Two quotes about God’s immutability that didn’t make it into the sermon yesterday:
“One of two things causes a man to change his mind and reverse his plans: want of foresight to anticipate everything, or lack of foresight to execute them. But as God is both omniscient and omnipotent there is never any need for Him to revise His decrees” [A. W. Pink, quoted by Packer]
“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.…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 immature 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.…One who can suffer any slightest degree of change is neither self-existent, self-sufficient, nor eternal, and so is not God.” [Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy.]
And three resources that I found very helpful (all three books are worth owning):
- Packer, J. I. Knowing God.
- Pink, A. W. The Attributes of God.
- Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy.
All three of these books could be put in the category of “classic.” Packer’s book is not strictly on the attributes of God, though he has ten or eleven chapters on various attributes. The chapter on God’s immutability, though short (about 6-8 pages), I found to be very readable and helpful.
Pink and Tozer’s books, while both dealing exclusively with the attributes of God and of similar length (about 125 pages), are quite different. Tozer rarely cites Scriptural references and deals with the various topics at a theological and logical level more often than a strictly Biblical and expositional level [of these two books, it also is more often “quotable” and thought-provoking]. Pink cites many Biblical passages in each chapter and is prone to giving more discussion of those passages. They actually complement each other quite nicely, which is why it is worth having and reading both of these books.
Words of Grace 