God's Immutability

Michael Seewald's sermon explores the attribute of God's immutability, meaning God's unchangeable nature. Seewald explains that the term "immutable" originates from Latin and Old French, signifying "not changeable." He highlights that while the word's meaning has remained consistent, it is not inherently unchangeable itself, unlike God's nature.

Seewald references Hebrews 6:17-18 to show that God's counsel is immutable, confirmed by an oath. He emphasizes that God's immutability applies to His being, attributes, and divine nature. God's declaration to Moses, "I am that I am," underscores His unchanging essence. Seewald explains that God's perfection cannot increase or decrease, as any change would imply imperfection.

The sermon also addresses God's immutability in His personality, specifically the Holy Trinity. Seewald uses the "Glory Be" doxology to illustrate the eternal and unchanging nature of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He discusses the concept of the Trinity as presented in Scripture, showing its consistent presence from Genesis through the New Testament.

Seewald then discusses God's immutability in His eternal will or decree, highlighting that God's plans are unchangeable and comprehensive. He explains that, unlike humans whose plans can fail due to external factors, God's will encompasses all events, including the actions of men and secondary causes. Seewald uses examples from Scripture, such as Joseph's story and Christ's betrayal by Judas, to illustrate how God's immutable plan works through human actions.

Seewald concludes by addressing seven qualifications to God's immutability, as noted by Greg Nichols:
1. God is active and self-moving, not inactive.
2. God is personal and communicative, not antisocial.
3. God has divine affections, not apathetic.
4. God is not implacable or obdurate.
5. God is approachable and responsive to prayer.
6. God's covenantal relationship with His people shows progressive revelation and development.
7. Christ's divine nature is immutable, while His human nature experienced change.

The sermon ends with a reminder that God's immutability should comfort believers, assuring them of God's unchanging promises and eternal refuge. Seewald transitions to a time of prayer, encouraging the congregation to meditate on God's steadfast nature.

