have to stop being God. Faithfulness isn’t a promise he’s keeping. It’s what he is.
I AM
Moses asks the burning bush the most reasonable question in the Old Testament: who should I say sent me?
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”
Exodus 3:14 ESV
Not I was. Not I will become. Not here’s my CV and my trajectory. I am.
And that’s the hope in it, which is what surprised me this morning. Your security doesn’t rest on God being stubborn, consistent & true to his word. It rests on God being God. He is dependable because he is ultimate, and there is nowhere else for him to go.
So have a look at the things you’re actually leaning your weight on this week: your health, your income, your competence, the people around you, your own resolve. Every one of them is mid-change. Every one of them is wearing out like a garment, some faster than others.
The only thing that doesn’t change, the only true refuge is God.