Immutability is hard for us to understand. If you look around, you look at things that are changing. Whether it’s the change of location, or change of expression, or change of emotion, or change of mind, there are always changes going on. And not to mention the changes that are happening that we can’t control. You’re getting older. Voices are dropping. Some bodies are developing, others are declining. We are constantly changing. It’s like we’re on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean. Wind blowing. Swells come and go. Up and down. That is our world. The only thing that is constant is change.
But God does not change. He does not mutate. He is immutable. Everything that God was, God is. “As Thou has been, Thou forever will be.”
Here are some reasons why God’s immutability is good news for believers.
1. We can trust all his promises. Numbers 28:19 “God is not a man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.”
God distinguishes himself from mankind in two ways here. First, he doesn’t lie. Men lie. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes accidentally. But nothing God has ever said is false. He only, always speaks truth. And second, he doesn’t change his mind. Men do this all the time, but God never changes his mind. People change. But God never changes. People mispeak, God doesn’t. People change, God never has.
The only hope for a changing world is a changeless God. The only certainty in a storm-tossed world is an immovable anchor. The only security for an insecure world is a rock-solid, unchanging, unalterable God. Because God does not change, every promise he’s ever made is trustworthy and true. Take it to the bank.
2. We can actually know him. If God changed, then we couldn’t ever truly know him. The Bible would only be a single snap-shot of an ever changing being. We would know things he had done, things he had said, things he had purposed, but we could never know whether or not they had changed. We wouldn’t know him.
You’ve probably had the experience of reconnecting with an old friend only to find that they’re not the same person you knew all those years ago. “I hardly know him anymore,” we often say. Such things cannot be said of God. What was true about God a thousand years ago is true about God right now. Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
Was God powerful when he spoke the universe into being? Yes, and his voice this day is no less powerful, his Spirit these days is just as omnipotent. Was God wise when he crafted this globe, when he shaped the mountains and dug out the deeps for the sea? Yes. Was he wise in how he devised salvation, how he planned to redeem for himself a people? Yes, and this hour this wisdom has not atrophied one bit.
Was God attentive to the prayers of his people? Did he hear their prayers and answer their groanings? He did. And he does. And all the cries of all the prayers in all the world from all the ages has not wearied him for one second.
Was he patient? Then he is now. Infinitely patient. Long suffering. Steadfast. Immovable.
Was he ever gracious? Yes, and so he is now. Spurgeon said, “God’s strong love stands like a granite rock, unmoved by the hurricanes of our iniquity.”
Anything God has ever said about himself has never been modified, edited, abridged, or altered. And so what A.W. Pink says is true: “He cannot change for the better for he is perfect; and being perfect, he cannot change for the worse.” And as such, we can know him.
3. We can understand how he relates to us right now. Sometimes we tend to think of God as sometimes gracious and sometimes angry and sometimes merciful and sometimes wrathful. It’s like we think he is emotional like us. Certainly, God does display features that we might identify as emotions in the Bible, but they do not exactly correlate to how we experience emotions.
Unlike me, unlike you, God is not susceptible to mood swings. He’s not groggy in the morning, apathetic at noon, and wired at night. He doesn’t get emotional like we do. He’s a constant, perfect embodiment of all his attributes all the time. He does not change.
And the reality is that God is, at all times, his unchangeable self. In his nature, he never changes. He always responds to sin with wrath; he always responds to repentance with grace.
A.W. Tozer says, “God never changes moods or cools off in his affections or loses enthusiasm. His attitude toward sin is now the same as it was when he drove out the sinful man from the eastward garden, and his attitude toward the sinner the same as when He stretched forth his hands and cried, ‘Come unto me, and ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'”
Sometimes when we are offended, we take a little time to settle down. Sometimes it takes time before we’re in a frame of mind where we can forgive our enemies. Not God. He is always extending his hands out to the sinner, and always opposing the pride in their folly. And the nano-second a person comes to him on his terms he accepts. It doesn’t take him time to “get over it.”
Believers ought to be very encouraged by this. Right now, God’s wrath is against your sin. But your sin has been detached from you and placed on Jesus. God’s grace is toward you, because you have Christ’s righteousness. This is the unchanging reality of the Christian: forever blessed, irrevocably accepted, unchangeably beloved.
4. Because of God’s unchanging-ness, man’s ability to change is a gift. For fallen man, the prospect of real change taking place is a immeasurable blessing. The unbelievers don’t see it that way. For the unbeliever, change is a frightening idea. It signifies decay and loss. Change is the harbinger of death. Change is a monster, terrorizing every poor soul that has nothing immutable to hold on to.
But for the redeemed, change is a gift.
- Our spiritual lives began with a change, when God changed our hearts and gave us faith to believe the gospel.
- Our spiritual lives continue in change, as God’s Holy Spirit continually works in us to make us more like Jesus.
- Our spiritual lives will end in change, when Jesus Christ gives us new, glorified bodies in the New Heavens and the New Earth.
Because of God’s immutability, we need not fear change. The hurricanes of this world need not frighten us; our live is hidden in the unchanging Creator. He is working in all things to change us each day. And he does. The unchanging God uses all change to change his children into the likeness of their changeless Savior.
5. We can feel the weight of eternity. The promises of God to save the repentance and the punish the sinner are immutable, written-in-stone, promises that will bear throughout eternity.
Those who do not believe will suffer immutable wrath. Unchanging anger. Immovable judgment. Unending torment. Be as good as you want, be as upright as you please, be as honest as you will, the weight of this threat stands toward all who do not give up trying to save themselves and trust Jesus Christ. Those who do not know Jesus savingly will have no second chances, there will be no do-overs, there will be no opportunity to set things right, there will be no fixing what went wrong. The gavel will sound and the judge will issue the immutable sentence: damned.
Believers ought to feel this weight and live with a marked urgency to help people see and believe in Jesus Christ, the only Savior.
But those who come to Jesus in repentance and faith will receive unchanging, immovable, granite-like salvation that will last them throughout all the ages of eternity. The oceans of his love will be dumped on them, he will delight in showing them kindness forever, he will not grow weary of them, he will not get bored of them, he will never get tired of them. Out of the infinite, unchanging riches of his grace he will lavish his generosity toward them.
God’s immutability guarantees this hope for the believer. God will not grow tired of heaven, wipe us out and start over. God will not change his mind. He never has.
Immutability is a very practical doctrine. And when we import man-like attributes into God, immutability is one of the first things to go. God becomes less like a rock of refuge and more like a sea of uncertainty. We are as secure as what we trust in, and there’s nothing more secure than an immutable God.
, pg. 98
I like Jonathan Leeman’s definition of church membership. It’s a bit clunky, but if we can unpack it I think it’s pretty helpful.