Transcript

0:00

So this week we're going to start on the attribute of God's immutability. And you might pray for me because that word is hard for me to pronounce. But our English word immutable derives from the Latin and arrived in English through the old French. The word is two parts. The "m" or "n" means "not" or "opposite of" and "mutabilis" means "changeable". Put them together and it literally means "not changeable". Immutability means "not changeable". Our old friend Webster defines immutable as "invariable", "unalterable", "not capable or susceptible of change". And the Cambridge dictionary defines it as "not changing or unable to be changed". So it seems that the meaning of the word immutable, from its origins in the Latin through the old French to the English, has been immutable till the present. Actually, that's not quite true. Even though the meaning has not changed to date and it has been unchanged in the past, doesn't mean that it is unchangeable and incapable of changing in the future. Hence the meaning of the word immutable is not actually immutable. That would be unchangeable. This word appears twice in the older English translations in Hebrews chapter 6 verses 17 and 18. And that passage says, "Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us". More modern translations render the word here as "unchangable", "unchanging" or "unchangableness". So the immutability of God is his "unchangableness", the quality of God that is unchangeable. Now as we consider God's immutability, let's think about the different ways in which God is unchangeable. First, God is unchangeable in his being. And some of the... just so I don't want to be guilty of stealing from anyone without proper recognition, some of this material I gleaned from Greg Nichols' great book on systematic theology on the doctrine of God. I would highly recommend that book as you're studying about God. So God is first unchangeable in his being. All that God is, he is eternally. God is unchangeable in all of his attributes and his divine nature. He cannot become more or less of what he is. God is not, if you will, becoming at all. God simply is. In Exodus 3, 14, when Moses asked God what his name is, which is essentially asking God for a self-description, he said, "I am that I am." God's description of himself infers immutability. He is not progressing or becoming. God is full stop. He cannot change. For if perfection changes to become more than it wasn't perfect to start with, and if perfection changes to become less, it is obviously no longer perfect. What would it be like to have a God who changes? Think about it for a minute. The Bible says that God is love. But what if God could become more love? This means that he isn't perfect now in love. And if God could change to become less love, it would mean that at some point in the future, he may stop loving his people, or worse, that his love ceases completely. Scripture tells us that God is holy. In a moral sense, this means that God is perfectly righteous. If God could become more holy, it means, as it does with love, that he wouldn't be perfectly holy now. And if he could become less holy, it would mean that evil is possible in God. So if God could become less holy than he is, it is not unreasonable to think that God could become even the devil at some point. Now this is obviously absurd. For God to be God, he is necessarily immutable or unchangeable. Therefore, God's declaration of his name, "I am that I am," is the real starting point in apprehending God. Essentially, in this, God is saying, "I am God. I have always been God. And I always will be God. I am unchanging. What I was, I am. What I am, I am. And what I will be, I am. All that I am, I am." That's why he said, "I am that I am." That's a lot of "I am's." So God's immutability, his absolute immutability also applies to the personality of God. That is the Holy Trinity, the tri-personality of God. We sing about this when we sing the glory of Patre. It goes, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning is now, and ever shall be world without end. Amen." It's a wonderful doxology. So this doxology is praising the Holy Trinity and declaring his immutability. The triune God was and is the same unchanging Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the beginning, in the present, and in the eternal future. There was never a time before the Trinity, and there will never be a time after the Trinity. Our God is forever the same. This is why we speak of the relationship among the three persons of the Trinity as eternal relations. There was never a time when God was not triune. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and the Spirit is eternally proceeding forth from both the Father and the Son. This Trinity of persons is alluded to in the very first chapter in the Bible, when God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him. We see in the wording that is used by the Holy Spirit here, that unity of essence and diversity of persons is a concept that is immediately introduced in Scripture. Though the doctrine of the Trinity is not fully expound to here, the concept is clearly introduced. We see the plurality, "Let us," but then we see the singularity that God created man in his own image. The Holy Spirit is introduced in the second verse of Genesis. The Spirit of God moved over the waters, it says, while the Psalms and the Prophets formally introduced the Son, though he appears in the earlier narratives. The New Testament develops the doctrine of the Trinity through the coming of Christ as the Son of God and the giving of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. The Trinity is visibly manifested during Jesus' baptism, and Jesus commanded us to baptize in the name of the Holy Trinity in Matthew 28, 19. The three heavenly witnesses of 1 John 5, 7 is marshaled by the writers of our confession as the key proof text of the Trinity, as it says,"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost." And these three are one. There again we have the diversity of persons and the unity of essence. So this relationship of one God in three co-equal and co-eternal persons is an eternal relationship, because God is immutable. He does not change, and He cannot change. In the fourth century at the Council of Nicaea, our fathers in the faith opposed the heretic Arius by asserting the eternal generation of the Son that goes like this,"I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, etc." The Christian truth that the Son of God always was as He is in His divinity, that the Trinity is an eternal relationship, not created at some point in time, and that the Holy Spirit also is eternally proceeding from the Father and Son is likewise professed in the Athanasian Creed. It says, "The Father was neither made, nor created, nor begotten from anyone. The Son was neither made nor created. He was begotten from the Father alone. The Holy Spirit was neither made nor