Samuel chapter 15, I mentioned. Prior to everybody showing up tonight,
Introduction
this is going to be a little bit of a different message this evening. It's going to be more theological in nature. I had mentioned last week that there are three passages in chapter 15. that indicate, two indicate that God relents, and another one indicates that God does not relent. So we need to address that particular issue.
Interestingly enough, it is the issue that ARBCA's been dealing with over the last year and will be discussed and probably debated on next week. So in many respects, this is a help to me to be able to articulate these things, and hopefully in a way that people can understand I don't want to dumb down the material in such a way that we can't understand it or don't appreciate it in its theological context. So any words that I use that perhaps you haven't heard before, I will try and define them, just so that we can be singing off the same theological page. So basically, verses 11, 29, and 35 are the passages in question.
And for the sake of time, I'll just pick up reading in chapter 15 at verse 10. We covered verses 1 to 9 last week. We took some time to consider the ethical challenge. Remember, God commands Israel to go in and utterly destroy the Amalekites, people outside the church and, unfortunately, sometimes people inside the church struggle with these sorts of commands, they think it renders God as an ethical meanie or as a capricious, vicious judge that just inflicts pain and punishment on people.
We sought to deal with that ethical challenge last week. Tonight, as I said, we're going to take up the theological challenge of verses 11, 35, and 29. Let's read beginning in verse 10.
Scripture Reading
Now the word of the Lord came to Samuel saying, I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel, and he cried out to the Lord all night. So when Samuel rose early in the morning to meet Saul, it was told Samuel saying, Saul went to Carmel. And indeed, he set up a monument for himself.
And he has gone on around, passed by, and gone down to Gilgal. Then Samuel went to Saul, and Saul said to him, blessed are you of the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord. But Samuel said, what then is this bleeding of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?
And Saul said, they have brought them from the Amalekites. For the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have utterly destroyed. And Samuel said to Saul, be quiet, and I will tell you what the Lord said to me last night. And he said to him, speak on.
So Samuel said, when you were little in your own eyes, were you not head of the tribes of Israel? And did not the Lord anoint you king over Israel? Now the Lord sent you on a mission and said, go and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed. Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord?
Why did you swoop down on the spoil and do evil in the sight of the Lord? And Saul said to Samuel, but I have obeyed the voice of the Lord and gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me and brought back Agag, king of Amalek. I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took of the plunder, sheep and oxen, the best of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.
So Samuel said, has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he also has rejected you from being king.
Then Saul said to Samuel, I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. Now therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me, that I may worship the Lord.' Samuel said to Saul, I will not return with you, for you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel. And as Samuel turned around to go away, Saul sees the edge of his robe and it tore. So Samuel said to him, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you.
And also the strength of Israel will not lie nor relent, for he is not a man that he should relent. Then he said, I have sinned, yet honor me now, please, before the elders of my people and before Israel, and return with me, that I may worship the Lord your God. So Samuel turned back after Saul, and Saul worshiped the Lord. And Samuel said, bring Agag, king of the Amalekites, here to me.
So Agag came to him cautiously. And Agag said, surely the bitterness of death has passed. But Samuel said, as your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women. And Samuel hacked Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.
And Samuel went to Ramah, and Saul went up to his house at Gibeah of Saul. And Samuel went no more to see Saul until the day of his death. Nevertheless, Samuel mourned for Saul, and the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel." Amen. Well,
The Theological Challenge of 1 Samuel 15
if we do not get to all of the text this evening, we will get to it in two weeks' time. Next week, Wednesday night, there is no Bible study. So please don't show up next Wednesday evening at 730. If you do, you're going to be here all alone, and you'll have to conduct the Bible study by yourself in the parking lot.
As I said, having dealt with the ethical challenge of verses 1 to 9 last week, we need to deal with this theological challenge. Notice verse 11, God says, I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king." And then in verse 35, it says, nevertheless, Samuel mourned for Saul, and the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel. But right in the middle, in verse 29, Samuel reports, and also the strength of Israel will not lie nor relent, for he is not a man that he should relent. The Bible uses this language of relenting or repenting of God, not just here in 1 Samuel chapter 15.
It's also found in the book of Genesis, in Genesis 6, verses 6 and 7. It's found in the prophet Jonah. You'll see it throughout the scripture. And on the one hand, we have these texts that say God does not repent, God does not relent.
