Psalm 102:27—“thou art the same”; Mal. 3:6—“I, Jehovah, change not”; James 1:17—“with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning.” Spenser, Faerie Queen, Cantos of Mutability, 8:2—“Then 'gin I think on that which nature sayde, Of that same time when no more change shall be, But steadfast rest of all things, firmly stayed Upon the pillours of eternity; For all that moveth doth in change delight, But henceforth all shall rest eternally With him that is the God of Sabaoth hight; Oh thou great Sabaoth God, grant me that Sabbath's sight!” Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 146, defines immutability as “the constancy and continuity of the divine nature which exists through all the divine acts as their law and source.”
The passages of Scripture which seem at first sight to ascribe change to God are to be explained in one of three ways:
(a) As illustrations of the varied methods in which God manifests his immutable truth and wisdom in creation.
Mathematical principles receive new application with each successive stage of creation. The law of cohesion gives place to chemical law, and chemistry yields to vital forces, but through all these changes there is a divine truth and wisdom which is unchanging, and which reduces all to rational order. John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:140—“Immutability is not stereotyped sameness, but impossibility of deviation by one hair's breadth from the course which is best. A man of great force of character is continually finding new occasions for the manifestation and application of moral principle. In God infinite consistency is united with infinite flexibility. There is no iron-bound impassibility, but rather an infinite originality in him.”
(b) As anthropomorphic representations of the revelation of God's unchanging attributes in the changing circumstances and varying moral conditions of creatures.
Gen. 6:6—“it repented Jehovah that he had made man”—is to be interpreted in the light of Num. 23:19—“God is not a man, that he should lie: neither the son of man, that he should repent.” So cf. 1 Sam. 15:11with 15:29. God's unchanging holiness requires him to treat the wicked differently from the righteous. When the righteous become wicked, his treatment of them must change. The sun is not fickle or partial because it melts the wax but hardens the clay,—the change is not in the sun but in the objects it shines upon. The change in God's treatment of men is described anthropomorphically, as if it were a change in God himself,—other passages in close conjunction with the first being given to correct any possible misapprehension. Threats not fulfilled, as in Jonah 3:4, 10, are to be explained by their conditional nature. Hence God's immutability itself renders it certain that his love will adapt itself to every varying mood and condition of his children, so as to guide their steps, sympathize with their sorrows, answer their prayers. God responds to us more quickly than the mother's face to the changing moods of her babe. Godet, in The Atonement, 338—“God is of all beings the most delicately and infinitely sensitive.”
God's immutability is not that of the stone, that has no internal experience, but rather that of the column of mercury, that rises and falls with every change in the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere. When a man bicycling against the wind turns about and goes with the wind instead of going against it, the wind seems to change, though it is blowing just as it was before. The sinner struggles against the wind of prevenient grace until he seems to strike against a stone wall. Regeneration is God's conquest of our wills by his power, and conversion is our beginning to turn round and to work with God rather than against God. Now we move without effort, because we have God at our back; Phil. 2:12, 13—“work out your own salvation ... for it is God who worketh in you.” God has not changed, but we have changed; John 3:8—“The wind bloweth where it will ... so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” Jacob's first wrestling with the Angel was the picture of his lifelong self-will, opposing God; his subsequent wrestling in prayer was the picture of a consecrated will, working with God (Gen. 32:24-28). We seem to conquer God, but he really conquers us. He seems to change, but it is we who change after all.
(c) As describing executions, in time, of purposes eternally existing in the mind of God. Immutability must not be confounded with immobility. This would deny all those imperative volitions of God by which he enters into history. The Scriptures assure us that creation, miracles, incarnation, regeneration, are immediate acts of God. Immutability is consistent with constant activity and perfect freedom.
The abolition of the Mosaic dispensation indicates no change in God's plan; it is rather the execution of his plan. Christ's coming and work were no sudden makeshift, to remedy unforeseen defects in the Old Testament scheme: Christ came rather in “the fulness of the time” (Gal. 4:4), to fulfill the “counsel” of God (Acts 2:23). Gen. 8:1—“God remembered Noah” = interposed by special act for Noah's deliverance, showed that he remembered [pg 259]Noah. While we change, God does not. There is no fickleness or inconstancy in him. Where we once found him, there we may find him still, as Jacob did at Bethel (Gen. 35:1, 6, 9). Immutability is a consolation to the faithful, but a terror to God's enemies (Mal. 3:6—“I, Jehovah, change not; therefore ye, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed”; Ps. 7:11—“a God that hath indignation every day”). It is consistent with constant activity in nature and in grace (John 5:17—“My Father worketh even until now, and I work”; Job 23:13, 14—“he is in one mind, and who can turn him?... For he performeth that which is appointed for me: and many such things are with him”). If God's immutability were immobility, we could not worship him, any more than the ancient Greeks were able to worship Fate. Arthur Hugh Clough: “It fortifies my soul to know, That, though I perish, Truth is so: That, howsoe'er I stray and range, Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change. I steadier step when I recall That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.” On this attribute see Charnock, Attributes, 1:310-362; Dorner, Gesammelte Schriften, 188-377; translated in Bib. Sac., 1879:28-59, 209-223.