For note by C H Spurgeon click Immutable

"It has been said by some one that "the proper study of mankind is man." I will not oppose the idea, but I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God's elect is God; the proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father. There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, "Behold I am wise." But when we come to this master-science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought, that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild ass's colt; and with the solemn exclamation, "I am but of yesterday, and know nothing." No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God. We shall be obliged to feel" "Great God, how infinite art thou, what worthless worms are we!" But while the subject humbles the mind it also expands it. He who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe....I dare say it does, but after all, the most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity."

Other Sermons by C H Spurgeon related to Immutability...

"Immutability means that God is not subject to change, that He is invariable. In His nature and character, God is absolutely without change.

Immutability

“is that perfection of God by which He is devoid of all change, not only in His Being, but also in His perfections, and in His purposes and promises … and is free from all accession or diminution and from all growth or decay in His Being or perfection.” (Louis Berkhof)

All God’s attributes or perfections are included in His immutability. There can be no increase nor decrease in their number, capacity, or power. God could not be more or less holy, righteous, omnipotent, etc. It would be an absurdity to suppose He could. Immutability, however, is not immobility. It does not mean that God cannot change His actions, or way of dealing with men in different situations and times. It simply means His character and attributes do not change. It means that His eternal purposes does not change, for He has even purposed all things that come to pass. Reason teaches immutability. God must be immutable; there can be no change in Him, either for better or worse, since God is infinite and absolute perfection. If God could change for the better or the worse, it would indicate a weakness in His Being. There can be no cause for change in God who is perfect.

The immutability of God raises an important question. If God is immutable, what is meant by such statements found in the Bible that speak of God repenting or changing His mind?

Jonah 3:10 And God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them? (KJV)

Gen. 6:5-6 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. (KJV)

These passages are not suggesting there was a change in the character of God, only in His actions toward man based on the actions of men. It is man who changes and due to the changeless character of God, He must change His actions or dealings with man. God must deal with men in accord with His holy character. He must eventually deal with sin in judgment as He did in Genesis 6, or He acts in mercy when men repent as He did with Nineveh. But God’s actions are always consistent with His character. For instance, the Genesis passage does not say that God changed His mind in the sense that He wished He had not made man, but only that He was grieved over man’s behavior. The translation of the NIV makes the point clear.

Genesis 6:5-6 The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. (NIV)

Compare also the translation of the NIV for Jonah 3:10: When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened. (NIV)

When used of God as in some translations, the term “repentance” is simply an anthropomorphism, a term ascribing human feeling or emotion to God to show us God’s attitude toward sin.

The immutability of God is a terror to the wicked because it means that God must always deal with men in accord with His holy character and plan. God make no deals and accepts no man’s person apart from His plan of salvation in the person and work of Christ. On the other hand, God’s immutability is a constant comfort to believers because it means God is faithful, always, to His promises and the principles of His Word. For this reason, God is called “the Rock” (Deut 32:4) for when the entire world around us seems to fluctuate and shake (especially if one lives in California) God is the one safe and faithful place of anchorage.

Deuteronomy 32:4 The Rock! His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, Righteous and upright is He.

Psalm 18:2, 31 The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. 31 For who is God, but the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God  (See Spurgeon Commentary on 18:2, on 18:31)

People will often let each other down. Our friends as well as we ourselves often prove fickle, but the Lord who never changes, never lets us down. He is our Rock of blessing, support, and deliverance. This is why our trust should never be in man as Jer 17:5 warns, “Cursed be man that trust in mankind and makes flesh his strength.” This does not mean that God always answers our prayers and desires according to our wishes for He does not. It means, however, we can count on the fact that He is faithful to always act in accordance with His wisdom, love, and purposes. Let’s note some of the ways that God is faithful: (Ed Note: see also "Faithfulness")

He is faithful to forgive sin when we confess it (1 John 1:9).

He is faithful to discipline us in love when we need it (see note Hebrews 12:5; Spurgeon Commentary on Ps 11:5).