And on the other hand, we have texts that say God does relent or God does repent. I want to submit to you that we do not have a contradiction, that we do not have a paradox, that we do not have a problem. But what we have is something that the doctrine of divine impassibility addresses. Now,
Defining Divine Impassibility
the word impassibility simply means that God cannot undergo emotional changes. There's a lot that we learn about God by negatives. We say God is infinite. That's a negative.
That means he's not finite. We say God is invisible. That's another negative. That means he's not visible.
We say that God is impassable. That means that God is not passable or one that undergoes emotional changes. or has these affections that move him or sway him in one shape or another. Our confession of faith describes God as without body, parts, or passions. That's in the Second London Confession of Faith, Chapter 2, Paragraph 1.
It was previously found in the 39 Articles of the Church of England. It is also found in the Westminster Confession of Faith and in the Savoy Declaration of Faith. It has been the consistent testimony of the church from the earliest days. It started to be modified in about the 1800s.
Some good men started retooling the particular doctrine. By the time we get into the 20th century, it's been modified, and it's been pretty much stripped of its classical Christian confessional status. So it is important that we understand what impassibility is all about. As I said, it teaches quite simply that God cannot undergo emotional changes.
In its narrower sense, it emphasizes that God cannot suffer. We speak of the passion of Christ. That means the sufferings of Jesus Christ. So impassibility means narrowly defined that God does not suffer.
Now certainly Christ, according to his humanity, suffered. but we do not argue from the humanity of Jesus to the essence of God. That is simply a fallacious way to go. We will not have time to deal with all of that tonight, but just suffice it to say that throughout the history of the Church, the Church has always seen Jesus Christ as being one person in two natures, human and divine. The Son of God suffered according to his humanity.
The deity did not suffer. The divinity does not bleed. God does not die. That is an impossibility for divinity.
So when we say that Jesus suffered, Jesus died, Jesus was buried, those are all referring to the humanity of our Lord Jesus. So that is something, again, that the church has consistently seen. throughout the ages. The doctrine of impassibility refers to the divine essence, to God's divine nature, to God as God is, and that's what's most important. James Dolezal says that the term passion is derived from a late Latin word, passio, which means to suffer, to submit, or to undergo.
And this is the rub. The idea is that God does not undergo emotional changes. Impassibility secures for us the doctrine of God wherein He does not change, He is not affected, He does not increase, He does not diminish. Now if it's rising up in your head, does that mean he's just a static rock somewhere out there that has no emotion or no feeling toward his creation?
It doesn't mean that at all. We'll try and clarify as we go along. But I want to just do this in steps. So the definition of impassibility.
Another definition is that divine attribute whereby God has said not to experience inner emotional changes. God does not experience inner emotional changes. I mean, if you think about it, the fact that he's omnipotent, that means all-powerful, he's omniscient, that means he knows everything, the fact that he has decreed all things whatsoever comes to pass, it cannot be the case that he would undergo these sort of emotional fluxes. He's never caught by surprise.
He's never taken unawares. He never has to react to a new contingency. We have passions. We are affected.
We have these emotional ups and downs because we don't know what a day brings. We are creatures and we're limited and we are acted upon. God is not acted upon. God is pure act.
He is not acted upon and so it follows that God is impassable. So that divine attribute where God has said not to experience inner emotional changes, whether enacted freely from within. Some today have said that God decrees these changes in himself. That is simply outlandish.
That is not the way that we are to treat the scripture. Imagine if God decreed that tomorrow he would feel sorrow. How genuine would that be? How legitimate would that be?
Would it be legitimate to you if I said, tomorrow morning, I'm going to cry for you at 8 o'clock? And that's going to be an expression of great love and sorrow and affection. You'd say, that's an odd way to approach things. So you see this definition protects us from that sort of a reality that God decrees these emotional changes.
Because they want to have their cake and they want to eat it too. They don't want to fall off into the waters of what's called open theism. But at the same time, they reject classical impassability. And so they try to navigate this sort of center place, but it's riddled with problems and obstacles and difficulties.
So whether enacted freely from within, that's called ad intra. Whenever you see that. I'm supposing you read theology books. If you ever see ad intra, that's the Latin phrase for something internal.
God does not have internal sort of things going on in him. There's no sort of war. You know, on the one hand, sometimes you want to do this, and on the other hand, you want to have this. Those are ad intra.
That's something going on in you. So impassibility says that there is no ad intra effect upon the emotional life of God. But as well, it's not affected by his relationships to and interaction with human beings in the created order. In other words, add extra.
