What Is Divine Immutability?
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A short analogy will help us understand what the Bible teaches about divine immutability. Time-lapse photos fascinate us as we watch the shadow of an object or person appear, move, elongate, shorten, and then disappear. Shadows are inherent to humans; as our or the sun’s position changes, so too does our shadow’s appearance.
The Bible tells us, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). This tells us God is who He is, and He doesn’t change, unlike the shadows we produce when the light around us changes. We change all the time, but He never does.
What Does the Bible Mean by Divine Immutability?
When the Bible says God doesn’t change, it is referring to His attribute of divine immutability. Since God is divine (divine is anything which refers to the one true God), we refer to God’s unchanging character as divine immutability.
God is unchangeable in any way, and therefore, unchanging. God cannot change His very essence or His mind because He is perfect in every way (Deuteronomy 32:4; 2 Samuel 22:31; Psalm 18:30). For God to even be able to change would nullify His perfection, and a perfect Being cannot change. How can God be perfect if he is open to change?
Change (specifically positive change) implies an imperfection in the current state which needs to adapt in order to be better. If God has imperfections, He cannot be God. Furthermore, the notion that God would need to change in response to His creation makes creation the authority and master over God, which again means that He could not truly be God.
It's difficult for us to comprehend immutability because we see and experience change all the time; we cannot try to understand an infinite God with finite minds. Professor and author Matthew Barrett writes, “Immutability and Impassibility are key, historic attributes the church has confessed, attributes that distinguish the infinite and eternal Creator from the finite and temporal creature.”
What Passages Tell Us God Is Immutable?
Following are ten key passages that teach us about God’s immutable character:
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
The Lord our God is One, and when the Bible to say Jesus never changes, it is the same as saying God never changes.
“For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed” (Malachi 3:6).
Here, God is telling the Israelites that since He doesn’t change, He will keep His covenants (promises).
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17).
God’s goodness will never cease or change.
“God is not man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind. Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not fulfill it?” (Numbers 23:19).
This is addressed to God’s enemies, who must acknowledge God’s reign is just, endless, and does not change. What He says He will do, he does.
“Of old You laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of Your hands.They will perish, but You will remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away,
but You are the same, and Your years have no end.The children of your servants shall dwell secure;
their offspring shall be established before You”
Because God doesn’t change, He is faithful.
“And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for He is not a man, that He should have regret” (1 Samuel 15:29).
In stark contrast to man (in this case, King Saul), God does not lie or have regrets.
“If we are faithless, He remains faithful — for He cannot deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13).
God remains perfectly immutable despite man’s changeability.
“Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, You are God” (Psalm 90:1-2).
No matter what changes are wrought on the earth, our Creator God remains steadfast and unchanging.
“So that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us” (Hebrews 6:18).
An immutable God cannot lie, therefore we are encouraged by His Word (The Scriptures) to us.
“The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations” (Psalm 33:11).
God’s word is His everlasting bond.
If God Does Not Change, Then Why Does He Sometimes Relent?
When we consider the word relent as regards humans, we define it as to soften a stance or give in. With what we’ve read about God’s immutability, we wonder how He can give in to someone or something.
Biblically, to relent as relates to the Lord God refers to His decision to suppress a course of action, especially in response to human repentance or intervention. That’s because God is both merciful and just, and all His attributes work in harmony with each other.
To illustrate, let’s look at Jonah as he prophesied to Nineveh. God commanded Jonah to preach to the great city of Ninevah about their impending demise. When Jonah obeyed, the community repented. Jonah 3:10 states, “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that He had said He would do to them, and He did not do it.”
The thing is, God already knew they would repent. Here we see another instance of the Bible’s use of anthropomorphic language so we can understand what God, who is beyond comprehension, did. Instead of bringing the foretold destruction upon Nineveh, He blessed them. God didn’t change, but Nineveh did. God responded to their repentance with a removal of their coming doom, and that is consistent with His character.
God’s immutability is holy — it’s part of what sets Him apart from His creation — because everything else changes, but not God. Immutability is vital to God’s character as the perfect, supreme being.
The state of every person before salvation was that we were destined for God’s wrath (1 Thessalonians 5:9a). Because God is holy, He cannot look upon sin (Habakkuk 1:13), therefore, since God is immutable, how can we be saved?
The Bible tells us, “For all sin and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a). Even Jesus, our perfect Savior, prayed the Father would remove the cup of God’s wrath He was destined to “drink.” That cup is the Father’s wrath to be poured out on Jesus on account of our sins. Does Jesus’ death on the cross to remove sins prove God changes His mind?
The answer lies within God’s sovereignty; His will and His character never changes. Here is where Reformed Theology gives us further insight into the nature of God.
One of the basic tenets of the Reformation — from which Calvinism emerged — is sovereign election (a more useful description than unconditional election). Sovereign election states that God decrees the conditions for a person’s salvation in Christ; it’s His initiative that draws people to Himself (John 6:44).
Further, God foreknows all He will save because He chose (elected) them in eternity past, before any of them were born. God’s perfect will through his Holy Spirit changes us and draws us to Him in Christ Jesus.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself…” (2 Corinthians 5:17-18a).
Because of Christ’s atoning work on the cross, we are justified before God. Again, we see we are the ones who change, and God reacts to us in a manner consistent with His grace and mercy (Ephesians 2:5; Psalm 145:8).
What Does It Mean for Us That God Is Immutable?
Because God is the supreme and is the ultimate fixed standard of all creation, we can look to Him for our security and more importantly, for His grace. Pastor John MacArthur reminded us, “That God does not change is a great source of comfort to believers. It means that His love is forever. His forgiveness is forever. His salvation is forever. His promises are forever.”
Because He is perfect, for Him to change would mean His perfection is lacking in some way. And perfection, by its very nature, is not open to nor in need of change. God’s immutability is linked to His impassibility; He is not governed by emotions, nor is He altered by our emotions. If He were, that would necessitate a change and therefore counter His immutability.
When David penned Psalm 62:6, he proclaimed the Lord God as immutable when he called Him his rock and his fortress: “He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken.”
We are assured in Scripture that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That truth is as solid as a rock to us, just as it was to David when he penned many psalms where he titles God his Rock.
As we ponder God’s immutability, a few hymns that aid our praise are: “Rock of Ages,” and “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.”
And so, as King David so eloquently said, we rest in our immutable God as “our Rock and our Redeemer” (Psalm 78:35).
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