One of the attributes of God is His immutability. This
means that He is unchangeable. God cannot change because
He is perfect, and any change would be for better or worse.
If it was for better, it would mean He was not perfect before
the change. If it was for worse, He would not be perfect
after the change. God is constantly and consistently the
same. Mal. 3:6 says, "For I the Lord do not change." In
James 1:17 God is described as one "who does not change
like shifting shallows."
This attribute of God is great assurance for us who live in
the turmoil of constant change. Arthur H. Clough speaks
for us when he says,
It justifies my soul to know, that,
though I perish, truth is so;
That howsoe'er I stray and range,
whate'er I do, Thoudost not change.
I steadier step when I recall
that, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.
John Campbell Shairp expresses well the contrast
between our mutability and God's immutability.
'Twixt gleams of joy and clouds of doubt
Our feelings come and go;
Our best estate is tossed about
In ceaseless ebb and flow.
No mood of feeling, form of thought,
Is constant for a day;
But Thou, O Lord, Thou changest not;
But same Thou art alway.
The doctrine of God's immutability is obvious and
unquestioned in Scripture and theology. The book of
Jonah, however, brings us to a passage that appears to
contradict this doctrine, for it states clearly that God
repented and did not do what He said He would do. He
changed His mind, and did not fulfill the prophecy that in 40
days Nineveh would be destroyed. Is it really possible for
God to change His mind and repent, or did Jonah make a
mistake? He certainly knew the fact that God was
immutable, so how could he write about God changing, and
how could God inspire him to write what appears
contradictory? God certainly cannot be unchangeable and
at the same time change His mind-or can He?
If God cannot change then the contradiction becomes
even worse in the book of I Samuel where in chapter 15
verse 29 we read that God "is not a man that He should
repent." Then only 6 verses later in verse 35 we read, "And
the Lord repented that He had made Saul King over Israel."
Certainly no author, let alone an inspired one, could fail to
see the contradiction, unless there is, in fact, no
contradiction. Our goal is to show that there is no
contradiction in the changes that take place in the
unchangeable God. In so doing we will gain a greater
biblical concept of God, and fulfill Paul's prayer for
believers that they increase in the knowledge of God. Let's
look at some solutions to this apparent contradiction.
I. Some theologians feel the solution is to explain the
contradiction away by denying one side of the issue. They
say that God does not really repent as the text states. This
language is used to make it understandable to our finite
minds. In other words, God accommodates Himself to our
capacities to understand. He doesn't really change, but only
says so for our understanding. Calvin, for example, says,
"There is a twofold view of God-as He sets Himself forth in
His Word, and as He is in His hidden counsel. With regard
to His secret counsel, God is always like Himself, and is
subject to none of our feelings; but with regard to the
teaching of His Word, He is accommodated to our
capacities."
It is hard for me to accept this, for if it is true, it means
that our revelation of God is not what He really is. If God is
unchanging in His real self, but changeable in His revealed
self, then what He has revealed is not really revelation at all,
but only an artificial God whom men can understand. It
seems to me to be dangerous to talk about God as He is in
His secret counsel in contrast to His revealed self, for if it is
secret there is nothing we can know about it, and for all we
know it is identical with His revelation. It is a sure sign of
man made theology when we are afraid to think of God as
He revealed Himself, and have to go beyond revelation to
find some way to explain away what we do not like. This
sounds to much like saying I am going to explain how to play
monopoly to a child, but I will really explain tiddly winks
instead because it is so much easier to understand. If God is
not what He reveals Himself to be, then we do not really
have a revelation of God.
My own feeling is that God is in reality very much like He
is revealed to be. He actually does experience emotions of
love, joy, anger, and sorrow. Certainly no one can explain
the joy and tears of Jesus as accommodation. These were
real emotions, and I cannot conceive that all that is said
about God's emotions are only an accommodation to our
finite minds. When God is revealed as angry there is no
reason to think it is not literal anger. It may seem like I am
trying to make God to much like man, but no one can deny
that God Himself has painted this picture for us. God wants
us to think of Him as having all the emotions of a human. It
is far better than the Unmoved Mover of Aristotle, and the
pure transcendental reason of the philosophers. The God of
Scripture is a person, and nothing less than personhood can
adequately convey the essence of God.
What is the point of all this? It is to say that the solving
of the apparent contradiction of an unchanging God who
changes by going beyond revelation to a secret counsel of
God is only an ingenious man made scheme that solves a
miner problem by creating a major one-namely, that what
God says in His Word is not what is true in reality, and that
revelation is really no revelation at all. This makes the Bible
to be glorified fiction. There is another solution.
II. We must first of all make sure that we do not think of
God's immutability as we think of the immutability of a
rock. God is not a victim of iron-bound rigidity. He is a free
and Sovereign Person with infinite variety and flexibility in
His nature. He can act in love and compassion, or in anger
and wrath depending on the people with whom He is
dealing. If men obey God, He is unchanging in His spirit of
love toward them. If men disobey God, He is unchanging in
His opposition to them. God is consistently just, holy, and
righteous, and this being so, He changes as men change. In
fact, His changes are the only way to maintain His
unchangeableness.
For example, God is unchangeably just. He can never be
unjust, and so when He sees men who have gone to a point in
sin where they must be judged, He cannot overlook it. His
just nature demands that there be judgement. Since He is
also unchangeably merciful, He gives warning before His
wrath falls so that people can repent. When they do God
cannot let His wrath fall, for it then would no longer be just,
for they have responded to His mercy. If He went ahead and
judged them anyway, He would be changing in His nature.
