Who Changed The Unchangeable God? Unmasking The True Nature And Character Of God

He was hard to please, easily offended and demanded outrageous sacrifices round the clock.

He caused the flood, rained fire and hailstones from heaven and was very generous in his use of lightening and thunder on his enemies.

Death and sickness were his special messengers, for they did his bidding cold, quick and without any iota of mercy.

The cry of infants never moved his heart, neither did he give a damn about the groans of the elderly. He judged every man alike - even for sins committed for generations past.

The above description was what the Old Testament presented to us about God. And as long as that part of the Bible was concerned, God was not just mean, He was the meanest of all mean men ever!

But then you turn over to the part of the Bible known as the New Testament and God seems to have turned a new leaf. He is now soft and full of sweet talks - love talks.

He doesn’t just ask you to love your neighbours, He takes the first step and shows you how to do it.

Before asking you to give and share your resources with others, He gave you His Son, His own Son.

He forgave you your entire sins before you even committed them, confessed and begged Him for mercy. He did all that and then invited you to do the same to those around you.

In the face of death, He raised the dead, healed the sick and cast out demons. Like that wasn’t enough, He stripped these forces of their power and empowered humans (believers) to live above them.

In reading the descriptions of God found in these two Testaments, it seems like somewhere in-between the two, God changed. Because the character of God we see in the Old Testament is clearly different from the one we see in the New.

If we all agree that there is a clear difference between the two, then the question is, “what happened to God? Who changed Him and how did He change so much?”

In answering that question, some persons have said it was the sacrifice of Jesus that changed Him.

That is to say that God was this angry fellow who hated sin and sinners so much He never hesitated to kill them. But the sacrifice of Jesus softened His heart and made Him somehow accommodating. That is a very shallow answer, for that would insinuate that somewhere along the line God changed and can still change again if needs be.

To be able to properly understand what happened to God, we need to take a closer look at the scriptures again.

“All Scripture is given by the inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” 2 Timothy 3:16 KJV

Now bear in mind that as of the time this verse above was written, the only major book that was read and referred to as “scripture” by the early church was the Old Testament writings.

If we are to paraphrase that today, it would read:

“All writings of Old were given by the inspiration of God, and is profitable for …..”

However the words “All scripture” in that verse, is actually more than just “all writings” in the Greek.

The words translated as “All scripture” there is “Pas graphe”. Graphe, pronounced as “graf-ay” here, according to Strongs dictionary of greek words, means “a document, that is, holy Writ (or its contents or a statement in it.)

It was actually used here to refer to the jotting down of everything that happened, both bad and good, by the author, in his own understanding and with his own words. (please read and re-read the underlined words to get it)

That means, God inspired the authors of the Old Testament writings (the scriptures as of then), to put down everything that happened in their time.

But in writing these things down, they were allowed to put it down in their own understanding of the events that happened, using their own words (descriptions) and sometimes words directly put in their hearts by the Holy Spirit. (see Hebrews 1:1)

Let me give you a day to day example to help you understand what I just said.

Assuming you have two sons and send both of them a message saying, “go tell your mum I’m hungry and please be fast about that”.

The first son being faster, got to your wife first and said, “Mum, Dad said he’s so hungry right now he can swallow a pig. If he’s not served food as soon as possible, who knows what may happen next”.

The second son arrived and said “Mum, you need to see Dad right now. He is so hungry he can barely lift a cup. All he needs now is food, food and nothing more but food. That is the only thing he is interested in right now”

Now taking a closer look at the two statements above, did you the Dad say everything your sons said word to word? No. But you were behind the main content of what they said, which was that you were hungry.

You inspired the main content of their individual messages which is that you are hungry. However, you allowed them to pass the message across to their mum using their own individual understanding of how hungry you were and their own words.

So the writing of the Books of the Old Testament was inspired by God (the act precisely), but not everything written (words and individual understanding of events) came directly from God. (I hope this is clear by now, if it is not, please start from the example again)

This is why it is said that the Bible is the Word of God. But not everything written in it is the Word of God. Because in it there were many places where Man spoke, Angels spoke and Satan spoke. You just can’t call all that they all said God’s words.

So how can we know when to absolutely trust the words of the prophets and take the things they said hook-line-and-sinker like the early church did?

The writer of 2^nd Timothy, the same chapter 3 gives us a clue by letting us first know the Original message or purpose of their writings. By knowing that, we can then know every other thing that follows.

“And from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” 2 Timothy 3:15 KJV

So the purpose of the Old were to point to Christ. And only when we see them do this accurately can we build our doctrines from them.

Jesus also made this clear in John 5:39

“Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.”

If the main purpose of the Old writings was to point to Christ who is the image of God, the full expression of all that God is, then we do not need to base our understanding of the character of God on their descriptions of Him but on what the Christ has to reveal to us about Him.

The reason like I have been saying throughout this post is because the descriptions the prophets gave about God in their writings were mostly their own personal understanding of His acts using their own words too.

We must then seek to know Him from where the Scriptures said we would know Him - and that is in Christ, through the New Covenant or Testament.

Jeremiah puts it this way towards the end of his ministry:

“Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Judah;

Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers when in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt: which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:

But this shall be the covenant that I will make the house of Isreal; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.

And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” Jeremiah 31:31-34 KJV.

Of course the New Covenant here that the scriptures said we would know God from, is not primarily referring to any book in particular but an event. This is the event that has to do with the Salvation of man and the coming of the Holy Spirit who inspired the epistles.

So put directly, it is only from God’s acts with regards to Salvation that we can truly know His character and this is illuminated in our hearts by the help of the Holy Spirit.

Why is this knowledge of God peculiar to the New Covenant? The last line of Jeremiah 31:34 tells us

“.…for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Simply put, it is because in the New Covenant, the only thing that darkened the understanding of the character of God in the Old Testament, which is sin, will be completely washed away from our hearts.

Now we can look at God clearly in His Son (Hebrews 1:2-3, Colossians 1:14-15 & 19) with our minds having being washed of sin, and see how good He has always been, before time ever began till now.

We can also look at the Devil and see how he has hid in the background, took advantage of the prophets of old limited knowledge or partial light, to have his works attributed to God.

Like Jesus, we can now not only expose this devil and his works (sin, sickness and death) as found in John 10:10 & 1 John 3:8, we can also cast him out and set the oppressed free, bringing glory to our God.

So was our God ever “hard” and now “softened” by the sacrifice of Jesus or anything else? No, he has always been who He is and how He was from the beginning till now.

However, the sacrifice of Jesus purified our hearts that we ALL through the New Covenant, might behold Him with open faces as in a glass - clear enough to know and recognize Him and His works.

I hope this edifies you, Glory to God!