God is immutable, while we are mutable. Immutable means unchanging over time or unable to be changed. God is unchanging! Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. God doesn’t change; there is not even a shadow of turning with Him. It is impossible for God to change since He is eternal and infinite in wisdom. God knows all things. Change implies learning new things or gaining new information, but God doesn’t learn; He already knows all things, created all things, and rules over all things. God is immutable!
All created beings are mutable. Every created being, from the highest angel to the lowest insect, changes—simply because all created beings are finite. It is impossible for a created being to know everything. We are constantly learning and changing as we grow. Because change is a reality for us, we face two simple choices: we are either changing for the better or for the worse. All around us, we see people moving in one of these two directions.
How do we change? We change by what we behold—by what we look at. We change for the better by beholding Jesus, who is infinite in goodness, love, and mercy. We change for the worse by looking toward the "self," which is broken, corrupt, and frail. Lucifer found out the hard way that he was not like God. He thought he could be better by becoming his own god, so he turned away from Christ—the light of truth—and looked to himself, a finite being. He thought he was wiser than God, and so he changed. A once-perfect being transformed into a devil. Even as he was changing into an evil being, he refused to repent because he believed he could improve himself by depending on himself.
Daily, the people around us are changing for better or for worse. Those who look to Jesus daily—meditating on His matchless love, His beauty of character, His compassion, patience, and sacrifice—are being transformed into His image. We slowly but surely become more loving, compassionate, patient, and sacrificial. The more we look at Christ, the more we see His beauty, and the more our own ugliness is revealed. This leads us to cry out, "Lord, change me into Your image; help me to be like You."
The more we behold Christ, the better we become. The angels of heaven keep their eyes upon Jesus, and they become more perfect and lovely every day. Conversely, we become worse by looking to ourselves. We are broken creatures living in a corrupt world; to look to ourselves for improvement is to spiral downward. The angels who fell with Satan became devils when they looked to a created being (Lucifer) and turned away from the Creator. They followed his example and became as corrupt as he was. Created beings, unless they are beholding Jesus, are liable to error and will lead you astray.
People are becoming worse because they look up to everyone but Christ, the Unchanging One. They look to Hollywood celebrities, "Instagram influencers," crooked politicians, arrogant athletes, and deceptive leaders. They look to the broken self for direction and find themselves sinking lower into the pit of moral degradation. Yet, they will not come to Jesus so that He may uplift them.
The reason many of us will not come to Jesus—even as we see ourselves getting worse—is that, like the Devil, we believe we have sufficient wisdom to fix ourselves. We believe that sooner or later, we will "get it right" and then come to Jesus. Friends, if that is your mindset, you will only continue to decline. No fallen being can fix itself. We lack the wisdom to understand what God made. To attempt to fix yourself is like a child attempting to fix a spaceship; you will only make things worse.
The worse we become, the more corrupt our thinking becomes, and the more corrupt our "solutions" become. When David sinned with Bathsheba, his thinking became so warped that his solution was to commit murder to cover his tracks. When Satan rebelled, his corrupt reasoning led him to try to destroy humanity, thinking that if God rescued us, He would have to rescue him too. This is the result of sin: corruption.
To sin is to choose corruption, and we add to it by trying to fix it with corrupt logic. This is why many seek to "fix" a situation by committing another sin, leading to a further loss of light. It is a vicious cycle. But how do we change for the better? We go to Jesus today, acknowledging that our whole being is corrupted and we cannot fix ourselves. Let us say, "Lord, save me, for I perish! Transform my mind and help me see things as You see them."
We are either getting better or worse every day. We get better by looking at Jesus and bringing everything to Him in prayer. Let us repent of our folly and stubbornness, keeping our eyes on His perfection until that perfect day.
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