Statement: God is unchanging.
52% of evangelicals strongly agreed with this statement. That means 48% did not strongly agree.
What does the Bible say?
Remember that we look to the Bible as our authority and our instructor as 2 Timothy 3:16 says: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness”.
The Bible is clear in both the old and new testaments that God does not change.
“For I the Lord do not change…”(Mal. 3:6;)
The context of that verse is God calling Israel to repentance because they were not obeying God’s law. He said they had not been consumed because he does not change. He would return to them if they would return to him. So, his not changing was a good thing for them.
“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.” (James1:17)
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8)
God is eternal and eternally unchanging. The God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament. He has the same attributes.
God’s very name implies his unchanging nature. When God, at the burning bush, commissioned Moses to bring Israel out of Egypt, Moses asked for God’s name. God said “I AM WHO I AM” and he told Moses to tell Israel “I AM has sent me to you”. (Exodus 3:14) God said he is who he is and will be, not changing.
In Isaiah, God repeatedly affirms to Israel that “I am he”, meaning he is the one who is and will always be the same, unchanged. For example, in Isaiah 41:4, he says “Who has performed an done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the LORD, the first and with the last; I am he”.
In 43:10, he says “…that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he”. In 46:4, he says “even to your old age I am he…”, a comfort for us as we age. In 48:12, he declares “…I am he; I am the first, and I am the last”.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism captures this doctrine, saying:
“God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.”
(Westminster Shorter Catechism 4)
This is the theological doctrine of Divine immutability. It flows from the doctrine of Aseity. Aseity means God is independent of everything outside of himself; he is sufficient in himself. He needs nothing, he depends on no one. It is we who depend on him, not he who depends on us.
It also means he has the fullness of being, containing all perfections. He is perfect. (Matthew 5:48) There is nothing lacking in him. Thus, there would be no need for God to change.
Therefore, there can be no change in God because any change in God would imply a change for the worse, which would make him less than what he is, less than perfect. He cannot change for the better because there is no better than perfect.
Augustine said “If God were not immutable, he would not be God”. (Augustine, “On Grace and Free Will”)
There are philosophies and theologies that attempt to contradict this doctrine, however.
A philosophy that developed a theology that wrongly contradicts this is process theology. It holds that God learns and changes as he adapts to what he has learned. It denies God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and immutability. This idea is in opposition to the teaching of the Bible and classic Christianity.
God knows all things (omniscience), so he has no need to learn. (1 John 3:20) He also has no need to adapt to changing circumstances because his will was established before the creation of the world. (Ephesians 1:8) He is omnipresent (present at all times, not bound by space or time). His plans are eternal and unchanging. (Isaiah 46:10; Psalm 33:11) He is the eternal and sovereign king of the universe.
If God learns, his knowledge is dependent. If God adapts to different circumstances, his being is dependent on those circumstances. Ultimately, to say that God learns and that God adapts to different circumstances is to say that God is a dependent being, and a God who is dependent isn’t God.
Open theism holds that God's knowledge of the future is not exhaustive, because the future is not yet fixed. It is not fixed because the free will of humans may change it. It denies God’s omniscience. It requires that God be ignorant of some things in the future.
If this were true, God could not say, as he does:
“I am God…declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying ‘My counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose…I have spoken and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed and I will do it”. (Isaiah 46:10-11)
God said he knows what will happen all the way to the end. This is omniscience. He knows it because he wills it in his sovereignty.
Here is an example. In Genesis 3:15, God tells the serpent:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heal”.
We know that God was speaking of the coming of Jesus Christ who would conquer Satan, the serpent. Clearly, God knew what would happen because he ordained it to happen around 4,000 years before it happened.
Open Theism also denies God’s immutability, holding that God’s knowledge grows in response to what humans do and he changes as he grows. This also denies God’s sovereignty.
I call this “Dune Theology”. The Dune Trilogy written by Frank Herbert features a messiah like character who sees many possible futures and narrows the field as time goes on until he has a good idea of what will actually happen. That is not how God is.
As the Puritan Stephen Charnock states:
“He who hath not being from another, cannot but be always what he
is: God is the first Being, an independent Being; he was not
produced of himself, or of any other, but by nature always
hath been, and, therefore, cannot by himself, or by any other,
be changed from what he is in his own nature.”
Stephen Charnock, ”The Existence and Attributes of God."
Ramifications
God’s immutability is a source of comfort and assurance to Christians
because we can count on God to be who he says he is and to do what he says he will do.
God’s immutability is one of the attributes that make him different, and better than, than human beings.That leads us to worship.
Since a vast majority of Evangelicals said the Bible was their authority, why did not a greater number affirm this doctrine? It means they do not know their Bibles. In some cases, it may mean they actually do not accept the Bible’s authority. Don’t be like those people.
If we define God as other than he reveals himself, we worship an idol.
Carnal men love the god they make, but not the God that made them.
Charles Spurgeon.
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