Those things outside of God do not so affect God or move God to this emotional recoil. God, rather, is impassable. There's no fluctuation, there's no up and down, there's no this way one day and this way the other day. God is not like us.
That is fundamental and crucial to the doctrine of impassibility, the creator-creature distinction. That is fundamental in all of theology. God is God, and we are not. God is in a different order of being than we are.
It's not like it's, you know, slug, and then dog, and then man, and then angel, and then God. God is not in that order of being. It's slug and dog and man and angel. That's it.
In the created realm. Now there's a lot of other creatures I'm representing from slug to dog and, you know, to man and to angel. I'm just kind of giving you a representation of the created order. God's outside of that.
God is God. He is the creator. He is not like us. He loves to be sure, and we love to be sure.
But God is love. That can't be said of you and I. That is very essential to the being of God. We either love, or we don't, or we increase. or we diminish.
We need to understand God is in his own category of being. Now secondly, we look at the definition of impassibility.
Impassibility and Immutability
What is the relationship to immutability? You've probably heard that word. That's probably the more familiar word. Again, it's another negation.
We learn something about God by what he is not. Immutability means he cannot change, right? He cannot change. Isn't this what scripture tells us?
Malachi 3.16, I, the Lord, do not change. Isn't that a blessing? Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that amazing?
James 1.17, every good and perfect gift comes from our Father, our Father in heaven, in whom there is no shadow of turning. There is no deviation in our God. He is always the same. He is rock solid.
Well, if you have immutability, then it necessarily follows that God is impassible. If He cannot change, He certainly does not change in terms of His emotional life. So impassibility is a subset of immutability. So listen now, if you mess with impassibility, guess what you're going to mess with? you're going to mess with immutability.
It is absolutely impossible to rework or retool impassibility and not affect immutability. You're going to end up with a god of open theism, a god who doesn't know what's going to happen tomorrow, a god who's hoping and rooting for you to make it above all hopes and odds. So we need to understand there is a very intimate and close relationship between immutability and impassibility. Listen to the theologian Hermann Baving.
He said, those who predicate any change, that word predicate is going to come out again. I'm going to define it right now. If I were to take any human being and I was to predicate concerning them, all it means is to describe them. I'm predicating of this person that he has blue eyes, and he has gray hair, and he wears glasses, and he walks with a limp.
But predication is simply a description about a subject. That's all predication means. Predication is a description about a subject. Okay?
That's it. So this is what Baving says. Those who predicate. That means ascribe or describe.
Those who predicate any change whatsoever of God, whether with respect to his essence, knowledge, or will, diminish all his attributes. This is the case. There was a man by the name of Clark Pinnock, and this man at one time was a very orthodox Reformed theologian. Clark Pinnock did not end well.
He ended up as an open theist, denying just about everything that was intrinsic to the character of God. Do you know what started his downfall? It was the denial of the doctrine of impassibility. And other theologians have described it.
It's like a sweater. If you see a thread hanging off the sweater, do you just pull the thread? What happens? The whole sweater starts to be affected, doesn't it?
I think we all do this as kids, right? You know, you go and you pull that thing and then your sweater kind of bunches up and your mom says, what are you doing? You knucklehead, you don't pull strings from a sweater because it affects the whole sweater. Well, when you take the doctrine of impassibility and you wrench it from the sweater, you're going to affect the entirety of God.
You see, this is no small thing. Some of the people in Arbca are saying, what's the big deal? We ought to just agree to disagree. No, we ought to agree to disagree on eschatology, we ought to agree to disagree on what color hymn books we use, but we don't agree to disagree on the doctrine of our God.
And when we affect, or when we deal with impassibility, I believe that Bavinck is right. We diminish all his attributes. Independence. God is independent.
He is singular. He is alone. He is not dependent upon us. We are always dependent on God all the time.
God is not dependent upon His creation. God is not dependent on anything outside of God. There is nothing that gives God encouragement or meaning or life or sustenance or anything like that. The Bhavink says, those who predicate any change whatsoever of God, whether with respect to his essence, knowledge, or will, diminish all his attributes.
Which attributes? Independence, simplicity. Now the doctrine of divine simplicity is what the confession is referring to when it says he's without parts. We are made up of parts, aren't we?
