Does God change?

"All that God is, He has always been, and all that He has been and is, He ever will be." This assertion, made my Anselm of Canterbury, expresses the immutability of God. To say that God is immutable is to say that He is not subject to mutation or change; that He never differs from Himself. For a moral being like God to change He would either have to go from worse to better or from better to worse. Since God is absolutely holy and perfectly righteous, He cannnot change for the better. And because God is eternally the same, He cannot change for the worse. God is morally always the same. Nor does He change in His essence, or nature. Whatever the attributes of God were before He laid the foundation of the world, they are precisely the same now, and will forever remain so. He is "semper idem," always the same.



In Malachi 3:8 God declares, "I am the Lord, I change not." He doesn't evolve, learn, discover, or develop. Likewire, He doesn't weaken, deteriorate, abate, or expire. He never says, "Oh no, I didn't know that." Nothing ever comes to Him as new information. Nothing dawns on Him. By the way, He is the only being in the universe who can rightly assert, " I change not."



In contrast to God's unchangeableness, we humans are subjected to steady, irresistible atrophy. That is, was are always wasting away, decaying, dying. To deny it is to deny the obvious. To try to stop it is foolish. We don't mind saying that someone else is changing. We say, "Isn't she looking older." "Isn't he looking more and more like his father." " She certainly has lost her figure, hasn't she?" But what we don't mind observing about others, we have trouble accepting about ourselves; even though the evidence is right there in the mirror. And we do try to stop it. Just about any part of the body can be surgically enhanced, improved or altered these days. We can have a nip or tuck, a lift or release, a re-do or un-do, deconstruction or reconstruction. We can exercies, diet, fast, or cover. But whatever we try, we can't stop the steady irreversible processes that are gradually sending each of us toward the grave. We change! We grow! We weaken! We deteriorate! We abate! We die! And while all this is happening to us, God never varies from Himself in any way.



Because of the immutability of God, our faith has found a firm resting place. We believe and trust in a God who never changes!!!