Sermon Tone Analysis

(sorry, regret, repent)

Immutability

God’s immutability is his perfect unchangeability in his essence, character, purpose, and promises.

Scriptural Evidence.

The following list summarizes the biblical teaching about God’s immutability:

1.

He is eternally the same (Ps.

102:25–27).

2.

He is the first and the last (Isa.

41:4; 43:10; 44:6; 48:12).

3.

He is what he is (Ex.

3:14).

4.

He is incorruptible, alone having immortality, always remaining the same (Rom.

1:23; 1 Tim.

1:17; 6:15–16; Heb.

1:11–12).

5. His thought, purpose, will, and decrees are unchangeable:

a.

He executes his threats and promises (Num.

23:19; 1 Sam.

15:29).

b.

He does not repent of his gifts and calling (Rom.

11:29).

c.

He does not cast off people with whom he has made a unilateral covenant (Rom.

11:1).

d.

He glorifies those whom he foreknows (Rom.

8:29–30).

e.

He perfects what he starts (Ps.

138:8; Phil.

1:6).

f.

His faithfulness never lessens (Lam.

3:22–23).

6.

He does not change (Mal.

3:6; James 1:17).

Related to Impassibility:

God is impassible.

This means, not that God is impassive and unfeeling (a frequent misunderstanding), but that no created beings can inflict pain, suffering and distress on him at their own will.

In so far as God enters into suffering and grief (which Scripture’s many anthropopathisms, plus the fact of the cross, show that he does), it is by his own deliberate decision; he is never his creatures’ hapless victim.

The Christian mainstream has construed impassibility as meaning not that God is a stranger to joy and delight, but rather that his joy is permanent, clouded by no involuntary pain.

Questions concerning God’s Immutability.

Tensions are apparent to people when they read passages asserting God’s unchangeability alongside passages stating that God repents (Gen.

6:6; Ex. 32:12; 1 Sam.

15:11, 35; Jer.

18:10; Amos 7:3, 6; Jonah 3:9–10; 4:2), changes his purpose (Gen.

18:23–32; Ex. 32:10–14; Jonah 3:10), gets angry (Ex.

4:14; Num.

11:1, 10; Ps. 106:40; Zech.

10:3), turns from his anger (Ex.

32:14; Deut.

13:17; 2 Chron.

12:12; 30:8; Jer.

18:8, 10; 26:3), relates differently to the unbeliever than to the believer (Prov.

11:20; 12:22), is pure to the pure but opposes the wicked (Ps.

18:25–26), is incarnated in time (Gal.

4:4), indwells the church (1 Cor.

3:16–17; Eph.

2:19–22; Col. 1:27), rejects Israel (Rom.

11:15), receives the Gentiles after having rejected them for years (Acts 11:18; Rom.

11:11–15), is wrathful at one time and forgiving at another (Ex.

34:7; Num.

14:18; Psalm 78), and is close at one time and far off at another (Jer.

23:23).

To resolve this tension, many, such as open theists, have said that God really does change his mind, purposes, and promises in response to what humans do.

They contend that one cannot justly harmonize God’s “changes” in Scripture with the traditional doctrine that God is unchangeable.

They claim that if sinners turn from sin and respond in faith and love toward God, he will turn from (repent of, change his mind about) the judgment he intended and give them blessing instead.

Correspondingly, if they turn from trusting in him, he will revoke any promises of blessing.

According to open theists, God does not know how people will respond to him, and he waits to see what they will do in each moment before he chooses his response to them.

There are many errors in open theism and other such false teachings that deny God’s immutability, each of which is refuted by viewing God’s immutability in proper biblical perspective.

Immutability does not mean that God is static or inert, nor does it mean that he does not act distinctly in time or possess true affections.

God is impassible—not in the sense that he is devoid of true feeling or has no affections but in the sense that his emotions are active and deliberate expressions of his holy dispositions, not (as is often the case with human emotions) involuntary passions by which he is driven.

A good way to understand God’s apparent changes in Scripture is to consider that God reveals himself in his relations to people.

