What is God like? Immutable and impassable!

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.” (Hebrews 13:8)

So far we’ve seem some mind-bending combinations of wonderfully true things about God: He is both beyond us (transcendent) and near to us (immanent); He is both simple and incomprehensible. Today we’ll explore His immutability (He cannot change) and impassibility (He cannot be caused to suffer). Both will melt our minds, but both turn out to be wonderfully reassuring!

What is the doctrine of divine immutability?

Time and time again in Scripture we get the repeated claim that God does not change. Look, for example, at Malachi 3:6 – “I the LORD do not change.” Or Hebrews 13:8 – “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.” That truth is a huge comfort to us because we always know where we stand with Him. He’s not changeable like the weather; instead He’s as constant as gravity. (In fact He’s more constant than gravity, which is different at different places in the universe!) It means, as we’ve seen before, that God is, and will always remain, perfect. He’s not on a journey of self-improvement, nor can He begin a slippery slide down into corruption. He does not change! This is the truth of God’s immutability.

What is the doctrine of divine immutability?

The truth of God’s impassibility is related: He cannot be caused to suffer by anything outside Himself. In other words, nothing and no-one can force God to change. God cannot undergo emotional change. Again, this is a huge reassurance, as we can be sure God is not like a volatile human, a slave to constantly shifting emotions. This is not meant to imply that God doesn’t feel: He simply doesn’t feel in the same way as us. So when the Bible tells us that God is love, and that He pours out His love on us, we can truly rejoice in that truth, because the pouring-out of love will never stop. Think of that! The truth of God’s impassibility doesn’t imply that God is cold and disinterested: rather it tells us that God couldn’t be more alive and loving. And that He will never stop or abate in those things.

But, you may ask, what about those times in the Bible where God seems to change His mind, or to regret an action, or even to “repent”? (See, for example, when God expresses regret at having made Saul king in 1 Samuel 15:11.) Here we need to realise that God’s immutability and impassibility are to do with His nature and His character, not His actions. And an unchanging God might just seem to change when dealing with constantly changeable human beings (like Saul). In fact, at the end of 1 Samuel 15 we get a reminder that God is not like a changeable human (v29). Perhaps an analogy would help here. Think of our relationship to the sun. Each morning the sun rises, and each evening it sets – except that’s not really what happens. When we describe the movement of the sun in those terms we’re actually describing our perception of the sun’s movement in relation to us, but we know scientifically that it’s actually us (earth) moving in relation to the sun. Likewise whenever we see what looks like change in God it’s actually Him acting out of His unchanging character towards intensely changeable humans.

What does this mean for us?

One thing this means is that our experience of relationship with God is liable to change from one moment to the next, but the bedrock of that relationship is unchanging. Theologians sometimes describe this as the difference between our union with Christ (the unchanging relationship) and our communion with Christ (the changing experience of that relationship). If you’d like to think more about that, I’d suggest Tim Chester’s excellent book Enjoying God, which talks about how we can experience deeper communion with God in our everyday lives because of our unchanging union with Him.

And another reassuring thing is that God’s personal resistance to suffering in Himself means that He is able to do far more than just sympathise with us when we’re hurting. He doesn’t just sit beside us and say, “Yeah, me too”. Instead He has the power (and unchanging love) to do something about it – to provide purpose and significance to our suffering, and ultimately to bring it to a happy end (see 2 Corinthians 4:17). Again, we’re left in awe of how unlike us God is – and how that’s such a wonderful thing!