Have you ever known someone with dual dispositions? Hot and cold. Up and down. One morning he’s Mr. Happy and the next, he’s Mr. Grumpy.
God’s immutability is a source of great comfort to His children. Whereas God is constant and consistent in His wrath against sin, He is equally constant and consistent in His forgiveness in response to our faith and repentance. In a world that ebbs and flows in constant change, the believer finds peace in a God who does not change, knowing that truth is firmly grounded in the nature and character of an unchanging God.
God boldly declares His immutability. “For I the Lord do not change!” (Malachi 3:6, ESV).
The Bible gives further testimony saying, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8) and “every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17).
Clearly, God is distinct from creation. “Long ago you established the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will endure; all of them will wear out like clothing. You will change them like a garment, and they will pass away. But you are the same, and your years will never end” (Psalm 102:25–27).
God’s immutability assures us that “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6, ESV).
One of the incomprehensible paradoxes of the Bible is this… God is unchanging, yet He is moved by the prayers of His creatures!
In the little Old Testament book of Jonah, we read that the prophet was commissioned to preach God’s judgment in Nineveh, the capital city of the evil Assyrian empire. “In forty days Nineveh will be demolished!” (Jonah 3:4). Nineveh was wicked, fully disserving of God’s harshest treatment, but “the people of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth—from the greatest of them to the least” (Jonah 3:5). And when “God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—God relented from the disaster he had threatened them with. And he did not do it” (Jonah 3:10). The immutable God “relented.”
At Mount Sinai, while Moses was in the glorious presence of God for forty days, the fickle Israelites fashioned the golden calves. Justly, God declared, “I have seen this people, and they are indeed a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone, so that my anger can burn against them and I can destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation” (Exodus 32:9-10). But when Moses prayed for them, “the Lord relented concerning the disaster he had said he would bring on his people” (Exodus 32:14). Again, the unchanging, immutable God, “relented.”
On the surface, these passages may seem to disprove the doctrine of God’s immutability. But they do not. Though God responds to the cries of faithful people, God never wavers or changes His plans, purposes, or promises. He is in fact, immutable.
And… He’s waiting for us to expectantly and excitedly cry out in prayer!