We are composite beings. God isn't like that. There's not a bunch of God parts that are put together to make God. See, we are flesh, we are bone, we are blood, we are mind, we are will, we are affection, we're a conglomeration of all kinds of things.
When the Bible, or when the Confession speaks of God as being without parts, And theologians call this divine simplicity. It doesn't mean simple like foolish or ignorant. It means not composite. God is all that he is all the time.
God is identical with his attributes. When we talk about the attributes of God, it's not like you've got God who's a 30% love and 30% wrath and 30% mercy. God is everything he is all the time, always, without diminishing and without increasing. That's the doctrine of divine simplicity.
Inevitably, when you mess with impassibility, guess what topples? Simplicity. This idea that God is simple. Bavi then says, eternity.
Eternity is messed with when you deny impassibility. Omniscience. I mean, in the very text tonight, God relents over what had happened. Now if you just think for a moment, This happened according to God's decree, didn't it?
Doesn't God decree all things whatsoever comes to pass? So if impassibility is wrong and God really does have these emotional convulsions, who ultimately should God be upset with according to 1 Samuel 15, 11? God! Saul's just doing what he was supposed to do according to the decree.
So if God is relenting, and God is sorrowful, and God is feeling this emotional angst, it has to be over what he's done, right? That seems to follow, unless we can understand the text. in its proper sense, which I hope, hopefully, we'll argue with later, argue for, and omnipotence. And then this is what Boving says, because sometimes it comes up, well, what practical benefit is this? Come on, what's the benefit?
How many times have you heard a sermon on impassibility? Brethren, there is no practical benefit without impassibility. If your God changes today, or He changes tomorrow, or He's going to change next March, you're in big trouble. Here's what Bovink says, this robs God of His divine nature and religion of its firm foundation and assured comfort.
Amen, a hundredfold. We could just stop there and pray and thank the Lord that Bavinck wrote these words because it's so fitting. But a third observation, you're probably thinking, why doesn't he just pray? I hope everybody's with me.
You're trafficking, trying to define the terms, everything's clear. Thirdly,
What Impassibility Does Not Mean
the doctrine of divine impassibility does not mean that God has no affections or relatability to his creation. Of course God relates to his creation. Of course God undertakes and does mighty miracles for his people. Of course God manifests himself. in the preaching of the word, in the prayers of the saints, in the providence of God, in the life of His people.
Certainly there is a relatability that God affords to His people. We will never walk alone because God is with us. We have the benefit. of the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of divine impassibility has been misrepresented to teach that it's just this cold, static, and inert God.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. It does not yield that particular view. What, fourthly,
What Impassibility Does Mean
the doctrine of divine impassibility does mean is that God does not increase nor diminish in the perfections that He has. He does not increase or diminish in the perfections that he has. Our confession goes on to describe God. After speaking of him without body, parts, or passions, it's then able to say this, most loving.
Isn't that beautiful? What does most loving mean? It means he can't get more loving. Most loving is as good as it gets.
So the doctrine of divine impassibility means that he'll never be less than most loving to you. It actually secures God's relatability. It actually secures the fact that he has affections, and he pours them out abundantly upon his people. The confession says most loving, and I think the most qualifies everything that follows. most loving, most gracious, most merciful, most long-suffering, most abundant in goodness and truth." You see, the same confession, the same paragraph that affirms that God is without passions is able to affirm this reality.
Excuse me. Because of the doctrine of divine impassibility. Take, for instance, 1 John 4a. I've already referred to this.
God is love. That's his essence. That's, you know, the attributes of God. If, as I said before, they don't make up God.
It's not like a little part of this, a little part of that, a little part of this, and we have a God. You see, then God would be dependent upon those parts. And God's not dependent, remember? He's independent.
God is not dependent on God parts that make him up. With God, we need to understand that all that is in God is God. So that God is his essence, his existence, and his attributes. Not that God has love, but God is love.
And in saying that, we need to realize, again, that man loves, but it is not the case that man is love. Could anyone describe you that way? Jim is love. I doubt my wife would describe me that way.
I doubt any of you would describe me that way. Jim is love. That is not essential to Jim. It is essential, however, to God.
You see, God is love. Now, we need to follow this for a moment. We can grow in love. We can diminish in our love.
This is not the case with God. He is his attributes. If God increases in his love, what does that mean? It means he wasn't perfect before the increase.
If God decreases in his love, what does that mean? It means he leaves the place of perfection. You see, if he's most loving, he gets better, and he wasn't most, so he wasn't perfect in this mode, so now he's become perfect. If he's most loving and he decreases, what does that mean?
