Thoughts on James: 1:16-18 (Part II)

“with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” (v.17b NRSV)

Our God does not change as the writer of Hebrews puts it, “For Jesus doesn’t change—yesterday, today, tomorrow, he’s always totally himself.” (Heb. 13:8 MSG). There is a timelessness and firmness to the plans and purposes of God,  “⁴ just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. ⁵ He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will,” (Eph. 1:3-4 NRSV) If these plans are to be stable, then there must be some sort of stability in God and who he is!

⁶ “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.^“ (Mal. 3:6 ESV)

The character of God is clearly established throughout the Old Testament, even by whiny, moping prophets:

² He prayed to the Lord:  “Please, Lord, isn’t this what I said while I was still in my own country? That’s why I fled toward Tarshish in the first place.  I knew that You are a merciful and compassionate God,  slow to become angry, rich in faithful love, and One who relents from _⌊sending_⌋ disaster.” (Jon. 4:2 HCSB)

Jonah hated the Ninevites and he knew that if they repented at his fiery pronouncements of doom that God would show them mercy and compassion, thus sparing them from his judgment. This is the last thing Jonah (and sadly many of us) wanted to for his enemies!

But what about the incidences where God seems to change his mind? Does this not signal some sort of change in the working of God? Let me first say that I am not an expert on the higher things of God, we would do well to remember God’s pronouncement in Isaiah:

⁹     “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

      So are My ways higher than your ways,

      And My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isa. 55:9 NKJV)

At the same time though, we cannot ignore those parts of the Bible where God seems to change his mind, this is especially true in several events: when Abraham pleas for Sodom and Gomorrah, when Moses pleas for the people of Israel, and when Hezekiah pleas for God to heal the illness taking his life. For the sake of brevity, we will only cover the incident with Moses and Israel.

⁹ Then the Lord said, “I have seen how stubborn and rebellious these people are. ¹⁰ Now leave me alone so my fierce anger can blaze against them, and I will destroy them. Then I will make you, Moses, into a great nation.”

¹¹ But Moses tried to pacify the Lord his God. “O Lord!” he said. “Why are you so angry with your own people whom you brought from the land of Egypt with such great power and such a strong hand? ¹² Why let the Egyptians say, ‘Their God rescued them with the evil intention of slaughtering them in the mountains and wiping them from the face of the earth’? Turn away from your fierce anger. Change your mind about this terrible disaster you have threatened against your people! ¹³ Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.* You bound yourself with an oath to them, saying, ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven. And I will give them all of this land that I have promised to your descendants, and they will possess it forever.’ ”

¹⁴ So the Lord changed his mind about the terrible disaster he had threatened to bring on his people. (Ex. 32:9-14 NLT)

I want to acknowledge first that God does change his mind; this is clear in many portions of Scripture. However, God does not change his mind in the same way that we change our minds. We change our minds because we second guess a decision; we do it because the rightness of our original decision is now placed in uncertainty. God on the other hand, he does not change his mind because of uncertainty but rather because of the positional acts he has allowed from intermediaries. For example, in this passage Moses interceded for the people; if Moses had not done so, God would have destroyed Israel.

Did God plan to destroy Israel? Yes and no; Yes, if Moses had not intervened he would have (and he was honest about it, why do you think he told Moses to stand aside?), but no, because he was certain that Moses would intervene. There is a curious, glorious mixture of God’s sovereignty and man’s free will being played out here; God did not change his mind because he second guessed the rightness of his decision; God responded differently based on 1) the presence of a mediator and 2) the appeal to God’s own character of compassion and integrity. Both of God’s actions would have been right; but because Moses intervened on Israel’s behalf, God responded with his grace rather than his wrath.

Want a more recent illustration? Look what the writer of Hebrews says about Jesus:

¹⁵ For this reason he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, because a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant. (Heb. 9:15 NRSV)

Jesus Christ acts as mankind’s mediator in the same way, except that while Moses could only postpone death; Jesus Christ has eliminated sin, death, and hell through his own sacrifice on the cross and through his resurrection from the dead. That is why the author of Hebrews goes to great pains in early part of the letter to show how Jesus is superior to Moses (and the Mosaic Law). Because of Adam’s decision to sin, we are all under God’s wrath and God is just for bringing out his wrath against us. However, in Christ, we have mediator who pleas on our behalf and the Father willingly and graciously accepts his mediation, giving us everything in him that we could never dream of otherwise; God is also just in allowing this to occur. The difference is that if we try to please him on our own, our efforts are vain; in Christ, we will always be pleasing to God, that cannot and will not change because of what we do or do not do.

So then, even though God’s response to us is different based on the presence or absence of Christ; his character is good and his integrity points to him being a God who does not change and who can be counted upon to fulfill his promises to us. All good gifts come from him and as we will soon see, all of this means that we are to be born again and made first fruits of his new creation.