He is faithful to support us in our suffering as the faithful Creator (see note 1 Peter 4:19).

He is faithful to keep His promises according to the principles of His Word (Ps 119:86, 138; Deut 7:9; Isa. 49:7; 55:3; 1 Cor 1:8-9) (Spurgeon Commentary on Ps 119:86).

He is faithful to strengthen us in the midst of testing or temptation (1 Cor. 10:13). (Oswald Chambers on "Temptation")

It is out of His faithful that He answers our prayers (Ps 143:1) (Spurgeon Commentary on Ps 143:1)

We close this attribute with these verses:

Lamentations 3:21-23 This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope. 22 The LORD’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; Great is Thy faithfulness.
 

Psalm 36:5 Thy lovingkindness, O LORD, extends to the heavens, Thy faithfulness reaches to the skies  (Spurgeon Commentary on 36:)

(Source: For full discussion see: What God Is Like by Hampton Keathley III Well done summary the character of God, including His attributes).

Malachi 3:6: The Unchanging Lord - a sermon by Alexander Maclaren

‘I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.’— MALACHI iii. 6 .

The scriptural revelations of the divine Name are always the basis of intensely practical admonition. The Bible does not think it worth while to proclaim the Name of God without building on the proclamation promises or commandments. There is no ‘mere theology’ in Scripture; and it does not speak of ‘attributes,’ nor give dry abstractions of infinitude, eternity, omniscience, unchangeableness, but lays stress on the personality of God, which is so apt to escape us in these abstract conceptions, and thus teaches us to think of this personal God our Father, as infinite, eternal, knowing all things, and never changing. There is all the difference in our attitude towards the very same truth if we think of the unchangeableness of God, or if we think that our Father God is unchangeable. In our text the thought of Him as unchanging comes into view as the foundation of the continuance of the unfaithful sons of Jacob in their privileges and in their very lives. ‘I am the Lord,’ Jehovah, the Self-existent, the Eternal whose being is not under the limitations of succession and time. ‘Because I am Jehovah, I change not’; and because Jehovah changes not, therefore our finite and mortal selves abide, and our infinite and sinful selves are still the objects of His steadfast love.

Let us consider, first, the unchangeable God, and second, the unchanging God as the foundation of our changeful lives.

I. The unchangeable God.

In the great covenant-name Jehovah there is revealed an existence which reverses all that we know of finite and progressive being, or finite and mortal being, or finite and variable nature. With us there are mutations arising from physical nature. The material must needs be subject to laws of growth and decadence. Our spiritual nature is subject to changes arising from the advancement in knowledge. Our moral nature is subject to fluctuations; circumstances play upon us, and ‘nothing continueth in one stay.’ Change is the condition of life. It means growth and happiness; it belongs to the perfection of creatures. But the unchangeableness of God is the negation of all imperfection, it is the negation of all dependence on circumstances, it is the negation of all possibility of decay or exhaustion, it is the negation of all caprice. It is the assurance that His is an underived, self-dependent being, and that with Him is the fountain of light; it is the assurance that, raised above the limits of time and the succession of events, He is in the eternal present, where all things that were and are, and are to come, stand naked and open. It is the assurance that the calm might of His eternal will acts, not in spasms of successive volitions preceded by a period of indecision and equilibrium between contending motives, but is one continuous uniform energy, never beginning, never bending, never ending; that the purpose of His will is ‘the eternal purpose which He hath purposed in Himself.’ It is the assurance that the clear vision of His infinite knowledge, from the heat of which nothing is hid, has no stages of advancement, and no events lying nebulous in a dim horizon by reason of distance, or growing in clearness as they draw nearer, but which pierces the mists of futurity and the veils of the past and the infinities of the present, and ‘from the beginning to the end knoweth all things.’ It is the assurance that the mighty stream of love from the heart of God is not contingent on the variations of our character and the fluctuations of our poor hearts, but rises from His deep well, and flows on for ever, ‘the river of God’ which ‘is full of water.’ It is the assurance that round all the majesty and the mercy which He has revealed for our adoration and our trust there is the consecration of permanence, that we might have a rock on which to build and never be confounded. Is there anywhere in the past an act of His power, a word of His lip, a revelation of His heart which has been a strength or a joy or a light to any man? It is valid for me, and is intended for my use. ‘He fainteth not, nor is weary.’ The bush burns and is not consumed. ‘I will not alter the thing that has gone out of my lips.’ ‘By two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we have strong consolation.’