He would be acting arbitrary, and without reason for His
action. He would be locked in and not free to change in
response to the new situation.
If God could not change, He would be like a man who
decided to tear down his old garage and burn it. If his sons
built a new garage on the same spot while he was on
vacation, and he came home and felt the need to burn it
down anyway, this would be immutability to the point of
imbecility. We would consider the man a fool who could not
change in response to a change situation. A man is free to
change in order to be wise in a changing world. It is folly to
think that God does not have this same ability and freedom.
God said He would destroy Nineveh, but when they repented
they were no longer enemies out of God's will.
It would be folly for God to be locked in to judgment, and so
be forced to destroy them just when they were willing to
obey Him. God changed His response to them just because
He is unchanging in His nature. By nature He is merciful
and just, and both mercy and justice demanded that He
respond in grace toward those who repented.
God's nature is always the same, but His actions change
in relation to men. The sun is not arbitrary because it melts
wax and hardens clay. They are two opposite kinds of
action, but the cause for the difference is not in the sun, but
in the objects. God can be angry or loving without changing
in Himself, for He is both at all times in relation to evil and
righteous men. If you go from evil to being righteous, God
does not change in His nature, but only in His relationship to
you. This means that the changes in God are in relationship
to persons, and are not changes in God's nature at all. They
are necessary to keep Him unchanging in nature. If God
said I will destroy this person in wrath, and then could not
change, even if the person repented and responded to God's
grace, God would be a slave and victim of His own
unchanging nature. But God is free, and He can change His
attitude toward men at any time when they respond to His
grace. God is unchangingly merciful to the repentant
sinner. God could not make it plainer than He does in Jer.
18:7-10. "If at any time I announce that a nation or
kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if
that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and
not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another
time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up
and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey
me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for
it." So when God said that He would destroy Nineveh, and
then changed His mind, and did not do it because they
repented, did He change in His nature? Not at all. He acted
consistent with His nature, and remained unchangeably
committed to His plan to bless all those who repent. God
changes not, for even when He changes His actions, it is to
maintain His changeless nature which must always judge
evil and reward good.
The very purpose for God declaring His purpose to
destroy Nineveh was that He might not have to destroy
them. He warning was to make change possible in His plan.
His warning gave them a chance to repent and this change
would enable God to change in His plan. Being
unchangeable He could not change in His judgment of their
evil unless they repented, but if they did then His
unchangeable nature of mercy would have to change His
plan and not destroy them. The more we look at it the more
we see that change is a vital part of God's unchanging
nature. If He could not change in response to the changes in
man, He would be locked into one side of His nature and not
be free to be unchangingly merciful. God's unchanging
nature demands freedom to be flexible and ever ready to
change in response to changing situations.
God could have destroyed Nineveh without warning, but
He made sure that Jonah got there, even though it took a
miracle to get him there. This is a marvelous picture of
God's unmerited favor. Their repentance did not merit
God's favor and response of grace, for even that was only
because of His grace in getting the warning to them. God
could not save them without their repentance, however, for
that would be to change His nature and be a supporter of
evil. In mercy He had to get them to change before He could
change and forgive their evil. God does all He can to get men
to change so that He can change from being a God of wrath
to being a God of love and grace. He prefers to be this, but
He can only be that when men respond to it. So God never
changes in His desire to change from being a God of
judgment to a God of forgiveness. That is why we have a
plan of salvation at all. It is because of God unchanging
nature of love and mercy.
God's sovereignty demands that He be free to respond to
the changes in man, and so we have a necessary paradox.
Change is a necessary part of God's unchanging nature.
Jonah knew God was a God whose nature demanded He
repent if Nineveh repented, and that is why he did not want
to go and warn them. Jonah knew that God's unchanging
policy of forgiving those who repent would lead to the saving
of Nineveh and he did not want them to be saved. He knew
God was always the same and would not change in this case,
and he did not want it to happen, and that is why he tried to
escape. He knew that even though God said He would
destroy Nineveh in 40 days, that He would change His mind
and spare them if they repented. He knew that the
unchanging God would change in a moment is there were
changes in men.
The paradox of God's changing changelessness is real,
and not a mere matter of words. Nor is it a matter of
foolishness like the average size man who advertised himself
as the world's largest midget and the world's smallest giant.
God reveals Himself as immutable in His nature, and He
reveals that He changes in relation to the changes in men.
Both are true and essential, and to deny either is to refuse to
receive God as He has revealed Himself to be. Wise are those
theologians who see the necessity of both.
John Caird in Fundamental Ideas Of Christianity writes,
"Immutability is not stereotyped sameness, but impossibility
of deviation by one hair's breadth from the course which is
best....In God infinite consistency is united with infinite
flexibility." In other words, God is the only person who can
be constantly changing in order to be consistently the same
in nature.
Augustus Strong, the great theologian, wrote, "God's
immutability itself renders it certain that His love will adapt
itself to every varying mood and condition of His children..."
This is the basis of the Gospel, for God will change in an
instant if the conditions are met. The thief on the cross was
only minutes away from an eternity in hell, and because he
turned to Jesus in faith he was only minutes away from an
eternity in heaven. Thank God for His unchanging nature
that will change a lost man to a saved man in an instant,
because He is ever ready to change in His response to the
changes in man. Let us praise God that He is willing to
repent and change His mind when their is a way to avoid
judgment and show mercy and grace.
