Part 10 | The Only True God – God is Immutable

Ryan King | March 20, 2010 | 0 Comments

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By Ryan King

Friday 19th March 2010

Let’s face it: the word immutability is not in any danger of being overused. By that I mean that it is not a standard part of our vocabulary. It is, however, a very important aspect of Christian theology as it is one of the attributes of God. Taking these two facts into account, the first negative, and the second positive, it should be fairly obvious that before we can do anything else, we must define the word immutable. If looked up in a thesaurus you will find different words such as ‘binding’, ‘final’, ‘fixed’, ‘permanent’, ‘unalterable’, and ‘unchangeable’. To say that God is ‘immutable’ is to say ‘God does not change.’ Unchanging-ness (you now see why immutability is a better word) is one of God’s attributes.

We can now start our study of this attribute for real. Locate in your Bibles, the Old Testament Book of Malachi, the third chapter, and the sixth verse.

‘For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.’ There are three things that we can learn about the immutability of God from the passage set before us. (Malachi 3:6)

The first is this: God is unchanging in his personhood, that is the divine essence and the attributes that characterise the divine essence. He, speaking through the prophet Malachi, says, ‘I, the LORD, do not change…’ The ‘I’ speaking, that is the LORD, is called by different titles and different names throughout the Old Testament, but never is there any indication that the one being referred to is one other than he who has revealed himself to us as the LORD, that is by his personal name, Yahweh. The Scriptures are very clear that there is but one God. In the passage known as the Shema it is said

Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one’ (Deuteronomy 6:4).

God has always been one. And yet if we leave it at that, we fail to take into account the biblical evidence for three-in-one. Sharing the essence of the Godhead are three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three are coeternal: they have always been and will always be; they are coequal: each of them is fully God; and they are coexistant: they exist simultaneously in unity as the one true God. This is unchanging. There is nothing in our experience or sensory perception that allows us to understand this. It is without good analogy. However there is a belief that tries to explain it: it says that God has revealed himself as Father in Creation, Son in redemption and Holy Spirit in sanctification. This teaching, called Sabellianism, or modalism, fails to take into account the immutability of the personhood of God and teaches a God who is one person changing form or mode, in effect changing who he is, in different circumstances. Modalism is what happens when man tries to explain the incomprehensible. With it the doctrine of Trinity is removed, but the teaching that God is unchanging in his personhood is also muddled.

The attributes of God are a part of who God is. If he was without these attributes then he would cease to be God. They are a central part of the unchanging personhood of God. God is, listed: eternal, faithful, foreknowing, holy, longsuffering, infinite, impartial, jealous, incomprehensible, just, immutable, loving [not just loving, he is the embodiment of love], good, righteous, omnipotent, self-existent, omniscient, self-sufficient, omnipresent, sovereign, transcendent, truth [again God is not merely truthful, he is truth], he is merciful, he is wrathful, and he is wise. These things never cease. God has always been characterized by these things, and that is not going to change.

The second item that we come to is God is unchanging in his purposes. Some people will give ready assent to the idea that God is unchanging, but they feel compelled to qualify this affirmation of immutability. Such people would divide God into an ‘abstract essence’ and a ‘concrete actuality.’ They would say that God is unchanging in his abstract essence, that is, God as he is if completely detached from this world. However, God is not detached from this world and it is in his relations with humans and the world that he appears in his ‘concrete actuality’. God in his ‘concrete actuality’ does change to relate more properly to the freewill decisions of individual humans, they say. This idea fits into so-called ‘process theology’. I’m sorry. Process theology is not Bible theology. Bible Theology says ‘I, the LORD, do not change’ and it is because God is unchanging in his person that he is unchanging in his purpose as well ‘therefore, you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.’

The LORD purposed to save a people, to make for himself a ‘strange’ people, a ‘peculiar’ people, set aside from all others. And he never changed that purpose. He brought them out of the house of slavery in Egypt and across the Red Sea to Sinai. While he was delivering the laws against idolatry, the people of Israel were breaking them, and although he had the power and the passion to destroy them, yet his promise was irrevocable, and he kept to his purpose. They complained about their food, they complained about their drink, and they cried out for the old life in Egypt when they saw the size of their adversaries in the Promised Land. God could have let them wither and die everyone in the wilderness but he is unchanging in his purpose. They say after they are firmly situated in Canaan, that they will worship Lord God and obey his voice, and yet the book of Judges shows there consistent failure to do so. When they get kings, those kings all too often plunge the land into idolatrous sin. God warns them. They do not listen to his warnings. The people are invaded and conquered, the northern tribes by Assyria, and the southern tribes by Babylon. God could have let them rot there, but his purposes are unchanging. He delivered them yet again from the house of slavery and restored them to their land. Now, after all of this, in the days of Malachi, around four hundred years before Christ, they are offering sick, blind, blemished animals upon the altar of the LORD, and he is not happy. They are divorcing their wives. They are robbing the Most Holy, Mighty God of the honour do his name. ‘From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them’ (v. 7). Why does he not blast them into nothingness? Because he is unchanging in his purposes.

The third thing I want to show you is this: God is unchanging in his performance. It is dead certain that what the unchanging God has planned, what the unchanging God has purposed, he will perform. Do we do everything that we plan? Are all of our purposes fulfilled? I don’t think so. But with God, unchanging in his personhood and purposes, I know so. ‘For I the LORD do not change, therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.’ God had not purposed to consume the children of Jacob, so he does not consume them, though they are fully deserving of such a fate. He rather calls them to return to him. ‘Return to me, and I will return to you.’ It is his will that a people be united in him, and so he calls them back to himself. They return, and he does not stand aloof but performs according to his will, and returns to them likewise.

Some say that God sent Jesus to be the Messiah of the Jews but that didn’t work out so he changed his performance to meet a ‘plan B’- Jesus would be the Saviour of the Gentiles. But God performed according to one will and purpose and one plan and that plan was laid down from beginning of the covenant relationship: that in Abraham ‘all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ God sent his only begotten (literally one-of-a-kind) Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life. That is why Jesus came, to save Jew and Gentile alike, to preach peace to those near God and far from him, and to as Paul says in Ephesians, ‘reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross’ (Eph. 2:16). At times it appears to the undiscerning that God changes his mind, but in truth when this appears to be the case, it God working as he wills, perhaps in new ways, but always keeping to what he purposes. Therefore he says with certainty ‘…the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evil doers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the LORD of hosts’ (Malachi 4:1-3).

God is unchanging in his personhood. He never ceases to be who he and what he is. God is unchanging in his purposes. He does not change his will or desire in the slightest. Because of this he is also unchanging in his performance. He always acts in accordance with his purposes. He has purposed exalt the righteous and to trample the ungodly and therefore the righteous will be exalted and the ungodly will be trampled. God is unchanging. Do you know this God? If so you can sing with the Psalmist

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 (Ps. 102:26-27).

And again when he says,

The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations (Ps. 33:11).

And with the weeping prophet, who stops grinding his teeth on the gravel, leaves his cowering in the ashes, forgets what he said about his hope from the Lord perishing, and says screaming in the face of bitterness, pain, and death itself

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him (Lam. 3:22-24).