II. The unchanging God as the foundation of our changeful lives.

In the most literal sense our text is true. Because He lives we live also. He is the same for ever, therefore we are not consumed. The foundation of our being lies beyond and beneath all the mutable things from which we are tempted to believe that we draw our lives, and is in God. The true lesson to be drawn from the mutable phenomena of earth is—heaven. The many links in the chain must have a staple. Reason requires that behind all the fleeting shall be the permanent. There must be a basis which does not partake of change. The lesson from all the mutable creation is the immutable God.

Since God changes not, the life of our spirits is not at the mercy of changing events. We look back on a lifetime of changing scenes through which we have passed, and forward to a similar succession, and this mutability is sad to many of us, and in some aspects sad to all, so powerless we are to fix and arrest any of our blessings. Which we shall keep we know not; we only know that, as certainly as buds and blossoms of spring drop, and the fervid summer darkens to November fogs and December frosts, so certainly we shall have to part with much in our passage through life. But if we let God speak to us, the necessary changes that come to us will not be harmful but blessed, for the lesson that the mutability of the mutual is meant to impress upon us is, the permanency of the divine, and our dependence, not on them, but on Him. We may look upon all the world of time and chance and think that He who Himself is unchanging changeth all. The eye of the tempest is a point of rest. The point in the heavens towards which, according to some astronomers, the whole of the solar system is drifting, is a fixed point. If we depend on Him, then change is not all sad; it cannot take God away, but it may bring us nearer to Him. We cannot be desolate as long as we have Him. We know not what shall be on the morrow. Be it so; it will be God’s to-morrow. When the leaves drop we can see the rock on which the trees grow; and when changes strip the world for us of some of its waving beauty and leafy shade, we may discern more clearly the firm foundation on which our hopes rest. All else changes. Be it so; that will not kill us, nor leave us utterly forlorn as long as we hear the voice which says, ‘I am the Lord; I change not; therefore ye are not consumed.’

Bruce Goettsche writes that...

In a world where consistency is a rare commodity, God is someone you can depend on. In a world where public opinion changes with the wind . . . God remains constant. Listen to a few of the verses that proclaim God's immutability:

Psalm 102:25-27 In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same, and your years will never end.

Malachi 3:6,7 -“I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD Almighty."

Hebrews 13:8- "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."

In James 1:16-18- "Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."

In fact, the name that God gave to Moses, the name Yahweh (or Jehovah) means "I am". The point is simple: there was never a time when God was . . . or God will be. The way He is now is the way He has always been. He is perfect and complete. Nothing can be added to Him . . . because He lacks nothing...

Every one of God's attributes drives us to the point of commitment. We are reminded that our God is a great God. I hope you have seen that the immutability of God is more than an academic statistic. God's unchanging character is a truth that brings comfort, strength, stability, and a new sense of wonder. Look at our first four attributes:

Because God is omnipresent it means He is here

Because God is omniscient it means He understands what is going on in your life

Because He is omnipotent it means He can help

And because He is immutable it means this will never change

Spurgeon on (Malachi 3:6) It is well for us that, amidst all the variableness of life, there is One whom change cannot affect; One whose heart can never alter, and on whose brow mutability can make no furrows. All things else have changed-all things are changing. The sun itself grows dim with age; the world is waxing old; the folding up of the worn-out vesture has commenced; the heavens and earth must soon pass away; they shall perish, they shall wax old as doth a garment; but there is One who only hath immortality, of whose years there is no end, and in whose person there is no change. The delight which the mariner feels, when, after having been tossed about for many a day, he steps again upon the solid shore, is the satisfaction of a Christian when, amidst all the changes of this troublous life, he rests the foot of his faith upon this truth-"I am the Lord, I change not." 

