-
unchanging over time or unable to be changed:“an immutable fact”
I find it amazing that so-called smart people, professing to be Christians, believe that have the power to manipulate, control, and change to their liking the immutable God.
It can’t be that they don’t know the definition of immutable, right?
Or are they so Bible illiterate, or unbelieving [see faithful] in what they read they can’t connect God to the words — which happen to be GOD’S WORDS!
God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
Numbers 23:19
“For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
Malachi 3:6
Jesus Christ [God] is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Hebrews 13:8
Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
James 1:17
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
Matthew 24:35
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD.
Isaiah 55:8
Anyone speaking, preaching, or writing that God changes and He is now the modern, hip, liberal God that is no longer the God of the Holy Bible? No matter who — understand this — NO MATTER WHO says, preaches, writes, or spreads such lies? They are not Christ followers. They are not children of God. No matter who they may be. NO MATTER WHO.
What are they then? Even if considered longstanding Christians? They are anti-God, they are anti-Christ, they are anti-Scriptures. They are consumed by the world and serving the demonic powers of this world and they are not serving the Lord.
Period.
There is no variance. No gray area.
Don’t like this? Too bad. It’s God’s ways and word.
Rebel against the Immutable God and His unchanging eternal living Word. Follow the lies of the world pretending to be loving, compassionate, and tolerant of sexually immoral, sexually deviant sin over obeying God. Go ahead.
See where you spend eternity as a result of following man, following lies, following Satan and these sins rather than being faithful, remaining faithful in the ways and word of the Lord.
Read this before proceeding;
The Immutability of God
By A.W. Tozer
From his book Knowledge of the Holy
This is Chapter 9
O Christ our Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. As conies to their rock, so have we run to Thee for safety; as birds from their wanderings, so have we flown to Thee for peace. Chance and change are busy in our little world of nature and men, but in Thee we find no variableness nor shadow of turning. We rest in Thee without fear or doubt and face our tomorrows without anxiety. Amen.
The immutability of God is among those attributes less difficult to understand, but to grasp it we must discipline ourselves to sort out the usual thoughts with which we think of created things from the rarer ones that arise when we try to lay hold of whatever may be comprehended of God.
To say that God is immutable is to say that He never differs from Himself. The concept of a growing or developing God is not found in the Scriptures. It seems to me impossible to think of God as varying from Himself in any way. Here is why:
For a moral being to change it would be necessary that the change be in one of three directions. He must go from better to worse or from worse to better; or, granted that the moral quality remain stable, he must change within himself, as from miniature to mature or from one order of being to another. It should be clear that God can move in none of these directions. His perfections forever rule out any such possibility.
God cannot change for the better. Since He is perfectly holy, He has never been less holy than He is now and can never be holier than He is and has always been. Neither can God change for the worse. Any deterioration within the unspeakably holy nature of God is impossible. Indeed I believe it impossible even to think of such a thing, for the moment we attempt to do so, the object about which we are thinking is no longer God but something else and someone less than He. The one of whom we are thinking may be a great and awesome creature, but because he is a creature he cannot be the self-existent Creator.
As there can be no mutation in the moral character of God, so there can be none within the divine essence. The being of God is unique in the only proper meaning of that word; that is, His being is other than and different from all other beings. We have seen how God differs from His creatures in being self-existent, selfsufficient, and eternal. By virtue of these attributes God is God and not some other being. One who can suffer any slightest degree of change is neither self-existent, self-sufficient, nor eternal, and so is not God.
Only a being composed of parts may change, for change is basically a shift in the relation of the parts of a whole or the admission of some foreign element into the original composition. Since God is self-existent, He is not composed. There are in Him no parts to be altered. And since He is self-sufficient, nothing can enter His being from without.
“Whatever is composed of parts,” says Anselm, “is not altogether one, but is in some sort plural, and diverse from itself, and either in fact or in concept is capable of dissolution. But these things are alien to Thee, than whom nothing better can be conceived of. Hence, there are no parts in Thee Lord., nor art Thou more than one. But Thou art so truly a unitary being, and so identical with Thyself, that in no respect art Thou unlike Thyself, rather Thou art unity itself, indivisible by any conception.”
“All that God is He has always been, and all that He has been and is He will ever be.” Nothing that God has ever said about Himself will be modified; nothing the inspired prophets and apostles have said about Him will be rescinded. His immutability guarantees this.
The immutability of God appears in its most perfect beauty when viewed against the mutability of men. In God no change is possible; in men change is impossible to escape. Neither the man is fixed nor his world, but he and it are in constant flux. Each man appears for a little while to laugh and weep, to work and play, and then to go to make room for those who shall follow him in the never-ending cycle.
