38. God's unconditional Love will never change. The necessary actions required because He loves, however, may change constantly.
When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it. {Jonah 3:10}
When the Bible says that God never changes, that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, that’s true. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. But what God does is not the same yesterday, today, and forever. Because what He does is determined by what we need, and we are not the same yesterday, today, and forever! We are constantly changing, and as we spiritually grow and develop, what is in our best interest also changes.
It is a mistake to look at the actions of God in different circumstances in the Biblical record and to say, “Well, because He acted this way at this time, He couldn’t have acted a different way at another time.” That would be like saying that because I don’t currently feed my daughters at mealtime, there never would have been a time in the past when I would have done that. Yet, as we all know, mothers have to feed their babies for many months if they want them to live! The same selfless motive that drives us to meet our children’s nutritional needs when they’re infants drives us to patiently teach them to eventually feed themselves as they are able.
Our love for our children doesn’t change, even though the necessary actions for parenting change dramatically throughout the course of childhood and adolescence. The same is true of God. His Love will never change, but His actions may need to change constantly.
If you want to dig deeper—
Deuteronomy 29:22–30:5
Numbers 23:19
1 Samuel 15:29
Jeremiah 18:7-10
Jeremiah 26:1-6
Jeremiah 42:7-18
Jonah 4:2
James 1:17