They perceive only one aspect of God at a time.

God never changes, but creatures do change, and they perceive God’s perfections and actions according to their current state.

Thus, God’s actions do not imply a change of essence or purpose.

For example, the language of God “repenting” or “changing” in any way is anthropopathic language—figurative expressions that communicate to man on his level of understanding about changes of dispositions or actions.

Thus, God’s perceived “changes” are always in the context of his eternal omniscience and will, so they are never because God is surprised and has to adjust.

They are done in harmony with his truth and faithfulness (see 1 Sam.

15:29).

All his acts that might be perceived as changes are eternally foreknown and predetermined.

Mathews:

“Grieve” (yinnāḥem), translated “repent” in the AV, has troubled many expositors since elsewhere Scripture says God does not “repent” (Num 23:19; 1 Sam 15:29; Ps 110:4).

We find the same expression (yinnāḥem YHWH) only twice more in the Pentateuch (Exod 32:12, 14).146

In the wilderness God changes his harmful intentions against idolatrous Israel because of the intercessory prayers of Moses: “Then the LORD relented [yinnāḥem] and did not bring on his people the disaster [rāʿâ] he had threatened” (Exod 32:14; cf.

Ps 78:40–41).

The tension between these characterizations of God partly lies in the diverse contexts in which “grieve/relent” occurs in the Bible.147

Genesis 6:6–7 is describing the emotional anguish of God; our verse does not present an abstract statement about God’s decision making.

This would be altogether out of place for the intention of the passage, which depicts God as wronged by the presumptuous sin of humanity.

Moreover, the parameters of this verse have been dictated by the author’s intention to imitate 5:29 with its distinctive vocabulary and mood.

This is shown especially by the subsequent clause, where it describes God’s heart as “filled with pain” (yitʿaṣṣēb).148

This further echoes the painful consequences of human sin in the garden, where the cognate nouns narrate the “painful toil” the man and woman will endure (3:16–17; 5:29).

The NIV rightly reflects contextual differences by translating “grieved” (“was sorry,” NRSV, NASB) in 6:6–7 but “change his mind” in 1 Sam 15:29 as well as “relent” in Exod 32:12, 14 (also Amos 7:3, 6).

In Samuel’s chastening of Saul the concern is the character of God’s word, as indicated by the parallel “does not lie” (šāqar; 1 Sam 15:29).

Close to the sense of 6:6 is God’s sorrowful concern over Saul’s moral failures, which precipitate rejection of his kingship: “I am grieved that I have made Saul king” (1 Sam 15:11; also v. 35).

Similarly, Exodus 32 is speaking of a new course in God’s dealing with his people.

This too is not a comment on the nature of God’s sovereignty or promises.

It is told so as to highlight the intercessory position of Moses with God, a reassuring thought for Israel.

We have mentioned earlier the common language of our passage and Exodus 32.

Now to this we can add “wipe” (māḥâ) from Gen 6:7, which is rendered “blot out” in Exod 32:32–33.

If the Exodus passage is a veiled remembrance of God’s “pain” at antediluvian humanity, Moses is expressing the same remorse over the sins of Israel.

In the case of Israel, Moses’ mediation delivers his people, but antediluvian man has no intercessor, and the whole world suffers as a result.

It is solely by the grace of God that the human family has any chance at all.

God’s response of grief over the making of humanity, however, is not remorse in the sense of sorrow over a mistaken creation; our verse shows that God’s pain has its source in the perversion of human sin.

The making of “man” is no error; it is what “man” has made of himself.

By recurring reference to mankind (ʾādām) in 6:5–7, the passage focuses on the source of his grief.

God is grieving because this sinful “man” is not the pristine mankind whom he has made to bear his image.

The intensity of the pain is demonstrated by the use of nāḥam elsewhere in Genesis, where it describes mourning over the loss of a family member due to death.149

But his is not regret over destroying humanity; paradoxically, so foul has become mankind that it is the necessary step to salvage him.

This “grief” is explicated by the parallel clause of the sentence, “and his [God’s] heart was filled with pain” (v.