Certain poets have found a morbid pleasure in the law of impermanence and have sung in a minor key the song of perpetual change. Omar the tentmaker was one who sang with pathos and humor of mutation and mortality, the twin diseases that afflict mankind. “Don’t slap that clay around so roughly,” he exhorts the potter, “that may be your grandfather’s dust you make so free with”. “When you lift the cup to drink red wine,” he reminds the reveler, “you may be kissing the lips of some beauty dead long ago.”
This note of sweet sorrow expressed with gentle humor gives a radiant beauty to his quatrains but, however beautiful, the whole long poem is sick, sick unto death. Like the bird charmed by the serpent that would devour it, the poet is fascinated by the enemy that is destroying him and all men and every generation of men.
The sacred writers, too, face up to man’s mutability, but they are healthy men and there is a wholesome strength in their words. They have found the cure for the great sickness. God, they say changes not. The law of mutation belongs to a fallen world, but God is immutable, and in Him men of faith find at last eternal permanence. In the meanwhile change works for the children of the kingdom, not against them. The changes that occur in them are wrought by the hand of the in-living Spirit. “But we all,” says the apostle, “with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
In a world of change and decay not even the man of faith can be completely happy. Instinctively he seeks the unchanging and is bereaved at the passing of dear familiar things.
O Lord! my heart is sick,
Sick of this everlasting change;
And life runs tediously quick
Through its unresting race and varied range:
Change finds no likeness to itself in Thee
And wakes no echo in Thy mute Eternity.
Frederick W. Faber
These words of Faber find sympathetic response in every heart; yet much as we may deplore the lack of stability in all earthly things, in a fallen world such as this the very ability to change is a golden treasure, a gift from God of such fabulous worth as to call for constant thanksgiving. For human beings the whole possibility of redemption lies in their ability to change.
To move across from one sort of person to another is the essence of repentance: the liar becomes truthful, the thief honest, the lewd pure, the proud humble. The whole moral texture of the life is altered. The thoughts, the desires, the affections are transformed, and the man is no longer what he had been before. So radical is this change that the apostle calls the man that used to be “the old man” and the man that now is “the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.”
Yet the change is deeper and more basic than any external acts can reveal, for it includes also the reception of life of another and higher quality. The old man, even at his best, possesses only the life of Adam: the new man has the life of God. And this is more than a mere manner of speaking; it is quite literally true. When God infuses eternal life into the spirit of a man, the man becomes a member of a new and higher order of being.
In the working out of His redemptive processes the unchanging God makes full use of change and through a succession of changes arrives at permanence at last. In the Book of Hebrews this is shown most clearly. “He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second,” is a kind of summation of the teaching of that remarkable book. The old covenant, as something provisional, was abolished, and the new and everlasting covenant took its place.
The blood of goats and bulls lost its significance when the blood of the Paschal Lamb was shed. The law, the altar, the priesthood – all were temporary and subject to change; now the eternal law of God is engraven forever on the living, sensitive stuff of which the human soul is composed. The ancient sanctuary is no more, but the new sanctuary is eternal in the heavens and there the Son of God has His eternal priesthood.
Here we see that God uses change as a lowly servant to bless His redeemed household, but He Himself is outside of the law of mutation and is unaffected by any changes that occur in the universe.
And all things as they change proclaim
The Lord eternally the same.
Charles Wesley
Again the question of use arises. “Of what use to me is, the knowledge that God is immutable?” someone asks. “Is not the whole thing mere metaphysical speculation? Something that might bring a certain satisfaction to persons of a particular type of mind but can have no real significance for practical men?”
If by “practical men” we mean unbelieving men engrossed in secular affairs and indifferent to the claims of Christ, the welfare of their own souls, or the interests of the world to come, then for them such a book as this can have no meaning at all; nor, unfortunately, can any other book that takes religion seriously. But while such men may be in the majority, they do not by any means compose the whole of the population. There are still the seven thousand who have not bowed their knees to Baal. These believe they were created to worship God and to enjoy His presence forever, and they are eager to learn all they can about the God with whom they expect to spend eternity.
In this world where men forget us, change their attitude toward us as their private interests dictate, and revise their opinion of us for the slightest cause, is it not a source of wondrous strength to know that the God with whom we have to do changes not? That His attitude toward us now is the same as it was in eternity past and will be in eternity to come?
What peace it brings to the Christian’s heart to realize that our Heavenly Father never differs from Himself. Incoming to Him at any time we need not wonder whether we shall find Him in a receptive mood. He is always receptive to misery and need, as well as to love and faith. He does not keep office hours nor set aside periods when He will see no one. Neither does He change His mind about anything. Today, this moment, He feels toward His creatures, toward babies, toward the sick, the fallen, the sinful, exactly as He did when He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to die for mankind.