He's no longer at the status of perfection. Stephen Charnock made this observation. If God does change, it must be either to a greater perfection than he had before or to a less, right? If you posit change of God, there's only one of two ways he can go.
He can either get better or he can get worse. Now I hope you see the ludicrous, what's the word, ludicracy? Is that the word? I think so.
The foolishness of saying such a thing. Does the God of the Bible have the potential to be better at God? Does the God of the Bible have the potential to be less than better at God? You see, the very asking of the question makes one smile, because it's so not what the scripture sets forth.
Charnot says, if God does change, it must be either to a greater perfection than he had before or to a less, if to the better He was not perfect, and so was not God. If to the worse, he will not be perfect, and so be no longer God after that change." You see, there's a lot riding on this particular doctrine of divine impassibility. Two simple words without passions can affect the entirety of chapter 2, which is the doctrine of God. But then chapters 3 to 32 in our Confession of Faith all are founded upon that are grounded upon that foundation.
You see, if that's not the God of the Bible, then the rest of that theology is up for grabs. When we get to God's covenantal dealings with his people, how do we know that he's going to actually save us? Like he says, how do we know he's not going to change on a whim? How do we know he's not going to say, you know what?
Forget about it. I just don't want you anymore. It is the doctrine of immutability, the doctrine of impassibility, that secures for us the fact that the God who has covenanted, the God who has promised, the God that has revealed himself to be faithful to his people will, in fact, be faithful to them day in and day out, come whatever may. This is the foundation for comfort, for joy, and I believe that Bavinck is right.
If we deny this, it robs God of his divine nature and religion of its firm foundation and assured comfort.
Applying Impassibility to 1 Samuel 15
Now let's look at verse 11. Remember the scene. Soon as Saul becomes king, it's downhill from there. Right?
I mean, Saul You just kind of want to say Saul. Come on, dude. Like, what's going on here? The people clamor for a king.
They want a king. They want to be like the other nations. God tells Samuel, tell them this is the kind of king they're going to get. They want the king.
God sends them Saul. Soon as Saul takes the position, things start going bad for Saul. Chapter 15 is certainly no exception to that particular rule. So we see, God tells Saul, go in, kill the Amalekites.
Go in, kill the Amalekites. Go in, kill the Amalekites. What did Saul do? He went in, and he didn't kill all the Amalekites.
He spared Agag, and he spared livestock. Because Saul, you see, is a pious man, right? He's a very religious sort. He wants to have animals so he can sacrifice to the Lord.
And probably because he wants to have animals, because he likes more animals, you see. But Saul goes in, he disobeys God. Verse 10, we see, now the word of the Lord came to Samuel saying, I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments. So everything I've just said concerning the doctrine of divine impassibility is undone because we see here that God greatly regrets something that he has done.
As I mentioned, the word that is used here is used also in Genesis chapter 6, verses 6 and 7, where the Lord was sorry or grieved the Lord when he saw the wickedness of man on the earth. It's also used in Numbers 23, 19, which seems to be a bit of backdrop for this particular text. You can turn there for a moment. Numbers 23, 19.
God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should repent. Has he said and will he not do? Or has he spoken and will he not make it good? This is the expression used in numbers.
This is what? Samuel says in verse 29 specifically, but here God says, I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king. So everybody feel the pressure. We got this statement in 11.
We got the statement in 35. God says, I regret. And then in verse 29, we have this statement from Samuel that says, God won't relent. God's not a man that he should relent.
I mean, anybody would at least, if they never heard the issues, they never had the idea, you'd probably scratch your melon and wonder, what's going on here? Or when you get to the prophet Jonah, and God says he repents, some of those things probably have caused you to stop and think at least a little bit along the way. Or Genesis 6, when God is sorry and grieved. You just heard in Sunday school that God is omnipotent and omniscient, and he decrees whatsoever comes to pass, and then he says he's grieved over this.
Well, what's going on? Well, we need to be able to answer these particular questions. So the word is used, as I said here, Genesis numbers.
Priority of Divine-Essence Texts
The priority, or what we ought to do with reference to Bible interpretation, is take the priority of the essence of God texts. Texts that teach us who God is come before texts that teach us what God does. Priority there does not mean more important necessarily. It means first in order of interpretation.
