(62) God: Immutable in His Person & Perfections

"I am the LORD, and I do not change.

(Malachi 3:6)

“. . . there is no variation or the slightest hint of change.”

(James 1:17)

God does not and cannot change in His nature. He is perfect and infinite in every aspect of His being. There is no quantitative change in God. This means there will never be more of God and never less of God. There has never been a time when there was more of God or less of God and there never will be. God has not and cannot grow, God has not and cannot decay.

There is no qualitative change in God. Change implies improvement or decline in some way. But, God is perfect, He cannot become more perfect or less perfect. God is infinite. He cannot become more or less infinite or He would not be infinite in the first place.

God’s perfections or attributes are intrinsic to His essence or nature. All of God’s attributes, all that He is in His essence or nature remain exactly the same from eternity past to eternity future. God hasn’t become more or less gracious, kind, loving, merciful. He has not and will not change in any way in who He is in His character.

Arthur Pink points out,

God is immutable in His attributes. Whatever the attributes of God were before the universe was called into existence, they are precisely the same now, and will remain so forever. Necessarily so; for they are the very perfections, the essential qualities of His being. Semper idem (always the same) is written across every one of them. His power is unabated, His wisdom undiminished, His holiness unsullied. The attributes of God can no more change than deity can cease to be.

All that God is in His nature, He always has been and always will be. The God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament and the God of today. Any view of change in the nature of God is the result of the misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the scriptures and the true nature of God. At its foundations, the way God has dealt with His creation has, and will never change. It is always an outworking and result of the totality of His divine, unchanging nature.


Next: (63) God: Immutable in His Purpose & Plans