With a Subtitle: Reflecting on Malachi 3:6 and the steady, unchanging character of God amid life's changes.
A brief Excerpt: Malachi 3:6 reminds believers that God's unchanging character is why His people are never consumed, whatever the day brings.
Editor’s note – Malachi 3:6 rewards a second look: “I the LORD do not change” is the reason Israel survived its own unfaithfulness. The author traces that steadiness into the New Testament and into the ordinary anger and regret we struggle to reconcile with an unchanging God. We are running this piece because knowing God does not change should actually change how we read our hard days.
Children of the Promise
This verse seems innocent enough to read right over it, but it is a confirmation that God will never leave us, nor forsake us.
For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. [Malachi 3:6]
The children of Jacob is the people of Israel. Genesis 32:28
To begin with, we need to accept that Christian believers are children of promise, not by natural blood, at least not our own blood, but by the blood of Jesus. For we are the circumcision, Romans 2:28-29, who worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. Philippians 3:3
God does not permit us to be consumed because we are the true children of Jacob Deuteronomy 10:16 whom He is addressing in this passage.
Editor’s note – It is worth pausing here: this promise was first spoken to Israel, yet Paul insists believers grafted in by faith share it too. Sonship was never about bloodline first.
An Eternal God Beyond Time
Why then does God say that we are not consumed because He does not change? He does not change because He lives in eternity; He alone is eternal and not subject to time. This is difficult for us to understand, because in the world where we live, everything is governed by time, where one thing happens after another, and when two or three things happen simultaneously, we fall apart. We are changed by events, most of the time temporarily, like when we get angry and may end up doing things that are completely out of character and which we may regret later on. Some events may ever change us permanently, like when we lose our innocent trust in people after having been betrayed too many times.
God, on the other hand, has seen everything that will ever happen in our lives from the beginning of time to beyond the end of the ages. Not only did He know all that would happen, but He knew it from before the foundation of the world, and He made provision for man’s sin and his fall before He created man. 1 Peter 1:20, Revelation 13:8
Editor’s note – Notice the contrast: we are reshaped daily by grief and anger, while God has already seen the whole of our story before it happened.
Anger, Regret, and an Unchanging God
Why then does God get angry (Numbers 32:13) and why does He even regret (1 Samuel 15:35) things He has done? What are we missing here? One possible explanation can tie all loose ends together: Just as a natural father may sometimes need to show anger to effectively correct his children, even though he may want to burst out laughing, God communicates with us through those ways that will change us into more of His image. Even though He always knew (He just knows) what we would all do, His admonitions would be ineffective unless they were accompanied by appropriate emotions.
After we had our third child, I jokingly remarked that we should have had our third child first. Obviously, this was a tongue-in-cheek remark, but I realized then that we were much more relaxed and less stressed when our third child went through some of the difficult phases of childhood than we were with our first child. Imagine not only having experience with 3 children in a family, but with ALL children, past, present, and future. And God does not have to guess whether any particular child will be more strong-willed, more pliable, or have any other personality trait—He already knows it from before the foundation of the world.
He Knows You by Name
Learning something new changes a person; God never learns anything new—He already knows it; He always did. That is the reality of eternity, and there is no other god besides the Lord. (Isaiah 44:6-8) God knows His children, all of them, personally by name. He loves each one of us (John 3:16), and that never changes because God does not change.
A Word from the Editor
Malachi wrote to people wondering whether God had given up on them. He had not; the reason was never their performance but His character. Whatever regret you carry this week, the God who knew it before He made the world has not moved. Hebrews says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Salvation – Eternal Life in Less Than 150 Words
Distributed by – BCWorldview.org
This article appeared on and is reprinted with modifications and by permission.