Does God Change?

I’ve been asked, “Do you think God changes His mind?” Maybe you have been asked this or something similar. This is a loaded question. Answering it takes careful discernment of the reason for the question. This question can have more emotional context than intellectual. A Christian or someone seeking God may ask this question when living in the setting of a certain sin. They may say something like, “The Bible was written thousands of years ago and the times have changed so much since then.” What they are really saying is this: sin dwells in their life or the life of someone close to them and they want it to be OK with God. They are hoping that since we are so much more sophisticated in our society than we were in “Bible times” (debatable) somehow God has also become more sophisticated and therefore changed His mind about certain things that were originally declared sinful.

To answer this question, “Does God change His mind?” you may first need to carefully uncover what sin they want to excuse as “normal” or culturally acceptable. Then you can give them some good news. God doesn’t change (Malachi 3:6) (Psalm 102:25-27) (Numbers 23:19) and this is a very, very good thing. Imagine if He changed his mind about you. If He took back the grace He has bestowed on you and your salvation by faith, that would be terrible. There would be no assurance of salvation whatsoever. All of Gods promises would carry no weight. Even the peace we experience as we anticipate Christs return to bring judgment would be lost. Thank God we don’t have to worry about that. No, God doesn’t change. That sin is still grievous to God, but there’s hope.

God forgives sin due to the atoning sacrifice of His Son on the cross. No sin is too big or too entrenched for Jesus’s blood to cover. All that is required of us is to repent in the power of the Holy Spirit and confess that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead and you will be saved! (Romans 10:9) We should never ask God to change to accommodate our sin, we should ask Christ to change our lives. 

Kevin Roark