created nor begotten. He proceeds from the Father and the Son." So God is absolutely immutable in His essence or being. Secondly, God is immutable in His tri-personality. He does not change. The Trinity will not become more than the three persons in one essence at any point in the future. But now thirdly, let's look at God's immutability in His counsels or in His eternal decree or God's holy will. Since God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, all-wise, all-good, all-holy, and we could go on, His eternal will is therefore unchanging. God's eternal will is sometimes called His decree or His counsel, His purpose, or His plan. If you look for those words in Scripture, you'll be looking at God's eternal decree. We sometimes plan things that we are unable to bring about. The more complex and far-reaching the plan, the more tenuous it becomes. If we decide to get a drink of water, there is a high probability that we are able to bring it to pass. This plan involves the ability to move and the availability of water. But this plan may fail if we are in the middle of the Sahara Desert where no water is available. As finite creatures, we have limited power to accomplish our will because we are weak and we don't hold all of the factors involved. You may have scoped out a parking spot at your favorite grocery store that you wanted to slip into kind of close to the door, but before you get there, someone else takes the spot. Even our simple plans oftentimes are thwarted by factors that are outside of our control. But God is not like us in that way. He holds all of the factors in His hands. As the song says, He's got the whole world in His hands. Every atom in the universe is under His direct supervision. Even the thoughts and intentions of our hearts are governed by His sovereign hand. If the mightiest king's heart's intentions can be directed by the Lord, then so can all other hearts. The most powerful hearts, the most powerful men can be directed and governed. That goes for all of us. The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord as the rivers of water. He turneth it whithersoever He will. Proverbs 21 1. Next Sunday, we'll be praying for our lost loved ones, and this teaching time will be taken up in prayer next week. But it would be utterly foolish for us to ask God to intervene in the lives of people and to change them from unwilling and hard-hearted to willing and repentant if He lacked the power to do so. Along these lines, we might consider how God uses cause and effect, particularly secondary means to accomplish His will. Some things God does directly or without utilizing secondary means. He directly created the world by the word of His power. Let there be light, and there was light. He directly regenerates the hearts of sinners and makes them new. It is a work of the Holy Spirit. We struggle sometimes when considering God's immutable plan to understand how God can plan things that depend upon secondary wills and that operate voluntarily. Each of us makes choices that are ours alone. Some of our choices are good, and some of them are evil. If God was simply a puppet master, then He would be the culprit of our evil thoughts and deeds. The question of how God can have an immutable plan that depends upon billions of secondary and voluntary wills is a mystery to us, in the same way that creating the world out of nothing is a mystery to us. But just because we can't wrap our finite minds around the how does not mean that it is not so. God governs all things meticulously, even the evil in men's hearts. Joseph, commenting on his brother's evil toward him, said,"But as for you, he thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass as it is this day to save much people alive."(Genesis 50, verse 20) We see here that the brothers intended evil in their act of selling Joseph. They had no good will towards Joseph. They hated him. They were jealous of him. Yet, in their evil, in their act of evil, in their intention of evil, God intended good. God governs and oversees everything to serve his good purpose and plan. They were still culpable for their evil. Yet, God glorifies himself by intending good out of their evil. His plan utilized their wickedness to a cross purpose of good that no one could see coming. So most things that happen, so most things happen through secondary means. When our time to die comes, it will most likely come through some natural cause, such as disease, or it may come by an accident. Christ's arrest, which led to his death, came by way of the betrayal of his friend, Judas Iscariot. This is another place where Scripture gives us insight into the connection between God's perfect immutable plan, operating concurrently with the devil and evil men's wicked plans, all to bring about that which is good and right. His plan operated in and through their wicked schemes to bring about the salvation of men. He says, "But behold, the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table. And truly the Son of Man goeth as it was determined." That's God's plan."But woe unto that man by whom he is betrayed." That's Judas' plan. The Scriptures predicted Christ's betrayal at the hand of his friend. This was obviously part of God's immutable will or decree. It is God who determined the means and method of Christ's sufferings and death. He was, as it says in Revelation, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Nevertheless, the secondary causes, Judas and Satan, were fully responsible for their sin because most of God's plan does not come about through God's direct power, but indirectly through the willing and doing of people. Judas made a choice to betray Christ. His choice was his own. This is why he is morally culpable for his betrayal. God uses all things, even the wickedness of the wicked, to accomplish his immutable plan. So we see that God's plan or purpose, his immutable will, encompasses all things, all things good and evil. He governs and directs all events in conformity with his unchanging plan. His plan operates over, in, and through the wills and purposes of men. Isaiah gives us insight into the immutable will of God by prophesying the name and the actions of Cyrus, the King of Persia, nearly 200 years before he reigned. It says in Isaiah 44, "Thus saith the Lord thy Redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb. I am the Lord that maketh all things, that stretches forth the heavens alone, that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself, that frustrateeth the tokens of the liars, that maketh diviners mad, that turneth wise men backward and maketh their knowledge foolish, that confirmeth the word of his servant and performeth the counsel of his messengers, that saith to Jerusalem thou shalt be inhabited." This was after, this was to be after they were taken captive and after Jerusalem was desolate."That saith to Jerusalem thou shalt be inhabited, and to the cities of Judah, ye shall be built, and I will raise up the decayed places thereof. That saith to the deep be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers. That saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure. Even saying to Jerusalem thou shalt be built, and to the temple, thy foundation shall be laid.""Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him, and I will loose the loins of kings to open before him the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut. I will go before thee and make the crooked places straight. I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunders the bars of iron, and I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I the Lord, which called thee by thy name, am the God of Israel." So here again in this passage we see a clear picture of God's immutable plan being prophesied before it came to pass. And we all know that indeed the king named Cyrus issued the royal decree to send many of the captive Israelites back to Jerusalem and to rebuild the temple and the city. There's a cylinder in the British Museum that has this decree written on stone. Here again in the book of Numbers we see Balaam instructing King Balak that God is not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent."Hath he said, and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall he not make good?" Even he, even the wicked prophet Balaam, recognized that God's immutable plan cannot be broken and that whatever he says will surely come to pass. Now brothers and sisters, this should give us comfort as we navigate our way through life. When God says in Romans that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus and that all things work together for good to those who love God, we can have the highest degree of confidence that he will keep his promises concerning us. Now as we wrap up, it's important for us to put scriptural boundaries around this doctrine of God's immutability. Greg Nichols in his doctrine of God points out seven qualifications to this important doctrine. 1. God is immutable but not inactive or inanimate. The fact that God is immutable in his being, his tri-personality and his will does not mean that he is, as Aristotle would say, the unmoved mover, rather as Jeff Johnson would say, he is the self-moving mover. God is active. He created the world from non-being to being. In his providence he is acting, upholding, preserving, governing all things. God doesn't need to be acted upon by another force to move. He moves and acts at his own pleasure. 2. God is immutable but not antisocial or impersonal. Some people believe that immutability requires God to be totally other, to be on such a different plane that interaction and communication would detract from his divine perfection. They believe God to be utterly transcendent. Nevertheless, Scripture speaks of God as the living God, his personal and communicative. The very name Emmanuel means God with us. God speaks, he interacts and has personal relationship with his people. 3. God is immutable but not apathetic or heartless. There are those who believe that God does not have emotion. The fact that God interacts with his creatures requires God to respond to the actions of men and angels. He responds to good and evil as his immutable, holy character requires. He is angry, it says, at the wicked every day, but he delights, it says, in the righteous. Scripture reveals God with divine affections, including anger, grief, delight, compassion and mercy. These are divine affections. God is immutable but not implacable, that is, that he cannot be appeased or obdurate, that is, hardened in feelings or unyielding. Being immutable doesn't mean that God is implacable or obdurate. Our very salvation depends upon God's wrath against sinners being appeased in Jesus Christ. The Apostle John said, "Hear in his love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins, the appeasement of wrath." Christ is our appeasement, he's our atonement. He's not implacable. Likewise, despite our trials, the Lord is not hardened against his people. It says in James 5, 11, "Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy." God is not unyielding and hardened in feelings. He is not implacable and obdurate. 5. God is immutable but not inexorable, that is, not able to be moved by prayer or unapproachable. God is not resistant to persuasion. He invites us to pray and to ask him and that he will answer. Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and he shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." James said, "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." Also, Jesus taught us to pray, "Our Father, who art in heaven." Just as a child asks his earthly father for things, Christ as our priest invites us to approach the throne of the heavenly Father and ask for what we need. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted, like as we are yet without sin, let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. We can come to God's throne boldly and ask, and he will be approached by us. He will be moved, he has willed, that he be moved by our prayers. Therefore we should pray. God's immutability does not preclude, number six, augmentation, betterment, advancement, and development in his covenantal relationship with his people. This could be summed up in the statement that God saves the best for last. Think about it that way. In God's covenants, he saves the best for last. The Apostle Paul calls the new covenant a better covenant than the old, and God's people are advancing to a new creation, which is far better than this present evil world. God has progressively revealed his will in Scripture, and the end is better than the beginning. The beginning highlights the fall of Adam and his offspring, while the end highlights the salvation of Christ's people and everlasting life. In all this, God has not changed. He is just developing his eternal, unchanging will. His purpose, his decree, his plan. Seven, God incarnate has immutable deity, not immutable humanity. We must remember that Christ is divine and human in one person, two distinct natures in one glorious person. The divine nature of Christ as the eternal Son of God did not change when he took to himself a human nature. The human nature of Christ is immutable. He had a beginning. He was born. He grew. He developed. He learned wisdom. But the divine nature of the eternal Son of God remains the same immortal, invisible, God-only wise, in light, inaccessible, hid from our eyes. God does not change. To conclude, God's attribute of immutability should be a great comfort to all believers. He is a rock of refuge because he does not change. Whatever he says he will do. We can rest assured that our eternal happiness is secured because God does not change and he doesn't lie. As we transition now to our time of prayer, meditate on this truth and rest in God's promise of good to us. As Moses said, "The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms." Amen.