The Immutability of God

I’m old enough now to have had the surreal experience of going through old photo albums with my kids and seeing pictures of my dad when he was younger than me. My dad was twenty-four years old when I was born, so I have very clear memories of what my dad was like when he was in my age or younger. I tend to forget that, because I know what my dad looks like now. But looking through those old pictures, the memories of what he was like back then came screaming back to me. (Jack couldn’t believe it either; he kept saying, “Wow, he looked just like you.”)

It’s an almost melancholy experience, because although my dad is still pretty young, I have seen him change. When I was a child, he was right in the peak of his physical form. He still looks great, but his hair has gotten gray; he’s just a bit thicker than he was when he was my age. (So I guess I know what to expect.) When I was young my dad was a ball of energy; now he gets tired. When I was young he was almost hopelessly optimistic; now I see him worried. I know some of that is probably due to the fact that I’m older too, so he lets me see aspects of himself he didn’t let me see when I was little.

But that’s not all there is. My dad, who was in my mind as stable as a rock, has changed, and is still changing. In many ways he’s changed for the better; in some ways he’s suffered the changes that come from being an older man. But he’s not the same now as he was back then.

That reality is at the heart of some of our greatest fears about ourselves, and some of our greatest assurances from God.

We are in the second week of our annual series on the attributes of God. Last week we saw that God is independent—meaning that he exists completely in himself, and has no need of anything outside of himself to be or to act.

Today we’re going to be looking at a natural extension of that attribute: namely, that God is immutable. That is, he is unchanging. To see this, we’re going to start in .

God Never Changes

The heading for reads, A Prayer of one afflicted, when he is faint and pours out his complaint before the Lord.

We’ll be camping out in v. 25-28 today, but let’s just get a little context. Rather than just tell you about it, we’ll read some of what comes before.

A Prayer of one afflicted, when he is faint and pours out his complaint before the Lord.

The psalmist pours out his complaint to the Lord—not of the circumstances which surround him, but rather how he feels about those circumstances.

He feels weak. He says (v. 3):

Anon, 2016. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

3  For my days pass away like smoke,

and my bones burn like a furnace.

4  My heart is struck down like grass and has withered;

I forget to eat my bread.

5  Because of my loud groaning

my bones cling to my flesh.

He weeps in despair (v. 9):

Anon, 2016. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

9  For I eat ashes like bread

and mingle tears with my drink,

10  because of your indignation and anger;

for you have taken me up and thrown me down.

Anon, 2016. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

But after telling God how he feels about his situation, he comforts himself by reminding himself of God’s faithfulness in the past (v. 18):

12  But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever;

you are remembered throughout all generations.

He comforts himself by reminding himself of God’s faithfulness in the past (v. 18):

Anon, 2016. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

18  Let this be recorded for a generation to come,

so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord:

19  that he looked down from his holy height;

from heaven the Lord looked at the earth,

20  to hear the groans of the prisoners,

to set free those who were doomed to die,

21  that they may declare in Zion the name of the Lord,

and in Jerusalem his praise,

22  when peoples gather together,

and kingdoms, to worship the Lord.

Then in v. 25-28, he summarizes his reason for hope (which is of course ours as well).

Anon, 2016. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

25  Of old you laid the foundation of the earth,

and the heavens are the work of your hands.

26  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,

27  but you are the same, and your years have no end.

28  The children of your servants shall dwell secure;

their offspring shall be established before you.

Anon, 2016. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

So the psalmist is honest about his pain; but he reminds himself of God’s faithfulness. And he knows that God is faithful, because God never changes.

The earth will perish, but you will remain. The heavens will wear out, but you are the same.

Last week we saw that God is completely independent—he alone has aseity, meaning, he alone is self-existing and self-sufficient. And by definition, if he has being in and of himself, his being doesn’t depend on anything outside of himself.

Which means that nothing can happen that has the possibility to change him. As the song goes, As thou hast been, thou forever wilt be.

We hear this and we nod our heads—in the context of this limited conversation, we can get behind that idea.

But if we’re honest, we have to admit that at other times, it’s harder for us to believe that.

Most Christians, if they read their Bibles (and unfortunately that’s a big “if”), will tend to gravitate towards the New Testament. It’s astonishing, the number of Christians who never read the Old Testament—or who only read the Psalms and Proverbs.

