Unchanging Words |
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One of the big things that politicians do in election seasons is talk about how their opponents changed their minds about some policy issue or were less than forthcoming with their views on a certain subject or issue. Politicians are also notorious for not answering a direct question with a direct answer or obfuscating the answer in such a way that no one really knows what they said. They are masters with words and sentence construction, although sometimes they get tripped up in their own words and end up saying something entirely different from what they had intended to say.
I’m not a big fan of obfuscation. I do admit I’ve used it when it seemed the right thing to do at the time. I think we all have, at times, tried to use words and sentence construction in such a way that we aren’t telling a falsehood; yet we aren’t giving away any useful information either. Some are better at it than others, and some are just masters at it, seemingly having taken several courses in it from some political-type person.
What I do find very refreshing is that God doesn’t do that. The words and messages we find in Scripture never change. God is always saying the same thing in the same way to everyone. His message and communication to us is always rock-solid, reliable, and trustworthy.
Think about it. What if God changed his mind about things? What if he spoke in double-talk or politician-ese? What if yesterday it was salvation by grace through faith and today he says that it’s salvation by animal sacrifice? What would he say tomorrow? Who knows? Maybe tomorrow he’d make salvation dependent on our works or our heritage. What if we didn’t get the message that things had changed? What if we didn’t have any animals? What if we didn’t get the message the day after that about yet another new way of salvation?
What if God told us about a way of salvation in such a manner that was so complicated and twisted around such that we couldn’t possibly understand what he meant? Or what if he spoke of salvation only indirectly, leaving us to fill in huge gaps or having to guess at his motives?
Sometimes we take the Bible for granted. We are so familiar with it, so accustomed to it, that we just assume its reliability and trustworthiness with a somewhat cavalier attitude, I fear. The Bible is not to be worshipped. But the Bible is to be honored…appreciated…revered as the very breath and logic of God in a form that we can understand without having to be rocket scientists or divinity scholars.
And it never, ever, ever changes. Oh, our interpretation of it may change. Circumstance and environment may change how we view it. But the message itself never, ever changes. That is, I believe, one of the primary reasons why God has chosen to have a finite period of revelation…then close the book, so to speak, on new revelation. We can indeed rely on what we’ve been given as the revelation of God to his creation. Soli deo Gloria
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