Tag: Immutability

Links for the Weekend (2024-10-04)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

A Concise Theology of Failure

I appreciated Samuel James’ thoughts connecting the gospel to a theology of failure.

But what if you don’t get the life you wanted? In the digital age, you might as well not even exist. Failure is obscurity, and obscurity is death. In the post-religious imagination, without success, there is no meaning to one’s life. You can go on surviving, but each day that is spent contrary to what you actually want to be doing is a waste. If enough of these days accumulate, your very self disappears.

Growing Wise as We Grow Old

Jon Bloom reflects on a high school reunion and what Psalm 90 teaches us about growing older.

I know this all sounds a bit depressing. But our hope has to be real hope if it’s going to sustain us through real life, not the illusory hope of the mirage-like dreams my classmates and I likely had when we graduated. Real hope is only realized when we come to terms with the dismaying reality we all face in this age. Truly facing it is what forges in us “a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12), the kind of heart that Psalm 90 teaches how to cultivate.

Divine Immutability Explained

Here’s a short video in which Kevin DeYoung explains what it means that God does not change.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called God Gives Us Himself. If you haven’t already seen it, check it out!

Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

God’s Immutability Secures Ten Thousand Promises

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

God’s promises to his people are “precious and very great” (2 Peter 1:4). Some of his promises are explicit in Scripture, and some are implied, but all of them are vital to everyone who needs hope in the world.

What is God?

The Westminster Shorter Catechism gives an answer to this most important question.

What is God? 

God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. (WSC, Question and Answer 4)

It is God’s unchangeableness—the theological term for this is his immutability—that has recently struck me as being precious. Until recently, God’s immutability mostly stood out to me because it was so unlike me. In so many of his attributes, but especially in this one, I could see how different God was than any human. We change all the time—in our preferences, moods, philosophy, morality, and ethical behavior. But God does not change! The way he is now is the way he always has been and always will be.

While this is still a bit outsized for my brain, I’ve been learning how God’s immutability is even greater than I previously thought.

Is God Immutable?

Before we dig into this feast, perhaps we should set the table. Is God actually immutable? Just because a catechism claims something about God does not make it so.

There is excellent Scriptural support for this doctrine.

For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. (Malachi 3:6)

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8)

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1:17)

These texts are all making slightly different points, and they should all be examined in context, but they all point to God’s immutability.

Additionally, there is a philosophical argument to make, one advanced by the ancient Greeks. Any change to God’s nature or character would imply some move from or into greater wholeness, goodness, or glory. But if God is perfect and complete, any such changes introduce a contradiction. Therefore, God cannot change. (I understand that I am oversimplifying. There are better sources than me to consult for a proper philosophical treatment.)

Implications of Immutability

If God is immutable, then this gives Christians some wonderful, implicit promises. For every aspect of God’s character and nature will exist in perfection forever.

God is holy and he will always be holy. God is sovereign and he will always be sovereign. God is faithful and he will always be faithful. God is patient and he will always be patient.

As I am growing to treasure God’s promises more, I’ve found his immutability to be a silver tray on which are served an abundance of promises. And all the promises of God find their “yes” in Jesus (2 Corinthians 1:20).

This God who is unchanging in his holiness and sovereignty and faithfulness and patience (and a thousand other qualities) is for me. The work of Jesus, planned out before time, is the evidence and the decisive act of this immutable God to rescue me.

God is merciful and he will always be merciful.

And that’s exactly the sort of sure promise we need.

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