But let’s not be too hard on them. Even if I disagree in the strongest possible way, and will encourage you night and day to read all of the Bible—Old Testament and New—at least once a year if you can… I do understand why some people have a hard time with it.

And one of the reasons is that God, as we see him in the Old Testament, can seem quite a bit different from God as he appears in the New Testament.

People sometimes describe God, as he is presented in the Bible, in the following ways.

The God of the Old Testament is the God of judgment. The God of the New Testament is the God of grace.

The God of the Old Testament is the God of wrath. The God of the New Testament is the God of compassion.

The God of the Old Testament is the God of punishment. The God of the New Testament is the God of forgiveness.

On and on you could go.

I could go on a rant now about how this is patently untrue—and it is. The God of the Old Testament is not a different God from the God of the New Testament. It’s the same God. Yahweh and Jesus Christ are not at odds with one another. This is a ridiculous false dichotomy people have created.

But even so, let’s cut those people some slack.

Have you never had the experience of reading a passage from the Old Testament, and feeling really heavy and burdened, really conscious of the wrath of God, and then wanting to hurry over to the New Testament so that you can feel reassured of God’s grace? If that’s never happened to you, then you’re probably not reading your Bible.

That is how it feels sometimes. When we read the Bible too quickly, that is what we might come away with.

So if that is you, don’t feel bad, and don’t be afraid—there are two things that can help us make sense of this false dichotomy, and to see why it’s false.

There are two things we need to remember to help us make sense of the way it can sometimes feel to read the Bible.

I’m going to use two theological terms here, and I’m sorry for that, but I swear, I’ll explain what they mean.

Let’s look at the harder one first. It’s called the “inseparable operations of the Trinity.” Good Trinitarian theology can help us make sense of a lot of these false perceptions. The Bible says that there is one God, and that this one God has eternally existed in three distinct persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. (We don’t have time to go into how that’s possible, so I’ll give you the simple explanation: I have no idea.)

Often people will unconsciously put the Father in the role of the God of the Old Testament, and the Son and Spirit under the category of the God of the New Testament. We’ll think, The Father was active from Genesis to Malachi, then he passes the baton off to the Son in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and then HE passes the baton to the Spirit from Acts to Revelation.

The inseparable operations of the Trinity simply says that it doesn’t work like that. Any time you see God doing anything, all three persons of the Trinity are at work. You can’t separate the work of the Father from the work of the Son. You can’t separate the work of the Son from the work of the Spirit. And so on. In the Old Testament, the Father, the Son and the Spirit are always working together. And in the New Testament, the Father, the Son and the Spirit are always working together.

Christ is the God of judgment; the Father is the God of grace; the Spirit is the God of wrath; the Son is the God of the Law; the Father is the God of holiness; and the Spirit is the God of wisdom. You could replace any of those names with any of the persons of the Trinity, and it would still be true.

Everything God does, he does it in all the persons of the Trinity. You can’t separate the work of the Father, the Son and the Spirit. Everything they do, they do together, as God.

That’s the first thing.

One unchanging God: not the God of wrath in the OT and the God of grace in the NT. Yahweh and Jesus Christ are not at odds. Good Trinitarian theology—inseparable operations. Christ is the God of the law and the judgment; the Father is the God of grace. (“Before Abraham was born, I AM.”

The second is something which in theology is called “progressive revelation.”

Progressive revelation says that although God is always the same, he doesn’t tell his people everything there is to know all at one time. He reveals himself in progressive stages.

At creation, he reveals himself as the Creator God. To Abraham he gives the promise that through his lineage all nations of the world will be blessed. To Moses he gives his name—Yahweh, the great “I AM.” After the exodus in Egypt, he gives his people his law—the standard of righteousness that reflects his own perfect character. Through the law, he shows his people that they could never be perfect on their own (because they can never obey it). Through the prophets, he reveals why that’s a problem, and promises to send a Savior to solve that problem.

And in Christ, he shows his people just how mind-blowing his solution is: he himself will take on the imperfection of his people, and suffer the punishment for their rebellion in their place. God himself will suffer his own wrath for the people he loves.

In other words, there are steps to God’s plan, which allow us to see many different facets of his character—his perfection, his power, his justice, his wrath, his love, his grace—at different times. But God himself is the same at every step; it’s just that we didn’t see it before.

