By Pr Isaiah White
The major reason we as Christians trust God is because He is consistent. Many scriptures testify that He does not change.
He is constant in His will and work. When God says something today, we are sure He will say the same tomorrow. However much we offend God, His nature still provides for all of us.
We can trust Him because we know He is not only stable, but also consistent.
The consistent savior
The consistency of God is demonstrated in the story of salvation.
God decided to create a free will-being in His image and that was man, whom He loved too much (Genesis 1:26).
The idea to create man as a ‘free will-being’ set sin as his default result.
To create a free will-being in an all-good environment (Genesis 1-2:1-15), means the automatic existence of a choice upon which he will exercise his volitional capacities and that the alternative is evil (Genesis 2:16-17).
God knew all this before He created man, but because He is consistent, He did not take back the decision to create him, even though He knew that humanity would choose against His good side.
It is from this character that we are taught the ethics of consistency.
God knew He was on the losing side by creating man as a free will-being, but because He had committed to create humanity, He stuck to His guns and still created him as he had said He would.
It is important in life not to go against our words, even when we have the right excuse to do so.
Humanity was free to choose God or choose against the same God. The moment man was allowed to choose between God’s side, which is good and Satan’s, which is evil, he chose the latter (Genesis 3:1-23).
Man, by his choice, fell away from God and the destiny because of his sinfulness, was determined to be eternal death.
The same God made another declaration and commitment after the fall of man to save him.
Now, God had to save man without falling into the same pitfall as he had fallen in before. How was God going to do this? The answer is a simple one: by being consistent.
Man had fallen away from God because in his free-will state, he had failed to be consistently good.
God, dressed in the same body as man, was consistently good (1Peter 2:22).
Jesus consistently obeyed the law that man had failed to obey (Matthew 5:17-18), He overcame death that man had failed to overcome (Matthew 28:6), and this is how He qualified as the Savior of the world.
God’s grace has been consistent regardless of how sinful we are. He still welcomes us to come to Him (Isaiah 1:18), and reminds all of us sinners that He came to seek and save that which is lost (Luke 19:10).
Because God is consistently loving, forgiving and gracious, sinners are still being saved till today.
If God was inconsistent and emotionally volatile like other idol gods, then none of us would be celebrating salvation.
The question now is: how consistent are you in your daily life?
The ethics
Consistency is not the absence of dynamism. One can be dynamic but consistent.
It is a determination to not compromise what is right, regardless of the circumstances.
Consistency is not just about doing what you said you would do and always doing it, but rather the reason for doing what you said you would do is at the core of your consistent life.
You must have an unchanging and uncompromising guiding principle upon which your life rides on.
Consistency normally fails at the point of why we do whatever we do.
For instance, God has asked us in His Word to pray always (1Thessolonians 5:16-18).
However, there is a difference between being consistent in prayer because the problem we are praying for has persisted and always praying with or without a problem.
While it is okay to be consistent in prayer while you are faced with problems, this is circumstantial persistence that will not build your all-time consistency as an ethic.
James explains it well: “For let not that man expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:7-8).
We are called to be steady and consistent in all that we do in life.
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