The stability which the anchor gives the ship when it has at last obtained a hold-fast, is like that which the Christian's hope affords him when it fixes itself upon this glorious truth. With God "is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." What ever his attributes were of old, they are now; his power, his wisdom, his justice, his truth, are alike unchanged. He has ever been the refuge of his people, their stronghold in the day of trouble, and he is their sure Helper still. He is unchanged in his love. He has loved his people with "an everlasting love"; he loves them now as much as ever he did, and when all earthly things shall have melted in the last conflagration, his love will still wear the dew of its youth. Precious is the assurance that he changes not! The wheel of providence revolves, but its axle is eternal love.

"Death and change are busy ever,
Man decays, and ages move;
But his mercy waneth never;
God is wisdom, God is love."

See related word study on aprosopoleptos, the Greek word for impartiality.

Impartial means that God is not and thus treats all equally, not demonstrating favor toward one side, not prejudiced towards or against any or party and thus treating all rivals or disputants equally.

NAVE'S TOPICAL BIBLE:

The ninth tenet in the Athanasian Creed is "The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible."

Click for a note by C H Spurgeon on Incomprehensible

According to Webster’s Dictionary, something that is incomprehensible is “not capable of being comprehended, something that no limits can contain, unintelligible, ...”  So it is with our God.  He is incomprehensible to us.  We cannot know Him by our on power.

Even as we venture into this study of “The Knowledge of God”, we must be ever mindful that God is, in His essence, unknowable.  He is far above us; exalted infinitely higher than we, His creation; infinitely above our conception, thought, and language.  God’s essence (i.e. what He is in and of Himself) is hidden from us and beyond our ability to understand.  We are finite, limited beings.  The finite cannot fully grasp the infinite.   God has given us the ability and information (His Word) to know that He is, but not to totally know what He is.  The Bible does not try to prove the existence of God.  It assumes it as fact.  “In the beginning God ...” (Genesis 1:1)....Therefore, while Scripture teaches the absolute incomprehensibility of God (Job 38-41), it also presents a doctrine of God that fully maintains His knowability.  And He has revealed, at least in part, His purpose for doing so-that we may worship Him as God and have eternal life (see notes Romans 1:20; 21; 22; 23; John 17:3).  Our great God can be known, but He cannot be fully comprehended.

May the very incomprehensibility of God move us to adoration and worshipful awe. 

As Augustine said

Samuel Wesley (1691–1739) expressed God' incomprehensibility in verse writing from his hymn Hail Father, Whose Creating Call (play hymn)

Martin Luther (1483–1546) wrote that

Puritan Thomas Manton (1620-1677) wrote that

We know God but as men born blind know the fire, they know that there is such a thing as fire, for they feel it warm them, but what it is they know not. So, that there is a God we know, but what he is we know little, and indeed we can never search him out to perfection; a finite creature can never fully comprehend that which is infinite.

Puritan Richard Sibbes asks

How should finite comprehend infinite? We shall apprehend Him, but not comprehend Him.

And as another Puritan Richard Baxter (1615-1691) wrote

You may know God, but not comprehend him.

Puritan John Owen wrote the following thoughts on the "incomprehensible" God: 

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)

Incomprehensible? But because you cannot understand a thing, it does not cease to exist....It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that He should not exist.

A. W. Tozer (1897- 1963)

We cannot speak of measure or amount or size or weight and at the same time be speaking of God, for all these tell of degrees and there is no degrees in God. All that He is He is without growth or addition or development. Nothing in God is less or more, or large or small. He is what He is in Himself without qualifying thought or word. He is simply God. God is in and beyond Everything.

