"Does God Change His Mind?"

Jonah 3:10 "Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way, and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it."

From our perspective, it certainly appears that God changed, but when we see God's response from His perspective, we find the consistency that we expect of Him in His Word. Here's how we can understand these seeming contradictions.

God's "change" is an accommodation. When God uses language such as, "I am sorry I have made man", He is doing it as an accommodation to us, stopping to communicate in the only terms we understand: the language of humans. 

God's change is an affirmation. God's repentance is not a change of His will, it is His willingness to allow us to change. While it is true that God knows everything in advance, it is a mistake to infer from this that He is incapable of emotion or reaction to his creatures. The scriptures show that He is a God who cares deeply for those made in His image, and He acts according to that love. 

God's change is an application. God's immutability does not mean He is immobile. He is consistently pursuing a righteous course, and thus He adapts His response to people's moral changes. God's unchanging holiness requires that His treatment of the wicked will differ from that of the righteous. When the righteous turn wicked or the wicked turn righteous the way He treats them must change. God must deal with each of us according to the way we are currently living and particularly according to the ways we change.

These notes from my study Bible gave me a lot of reasons to think deeper about God's immutability.

Hope it challenged you.
Pastor Fred