There seems to be a growing number of people who believe that the God of the Old Testament is not the same God of the New Testament. This belief is not exactly new or revolutionary. It really has been around for centuries, ever since Marcion spouted ideas like this and got excommunicated from the church for being a heretic in the year 144 A.D. But as the years pass by, we are seeing more and more professing believers agree with this sentiment—that the loving and lovable Jesus who arrived on earth in the first century A.D. is not the same God as the fiery and vengeful One of old.
In Ligonier Ministries’ biennial State of Theology survey, they asked both believers and unbelievers whether they believed that “God learns and adapts to different situations.” Forty-eight percent of professing Evangelicals who participated in the survey agreed with this statement.[1] This means that about half of supposedly Bible-believing Christians in this country believe that God is able to and does change over time.
However, this belief is not a biblical one, and as we’ll see in a moment, how we think about this issue has a great impact on our Christian faith.
Let’s look at this question one step at a time. First, can God learn? Are there things that He was ever unaware of, or are there things that He learned or discovered over time? According to Scripture, the answer is no. The Bible teaches that God is omniscient, which is a word derived from Latin that refers to the doctrine of God being all-knowing. First John 3:20 says that God “knows everything,” (ESV) and Isaiah 46:10 says that God has determined and known all that will happen in the future since the beginning of time. God holds all knowledge of everything—past, present, and future— and because of this, He is literally unable to learn new things.
Second, can God change? Did He change from an angry, jealous, wrathful God into a loving, gracious, merciful God when Jesus came to earth? Both the Old and New Testaments agree that this is also not true. Speaking for God, the prophet Malachi wrote, “For I the LORD do not change;” (Malachi 3:6), and James said in his letter that “there is no shadow or variation due to change” with our Heavenly Father (James 1:17). God’s Word clearly teaches that—
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8
Because God is immutable, or unable to change, we can trust that God is who He has always been and He has always been who He is. God is and always has been angry and loving, jealous and gracious, wrathful and merciful, even if these attributes seem contradictory to us. In the Old Testament, we can see that God is gracious and merciful towards His people (Exodus 34:6). In the New Testament, we can see that Jesus gets angry about sin and speaks about the wrath to come for unbelievers (John 2:13-17, 3:36). The God we know today is the same exact God who walked on the earth two thousand years ago healing the sick and raising the dead, and He is the same exact God who created this world out of nothing and commanded His set apart people to destroy sinful civilizations. God has never changed, nor will He ever change in the future.
Third, can God adapt? Is it possible for God to regret or change His mind about things? After all, doesn’t Genesis 6 say that “the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth”? (v. 6) And didn’t God say to Samuel once, “I regret that I have made Saul king”? (1 Samuel 15:11) At first glance, it may appear that God has changed mind about things before. However, it is always a good policy to base your beliefs and theology on what the whole of Scripture teaches, rather than a verse or two, especially when that verse or two may be difficult to understand. As we read through the Bible, we can clearly see over and over again that God is omniscient, sovereign, immutable, and faithful. He is all-knowing, in control, unchanging, and never breaks His promises. Because of all this, we can be certain that God does not actually change His mind. Pastor Steven Lawson describes it in this way—
“From man’s perspective, God changed His mind. But from the divine perspective, God did what He had always eternally purposed to do. There was no alteration to the immutable God…This self-revelation of God is to accommodate man’s weakness in understanding Him, not indicating any true change in His character or purpose.”[2]
Can God learn, change, or adapt? Simply put: no. The Bible reveals to us that God is omniscient, all-knowing and unable to learn new things. God is immutable, unable to change His character or how He operates. God has a sovereign will which He never deviates from, regrets, or changes his mind about.
But why is this so important to know and believe? Why should we acknowledge and proclaim that God is unable to learn and adapt? Because what we believe about God affects our salvation. Gerald Bray writes,
“The salvation of God’s people is directly dependent on his immutability, which is presented in the Bible as the guarantee of the truth of the gospel…It is because God does not change that he can (and does) apply the same standards and principles to his actions, whatever the circumstances might be. It is this consistency that guarantees his justice, since, if he were susceptible to change according to the situation facing him, there is no telling what he might end up doing. If God were swayed by every change of fortune, he could hardly be trusted to save us from anything.”[3]
Or, as Jen Wilkin succinctly puts it,
“We fervently need God to stay the same—our great hope of salvation lies in his remaining exactly who he says he is, doing exactly what he has said he will do.”[4]
It is because God cannot learn, change, or adapt that we can trust Him to be true to His Word and save us from our sins. Because He never changes His mind, we can trust that what He said is right will always be right and what He said is wrong will always be wrong. Because He is the same God He has always been, we can trust that He will never change His standards. We can trust our omniscient, immutable, sovereign God to be faithful to save us regardless of the ever-changing chaos of the world we live in.
Can God learn, change, or adapt? No, He cannot. And that’s the best news you or I could hear today.
[1] “Key Findings,” The State of Theology, accessed December 19, 2022, https://thestateoftheology.com.
[2] Steven J. Lawson, Show Me Your Glory: Understanding the Majestic Splendor of God (Sanford: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2020), 105.
[3] Gerald Bray, The Attributes of God: An Introduction (Wheaton: Crossway, 2021), 45-46.
[4] Jen Wilkin, None Like Him: 10 Ways God is Different From Us (and why that’s a good thing) (Wheaton: Crossway, 2016), 85.