Tozer also reminds us that

Our concepts of measurement embrace mountains and men, atoms and stars, gravity, energy, numbers, speed, but never God. We cannot speak of measure or amount or size or weight and at the same time be speaking of God, for these tell of degrees and there are no degrees in God. All that He is He is without growth or addition or development.

Tozer said

We know nothing like the divine holiness. It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable. The natural man is blind to it. He may fear God’s power and admire his wisdom, but His holiness he cannot even imagine.

Tozer once said that

In theology there is no “Oh!” and this is a significant if not an ominous thing. Theology seeks to reduce what may be known of God to intellectual terms, and as long as the intellect can comprehend,  it can find words to express itself. When God Himself appears before the mind, awesome, vast and incomprehensible, then the mind sinks into silence and the heart cries out “Oh Lord God!

On a more practical note Tozer adds that

If we would bring back spiritual power to our lives, we must begin to think of God more nearly as He is.

From A. W. Pink's chapter The Contemplation of God found in his book "Gleanings in the Godhead" we find:

From this contemplation of His attributes, it should be evident to us all that God is, first, an incomprehensible Being; and, lost in wonder at His infinite greatness, we adopt the words of Zophar, "Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea" (Job 11:7-9). When we turn our thoughts to God’s eternity, His immateriality, His omnipresence, His almightiness, our minds are overwhelmed.

But the incomprehensibility of the divine nature is no reason why we should desist from reverent inquiry and prayerful striving to apprehend what He has so graciously revealed of Himself in His Word. Because we are unable to acquire perfect knowledge, it would be folly to say we will therefore make no efforts to attain to any degree of it. C. H. Spurgeon has well said:

Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued, investigation of the great subject of the Deity. The most excellent study for expanding the soul is the science of Christ and Him crucified and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. The proper study of the Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the doings, and the existence of the great God which he calls his Father. There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can comprehend and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go on our way with the thought, "Behold I am wise." But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumbline cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought "I am but of yesterday and know nothing" (The Immutability of God a sermon on Malachi 3:6).

The Incomprehensible

Isaac Watts  (1674–1748)

INFINITY means that God is limitless, measureless and boundless. Divine infinity indicates that the limitations of finite creatures do not apply to him. Whatever God is (love, faithfulness, righteous, wise, etc), He is without limit, and whatever He is cannot be measured. He is not bound or restricted by space, time, or matter.  There is no point, edge, or line confining God, and no size or weight that can catalog Him.  One should however avoid the error of applying the mathematical idea of infinitude as an endless expansion in either the time or space dimension to God. His being has neither a measurable beginning nor a measurable end. He fills eternity from everlasting to everlasting. Such truth is incomprehensible (another of His attributes) to our finite minds, for we live in a limited world where all that we know has size and weight. The distance from here to there, no matter where, is measurable & even atoms can be weighed. Infinity extends to every attribute of God.

“But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27)

“Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit” (Ps. 147:5 - Spurgeon's commentary on Ps147:5)

“Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens—what can you do? They are deeper than the depths of the grave—what can you know? Their measure is longer than the earth and wider than the sea” (Job 11:7–9)

"The eternal God is a dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms; and He drove out the enemy from before you, And said, 'Destroy!" (Dt 33:2)

“Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance?” (Isa. 40:12)

‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts’ ” (Isa. 55:8–9)

“For this is what the high and lofty One says—he who lives forever, whose name is holy” (Isa. 57:15)

“This is what the Lord says: ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?’ ” (Isa. 66:1–2)

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Rom. 11:33) (See notes on Romans 11:33)

Norm Geisler addresses a question skeptics ask about God's limitlessness

Justice is God's fair and impartial treatment of all people. The justice of God is a necessary correlate of His holiness or moral excellence. Since God is infinitely and eternally perfect, He must be impartial in His judgments and always treat His creatures with equity (cf Ge 18:25).

God is just and He always acts in a way consistent with the requirements of His character as revealed in His law. He rules His creation with rectitude, He keeps His word, He renders to all His creatures their due. God is just and fair, comple