In the same way, there are steps to God’s plan, which allow us to see many different facets of his character—his perfection, his power, his justice, his wrath, his love, his grace—at different times.

there are steps to God’s plan, which allow us to see many different facets of his character—his perfection, his power, his justice, his wrath, his love, his grace—at different times.

Let me give you an example. We often pit God’s wrath and God’s love against each other—how could a loving God ever punish people for their sin? The question is, how could he not?

If you came into my apartment and intentionally dropped one of our picture frames on the floor, I’d be worried about you, but I wouldn’t get too bent out of shape over that. I’d get the broom, sweep up the glass, and that’d be it.

But if you came into my apartment and intentionally dropped my baby daughter on the floor, I’d handle that differently. I don’t have a lot of rage issues, but the ones I have would all come out if that happened.

Sin is an affront to God’s people and to God’s creation—it is actively working to destroy them both. So because God loves his people, and he loves his creation, he levels all of his wrath against it—not despite his love, but because of his love.

The God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament; he did not change between the book of Malachi and the book of Matthew. He does not change. He is immutable.

Implications

So that’s the theology of God’s immutability. And we needed to see that to understand why it matters. So now that we’ve seen that, let’s just think for a minute about some of the implications of that very simple fact.

First of all, there are implications for how we see God.

Progressive revelation—there are steps to God’s plan, which allow us to see different facets of his character at different times. But God himself is the same at every step.

God’s immutability is the guarantee of his faithfulness.

There are all kinds of promises in the Bible of things that God will do for his people. Some of those promises have already been fulfilled. For those promises, we can actually see, as we read the Bible from beginning to end, how he did it. We can see that he was faithful to do what he said he would do.

This means that the acts of God we have a hard time seeing as good are good; and the grace of God is tempered by his wrath against sin.

But some of the promises we find in the Bible haven’t been fulfilled yet. We’re still waiting on these things. But we can have absolute assurance that he will do it.

Why? Because he never changes. As we saw last week, nothing can make God want something he doesn’t want; nothing can make him change his mind. His immutability guarantees that if he says he will do something, he will do it.

His immutability reminds us of the unchanging truth of Scripture. The God who inspired the book of Genesis is the God who lives in us today. The God who preserved his Holy Word through the millenia preserves us.

We can go to the Bible, and know that the Bible doesn’t change depending on time or place or context, because it is God’s Word, and God never changes. No matter where we are, or what we are dealing with, these promises are sure and steady; they do not depend on any external factors.

gives us comfort.

gives us comfort.

His immutability gives us comfort. My parents moved a lot when I was a kid, so we don’t have a “family house”, so to speak. But no matter where they have lived, there are elements there that are constant.

The collage of baby photos of me which hangs on my parents’ wall. The silverware and the dishes they use today are the same ones we used when I was little. No matter where they live, my parents’ house has the same smell.

I'm thirty-eight years old now. I don’t need my parents anymore the way I did when I was young. But even so, there’s something strangely comforting about coming home and seeing those permanent fixtures of my childhood, smelling the smells I grew up with.

God’s immutability is our ultimate source of comfort. Jen Wilkin said, “The God who was is the God who is. The God who is is the God who is to come. The God who is to come is the God who was.”

God’s immutability is the guarantee of his faithfulness.

Comfort— “The God who was is the God who is. The God who is is the God who is to come. The God who is to come is the God who was.” (Jen Wilkin)

What better news is there that the God who hates sin will help me kill mine? that God already loved me before making me, so won’t stop loving me now? that God has always been determined to reconcile his people to himself, and to right every wrong, so he will do it?

God’s immutability > the unchanging truth of Scripture

There are thousands of implications in the truth of God’s immutability for the way we see God.

But there are also many implications for the way we see ourselves.

God never changes; we, on the other hand, are constantly changing.

Us: constantly changing

Negative sense: we are never constant, never consistent. We are constantly changing our minds, going back, reneging on engagements, doing what we said we wouldn’t, not doing what we said we would. Human beings are inherently disappointing.

Positive sense: we can change. The lie: “This is just who I am. Don’t ask me to be something I’m not.”

: an impossible love

This love isn’t our love, but God’s. “What better passage to read at a wedding than one that describes the kind of love we can never hope to receive perfectly from anyone but our heavenly Father? How much more willing might we be to replace the always and never language of our human arguments for the anguage of grace and forgiveness if we could just recognize that we canot ask another human to be our God?” (JW)