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Scripture focus
For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
Malachi 3:6 KJV
At a glance
Why does the Bible so often feel like a record of someone else's God rather than our own?
Because readers instinctively separate themselves from its ancient, unfamiliar world — but Packer argues that gap is an illusion, since the God who dealt with Abraham and the apostles is, in every particular, still the God dealing with us.
Summary of the chapter
Packer names a common frustration honestly: readers often approach Scripture as spectators of a distant, culturally alien story rather than as participants in a living relationship, which leaves the Bible feeling more like history than address. He traces this to a felt gap between the ancient Near Eastern world of the text and modern life.
His answer is not to explain away the cultural distance but to insist that it does not matter, because the link across it is God himself. He works through God's immutability under several headings — his eternal life, his unchanging character, the abiding truth of his promises, the consistency of his ways, the certainty of his purposes, and the unchanging person and work of his Son — to show that the God of Abraham, Daniel and Paul is, without qualification, the God available to a reader today.
The chapter's practical edge is a challenge rather than a comfort alone: if the God of the biblical figures is unchanged, then the level of communion with him, and the standard of obedience to him, that marked their lives remains the standard for ours. Their experience is not merely historical but a pattern still open to us.
Key points
- The felt distance between the modern reader and the biblical world is real, but it does not separate us from God himself.
- God's immutability covers his life, character, promises, ways, and purposes — none of them shift with the passage of time.
- The Son, too, is unchanging, and intercedes for believers today with the same power he exercised in New Testament times.
- Because God does not change, the depth of relationship enjoyed by biblical believers remains available, not merely historical.
- This truth is meant to unsettle complacency as much as to comfort: why should our communion with God fall short of theirs?
A line worth remembering
Fellowship with him, trust in his word, living by faith, standing on the promises of God, are essentially the same realities for us today as they were for Old and New Testament believers.
J. I. Packer Knowing God, ch. 7
Related Scripture
- Malachi 3:6
- Hebrews 13:8
- Psalm 102:27
- James 1:17
For reflection and discussion
- Where does the cultural distance of Scripture most tempt you to read it as history rather than as address to you?
- Which of God's unchanging qualities — his character, his promises, his ways — do you find hardest to trust in practice?
- If the believers of Scripture are the pattern rather than the exception, what would it mean to pursue their depth of communion with God?
These notes are an original UECF.NET study companion and are not a reproduction of the book. Read the full chapter — chapter 7, “God Unchanging” — in Knowing God by J. I. Packer (InterVarsity Press / Hodder & Stoughton, 1973).