My Thoughts on the Immutability of God
I was doing some verse of the day reading with the Tecarta Study Bible. One footnote that I feel I wanted to write about today is about the Immutability of God. How is God immutable? The first verse that may come into my head is Malach 3:6 that has God declared that He doesn't change. The footnote also says that God is perfect meaning He can't get better or worse. The immutability of God is that He can't change His holy, perfect nature.
What must be known is that God's immutability doesn't mean that he is immobile. God also has the qualities of personality and can act, think, create, and make decisions. For instance, God can change His mind but it's based on His immutability. God once decided to punish Nineveh during Jonah's time but decided to spare them after the Ninevites' repentance. The KJV uses the term that the LORD God repents such as in Genesis 6:6-7. We also read that the LORD repented in Exodus 32:14 of His plan to punish the idolatrous people worshiping the golden calf. The LORD would've struck the rebellious people down if it wasn't for the intercession of Moses. Later, Moses ended up executing God's judgment on the people who haven't repented of their idolatry.
Numbers 22:19 says it's not as if God should repent. Other translations would render repent as a change of mind such as in the ESV (another Calvinist Bible aside from the KJV) or the NIV. Is it a contradiction to say that God doesn't change His mind when he says that He isn't a man that he should repent? There's no contraction when you consider God is infinitely consistent with His holiness. Going back to Genesis 6:6-7 has God seeing the disaster of how far mankind fell down. God didn't change His mind at all and decided to flood the Earth as soon as Noah finished building the ark. Yet, Jonah tells us of God's compassion for the Gentile city of Nineveh (though later on, Nahum had its declaration against it) when the citizens responded to Jonah's message. Jonah was later rebuked of God for wishing ill on the now-repentant population.
God changes His mind based on His immutable nature. It's like how, by default, everyone is headed for Hell. However, God the Father's attitude towards the unsaved person changes when he or she repents and receives His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as one's personal Lord and Savior. God the Father starts taking in those who were once considered children of Satan to now becoming His children by faith in Jesus Christ (John 1:10-12). God's change of mind is based on His immutable nature. God doesn't give chances after death because it's consistent with His holiness. Those who died in their sins are still hardened in the sins they died in. That's why God won't grant them any more chances because of His immutability based on His holiness.
If there's one thing worth thanking is that God never changes overall. God may change His mind but He's got a consistent direction. God can't be inconsistent because He's perfect and inconsistency is imperfection. A perfect God can't be wrong one bit because perfection means the absence of error. The perfect nature of God makes Him immutable. All the changes God makes is based on the immutability of His holiness.
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