Sermon Tone Analysis

What is an Incommunicable Trait?

Attributes of God that is not shared (communicated) to others by us, compared to communicable traits (those God shares or communicates with us and are shared by us).

Incommunicable (Gods traits we do not share)

God’s eternity

Inability to Change (Immutable)

Omnipresence

Communicable (Traits of God that we share)

God’s love

Knowledge

Mercy

Just

HOWEVER, there is no attribute of God that is completely communicable OR incommunicable.

We can never fully know the traits of God because we are not and cannot be like God.

So when we look at these communicable traits, Grudem says it is best to say they are “more shared” by us, while the incommunicable traits are those “less shared” by us.

So, when we look at the definition, these are traits that God shares or does not share with us and we share or do not share with others.

(We cannot share what we do not know).

Names of God

In the Bible a person’s name is a description of his or her character.

Likewise, the names of God in Scripture are various descriptions of his character.

So, God’s “name” is equal to all the Bible and creation tells us about God.

God should be honored

hallowed be thy name

shall not take name of Lord your God in vain

no other god’s before you

There are also individual names of God give in scripture.

Abba - Father

Adonai - Lord

Alpha and Omega - beginning and end

Ancient of Days

El Roi - God who sees me

Elohim

El Elyon - God Most High

Jehovah

Jireh - provider

Rapha - healer

Nissi - banner

etc

All address the attributes of God, who He is, what He shows to us, and how He interacts with us.

We also find descriptions that are familiar to us: lion, eagle, lamb, sun, morning star, light, fountain, rock, hiding place, tower, refuge, shield, temple.

He is known as the bridegroom, father, judge and king, man of war, shepherd, physician.

He is knowing, remembering, seeing, hearing, rising, wiper of tears.

He is joy, grief, anger, love, hatred, wrath, and the list continues on.

In one sense or another all of creation reveals something about God to us and that the higher creation—especially human beings, who are made in God’s image—reveals him more fully.

The incommunicable attributes of God are perhaps the most easily misunderstood, probably because they represent aspects of God’s character that are least familiar to our experience.

God’s Independence

God does not need us or the rest of creation for anything, yet we and the rest of creation can glorify him and bring him joy.

This attribute of God is sometimes called his self-existence.

We must understand God does not need creation in order to exist.

We exist simply because He wanted us.

God is absolutely independent and self-sufficient and needs nothing from us in return.

People have sometimes thought that God created human beings because he was lonely and needed fellowship with other persons.

If this were true, it would mean that God is not completely independent of creation.

Yet there are some specific indications in Jesus’ words that show this idea to be inaccurate.

In John 17:5, Jesus prays, “Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.”

Then in John 17:24, Jesus speaks to the Father of “my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”

There was love and communication between the Father and the Son before creation.

The fact that God is three persons yet one God means that there was no loneliness or lack of personal fellowship on God’s part before creation.

With regard to God’s existence, this doctrine also reminds us that only God exists by virtue of his very nature and that he was never created and never came into being.

He always was.

God’s independence is also seen in his self-designation in Exodus 3:14: “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’

God’s being is also something totally unique.

It is not just that God does not need the creation for anything; God could not need the creation for anything.

The difference between the creature and the Creator is immense, for God exists in a fundamentally different order of being.

The balancing consideration with respect to this doctrine is the fact that we and the rest of creation can glorify God and bring him joy.

This must be stated in order to guard against any idea that God’s independence makes us meaningless.

Someone might wonder, if God does not need us for anything, then are we important at all?

Is there any significance to our existence or to the existence of the rest of creation?

In response it must be said that we are in fact very meaningful because God has created us and has determined that we would be meaningful to him.

He decided that he would create us to glorify him.

Unchangeable

We can define the unchangeableness of God as follows: God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, and promises, yet God does act and feel emotions, and he acts and feels differently in response to different situations.

God existed before the heavens and earth were made, and he will exist long after they are permanently changed.

God causes the universe to change, but in contrast to this change he is “the same.”

The definition given above specifies that God is unchanging—not in every way that we might imagine, but only in ways that Scripture itself affirms.

Furthermore, God is unchanging in his purpose and promises.

All plans and purposes have been put into place and have existed for all eternity.

Once he has promised something, he will not be unfaithful to that promise.

Yet when we talk about God being unchanging in his purposes, we may wonder about places in Scripture where God said he would judge his people and then because of prayer or the people’s repentance (or both) God relented and did not bring judgment as he had said he would.

Examples of such withdrawing from threatened judgment include the successful intervention of Moses in prayer to prevent the destruction of the people of Israel (Ex.

32:9–14), the adding of another fifteen years to the life of Hezekiah (Isa.

38:1–6), or the failure to bring promised judgment upon Nineveh when the people repented (Jonah 3:4, 10).

Are these not cases where God’s purposes in fact did change?

Then there are other passages where God is said to be sorry that he had carried out some previous action.

One thinks of the time before the flood, where “the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Gen.

6:6), or the time when God told Samuel, “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me” (1 Sam.

15:11).

Did not God’s purposes change in these cases?

These instances should all be understood as true expressions of God’s present attitude or intention with respect to the situation as it exists at that moment.

If the situation changes, then of course God’s attitude or expression of intention will also change.

This is just saying that God responds differently to different situations.

The example of Jonah preaching to Nineveh is helpful here.

God sees the wickedness of Nineveh and sends Jonah to proclaim, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

(Jonah 3:4).

The possibility that God would withhold judgment if the people repented is not explicitly mentioned in Jonah’s proclamation as recorded in Scripture, but it is of course implicit in that warning: the purpose for proclaiming a warning is to bring about repentance.

Once the people repented, the situation was different, and God responded differently to that changed situation: “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” (Jonah 3:10).

In the cases of God regretting that he had made man or that he had made Saul king, these should be understood to mean that (a) God felt sorrow when considering the sinful results that had come after his earlier actions, but this is still consistent with the idea that (b) God knew that these events that caused him grief would still fulfill his long-term purpose of showing his justice and holiness when he brought judgment on sinful behavior.

So, does God then change his mind?

It depends on what we mean by that.

When a situation changes (such as when people repent or pray or both) God often in Scripture changes his present attitude toward the specific situation.

But God’s long-term purposes never change.

Impassibility