God never changes moods or cools off in His affections or loses enthusiasm. His attitude toward sin is now the same as it was when He drove out the sinful man from the eastward garden, and His attitude toward the sinner the same as when He stretched forth His hands and cried, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
God will not compromise and He need not be coaxed. He cannot be persuaded to alter His Word nor talked into answering selfish prayer. In all our efforts to find God, to please Him, to commune with Him, we should remember that all change must be on our part. “I am the Lord, I change not.” We have but to meet His clearly stated terms, bring our lives into accord with His revealed will, and His infinite power will become instantly operative toward us in the manner set forth through the gospel in the Scriptures of truth.
Fountain of being! Source of Good!
Immutable Thou dost remain!
Nor can the shadow of a change
Obscure the glories of Thy reign.
Earth may with all her powers dissolve,
If such the great Creator will;
But Thou for ever art the same,
I AM is Thy memorial still.
From Walker’s Collection
Now read on…
Ken Pullen, Tuesday, September 17th, 2024
Has God Changed His Mind on Homosexuality?
The Widening of God’s Mercy describes a different God.
09/11/2024
By John Stonestreet & Shane Morris
From BREAKPOINT
AUDIO
When politicians change their position on some policy matter, it’s called a “flip-flop.” A new book on sexual ethics describes God this way, as a kind of “flip-flopping” politician who said one thing for thousands of years but has, in recent years, altered His moral demands. Oddly enough, His new perspective makes Him more progressive, tolerant, and enlightened. You know, like us.
Thirty-years ago, Richard Hays, professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity, produced the classic work of biblical ethics, The Moral Vision of the New Testament. In that book, he offered a definitive biblical argument against same-sex relationships. “The New Testament,” Hays wrote, “offers no loopholes or exception clauses that might allow for the acceptance of homosexual practices under some circumstances.”
In a new book co-authored with his son, Fuller Seminary Old Testament professor Christopher Hays, he has now reversed this position on same-sex relationships. In The Widening of God’s Mercy, the authors assert:
The biblical narratives throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament trace a trajectory of mercy that leads us to welcome sexual minorities no longer as “strangers and aliens” but as fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.
This idea of a moral “trajectory” in the Bible that eventually points beyond itself is nothing new. In other words, same-sex relationships used to be wrong, but now they’re ok. As Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Al Mohler explained, the authors are suggesting that God has changed His mind on homosexuality and that the Church should “move beyond the Bible” on this issue.
Reversals like this, even when scholars and pastors claim otherwise, are rarely motivated by arguments or theology. The elder Hays acknowledges that his “experience being in a congregation with openly gay and lesbian members” helped change his mind. And, it’s likely the younger Hays played a role as well. As author Christopher Yuan remarked, “I have seen young adult children turn their previously biblical parents toward heresy…including a president of a Bible college.”
Still, the arguments offered in this book are neither good nor new. For example, Hays repeats the claim that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality. It’s a silly claim. As Rebecca McLaughlin countered in an article at The Gospel Coalition, Jesus condemned “sexual immorality,” (the Greek word “porneia”) alongside murder, adultery, theft, false witness, and slander.
Porneia (from which we get the word “pornography”) is, as Hays himself admits, “a nonspecific umbrella term for any kind of sexual immorality—presumably including all forms of illicit sexual relations elaborated in Leviticus 18.” That would, of course, include homosexual activity. So, by Hays’ own reasoning, Jesus did speak about same-sex relationships in the Gospels.
Moreover, when asked about divorce, Jesus responded by reasserting God’s original design for marriage described in Genesis. “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh…” Also, his “trajectory” was not to relax rules on sexual immorality. Jesus said that anyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery in his heart. That doesn’t sound like God changing His mind about morality.
The ultimate problem with the argument the Hayses make is that it all amounts to God “learning on the job,” as they unbelievably phrase it. As theology writer Derek Rishmawy responded, a “God” who changed his design for human sexuality would not be a God worth worshiping. Such a change would imply that there is a moral standard higher than God to which He failed to conform in the past. The moral purposes of such a “God” could not be trusted, nor could his supposedly “widening” mercy, since what he calls sin today may tomorrow be something he welcomes and encourages.
Thankfully, the “God” of this book is not the God of Christianity. James 1:17 says that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” Human sexuality, designed for union and procreation within man-woman marriage, is such a gift. Though it has been distorted by our fall into sin, God’s purposes for sexuality, and the prohibitions that flow out of those purposes, have not changed.
This is far better news for sinners, including those who’ve sinned sexually, than a “God” who has changed His mind. His mercy doesn’t need “widening.” It is already vast enough to rescue sinners from futile behaviors and false identities.
Those hoping to widen God’s mercy make His mercy unnecessary and His character untrustworthy. They should know better. In fact, considering the Bible’s warnings to those who call evil good and good evil, and who cause others to sin, they should repent.
This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. If you’re a fan of Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.
Leave A Comment