What is the bedrock of salvation, the deepest ground on which we rest our hope?
We know all too well that it cannot be ourselves. We are fickle creatures. One day, we stride out the door, confident that we belong to our Lord, that we are among the redeemed. The next, under the strain of crushing circumstances or repeated falls into indwelling sin, we question our faith and doubt if we’ve ever believed. Wavering in the wind, we founder, like houses built on shifting sands.
The only sure ground on which we stand is a promise that runs like a steel girder through Scripture: “I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33). While many promises succor us in the present life, this one secures us for eternity. We rest, assured of an “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading” inheritance, because God promises to keep us by his own power (1 Peter 1:4–5).
One beautiful statement of this hope comes in the little book of Malachi.
People of the Unchanging God
The Old Testament ends with a short book — a mere 54 verses, packed with indictments against the people of Judah, especially the priests, for forgetting God’s electing love and “profaning the covenant” of God (Malachi 1:2; 2:10). By word and deed, the people of Judah had first wavered in their faith, doubting the goodness and love of their God, and then wandered far from the covenant he had made with them. Had their hope lain in their ability to remain true to him, it would have been in vain.
And yet the book of Malachi is not without hope. The Lord of hosts promises to send his messenger, who will “purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver” so that once again their offerings will be righteous and pleasing to God (Malachi 3:1–4). Then, between words of both restoration and rebuke comes this striking statement:
For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. (Malachi 3:6)
The promise that they would be God’s people rested not in themselves but in him who set his love on them when they were yet unborn (Malachi 1:2–5; cf. Romans 9:13). It rested on that steel girder: “I will be your God.” And the guarantee of that promise comes from the very nature of him who gives it: “For I the Lord do not change.”
Reasoning from His Nature
Do you feel here the weight of the divine logic? The Lord God — Yahweh, he who is — does not, in this case, tell his wayward people to reflect on how he rescued them with a mighty hand from Egypt. He does not say that the children of Jacob would escape destruction because of promises made to the patriarchs. We find the Lord God making such connections through the mouths of his prophets elsewhere, but in this instance he takes us deeper.
“Under the name of Jehovah,” writes John Calvin, “God reasons from his own nature.” That is, he encourages and challenges his people to reflect, and therefore to act, based not on what he has done but on who he is. “I am unchanging.”
But why should this secure Judah’s hope? A bit of reflection would lead them to realize that they could not produce any security for themselves. Their history amply reflected that they were not unchanging. One day they might be praising God for a miraculous deliverance. The next they might be complaining because they did not believe he could or would provide their daily bread. Fickle faith is a faulty foundation. Thankfully, God tells his people that he is fundamentally unlike them.
As the eternal God, he remains the same. He does not make a promise one day and then forget or go back on it the next. When he sets his love on his people “before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4), he sets in motion a history that cannot separate them from that love. The steel girder that runs through Scripture is God’s promise that he will be our God and we will be his people. Yet where does that steel receive its strength if not from the very nature of the one who makes it? The ground of salvation — its very fount — is the God who does not change.
‘Return to Me’
The hope offered to Judah in this short book rests on the deep foundation of this Reality. They had wavered. They had lost confidence in the God who “loved Jacob” according to his purpose (Malachi 1:2). And so they wandered, turning their back on God, doubting that he really was the good, loving, righteous, and holy God of the covenant. They walked away and so suffered the curses that God promised would come from his hand (Malachi 3:9; see Deuteronomy 28:15–68).
And yet they were not without hope. God’s promise that they would be his people was still theirs if they should repent. “Return to me,” he says, “and I will return to you” (Malachi 3:7). Not all would heed the call, for the very next verses reflect hearts of unbelief and disinterest. “It is vain to serve God,” some complained as they stuck to their arrogant rebellion (Malachi 3:14–15). But some did repent, and God kept his word in accordance with his character. The names of “those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name” were written in “a book of remembrance” (Malachi 3:16). Of them, the Lord confirms his promise: “They shall be mine” (Malachi 3:17).
Hope for the Wavering and Wandering
We Christians are the people of God. On us God has placed his love, determining before creation that we should belong to him forever. And yet, finite and sinful as we are, we are prone both to waver in our faith and to wander from it. What is our hope when we find ourselves doubting the God of our salvation or caught in sin? Like those in Malachi’s day, our hope too rests on the unchanging character of God.
When we wonder, “Does God still love me?” and begin to doubt whether his words about himself and us are true, we remember that, as Calvin writes, “God continues in his purpose, and is not turned here and there like men.” He does not change in his nature; he does not take back his promise. Here is a firm and steady ground upon which to stand. “If the godly are vexed,” writes Petrus van Mastricht,
perhaps in regard to their eternal salvation, because of the inconstancy of their own heart, . . . what will sustain them more effectively than the fact that their immutable God (Mal. 3:6) is a rock and unmoved boulder, whose firm foundation stands, by which the Lord knows those who are his (2 Tim. 2:19), whose saving gifts he does not take away (Rom. 11:29)? (Theoretical and Practical Theology, 2:162)
Wavering saint, rest secure upon his promise and press forward in obedience. Be not like the faithless of Judah who, in their doubt, gave up serving God. Remember that you belong to him not because of the strength of your faith but because of the constancy of his character. Rest in the confidence that he will hold you fast, and as you do, press on to fear him, esteem his name, and walk in his ways.
There are times also when we wander from God. We turn from the Father of lights to walk in darkness. Does this put us beyond the reach of restoration? Here again, our hope is secure in the truth that, when we confess our sins, God faithfully and justly forgives those sins and cleanses us from our unrighteous ways (1 John 1:9). He does not go back on his promises to his people, for they are founded on his own unchanging nature. We can therefore repent with assurance of forgiveness.
Recognize, then, God’s unchanging character and how he graciously tells repentant sinners, “I will return to you,” and don’t grow weary in battling the sin that would lead you away from your immutable God. Because he is unchanging, we know that he will visit judgment on all who persist in unrepentant sin. There is a day coming “when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble” (Malachi 4:1). “But,” says the Lord of hosts, “for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings” (Malachi 4:2).
Therefore, in your wavering and in your wandering, don’t lose faith. Rather, listen to the voice of your unchanging Lord, who calls to his people, “Return to me, and I will return to you.”
Desiring God