Isn't this what Samuel does in the passage before us? Samuel does this very thing. Sometimes people say, well, that's arbitrary. You've got to take those texts that tell us what God is like, and how he reacts, and how he responds, and how he emotes.
You've got to take those texts and help those, or make those help you understand the essence of God's text. That's not what Samuel does. When Samuel speaks specifically concerning the nature, the essence, the character of God, he tells us verse 29. The strength of Israel will not lie nor relent, for he is not a man that he should relent." So in spite of the fact that God tells Samuel, I greatly regret that I made Saul.
Samuel does not abandon his doctrine of God. Samuel does not embrace open theism. Samuel does not deny impassibility or immutability. Samuel holds fast to the classical, confessional, biblical doctrine of divine impassibility.
When he comes to speak concerning the essence of God, Samuel says, the strength of Israel will not lie nor relent, for he is not a man that he should relent. We give priority to essence of God texts. Exodus 3.14, I am who I am. That's a passage that probably deals with the doctrine of independence.
God is independent. He is not dependent upon us. He is not dependent upon this creation. There may be overtones or hidden notes of simplicity and a lot of other things going on in Exodus 3.14 when God reveals himself through that divine name.
Numbers 23, 1 Samuel 15, 29, Malachi 3, I the Lord do not change. We look at texts that describe God in his essence, in his being, who he is. That takes priority. Again, not that it's not important, but it takes priority in terms of who God is, and then we understand what does he do toward men.
Figurative Language: Anthropomorphism
A third thing we need to understand is that the Bible uses what's called figurative language. You all know what this means. Jesus said, I am the true vine. Jesus does not tell us or nothing in us has the thought that there are grapes growing off of Jesus.
We know this to be a figure of speech. When Jesus says, I am the door, we do not suppose for a minute that Jesus has hinges. When Jesus says those things, He is speaking figuratively. He is using a metaphor, a figure of speech, to reveal certain truth about himself to his people.
Is everybody with me? This isn't new. When Jesus says, I am the door, or I am the vine, or I am the bread of life, This is not a new convention in scripture. The Bible everywhere uses figures of speech or metaphor.
There's two primary types that you need to understand. One is called anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism simply means that we ascribe human characteristics to God, right? How does Jesus define God for us in John 4, 24?
God is spirit, isn't he? We all would agree with that reality that God is spirit. Spirits don't have eyes. Spirits don't have hands.
Spirits don't have feet, right? Of course not. They're spirits. The very nature of spirit means not extended into space.
There is nothing in a spirit in terms of space, you know, occupying a particular part of space. So when the Bible tells us that the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the good and the evil. Do we actually believe for a moment that there's a spirit being that has eyes? No, it's a figure that we're all very commonly aware of.
Second Chronicles 16, the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth. I hope you don't actually envision There's somehow eyes with feet, and they're running throughout. No, it's a figure of speech. And when the prophet Isaiah specifically, or God through the prophet Isaiah, said that I will demonstrate my power, my powerful right arm.
That doesn't mean that God has an arm. In fact, in Exodus 6-6, in the New King James, it talks about God and His powerful arm, or His outstretched arm. And the margin actually says mighty power. The margin doesn't need to say that because I think we all intrinsically get it.
When a spirit reflects or says that I'm going to do this with my outstretched arm, we just automatically know it's talking about mighty power. We don't think there's a spirit with an arm. We think that means that God is exercising power and might and strength in the salvation of his people. So anthropomorphism, just to show a hint, who's heard that word before?
Okay, fair, good. Now
Figurative Language: Anthropopathism
the second one that is very important for the doctrine of impassibility is anthropopathism. Anthropopathism, as you might suspect, it's just like anthropomorphism. But if anthropomorphism is the ascribing of bodily parts to God, anthropopathism is ascribing emotions or human sort of affections to God. Ascribing human emotions to God is something that the Bible does.
In fact, go to Genesis 6, you see both anthropomorphism and anthropopathism used in this particular passage. Genesis 6, 6. Man, it is cooking in here. Can I open this window?
Sorry. That's it. No more heat on Wednesday nights. Bring a jacket if you think it might be cold.
Genesis, I'm just kidding. I'll still turn the heat on. It killed me to turn the heat on today, but I thought, you know, somebody's going to come. They're going to be cold.
And then I'm the big bad meanie. All right, notice in Genesis 6, 5, then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. I mean, even that convention there, God saw. I mean, who of us actually thinks there's a spirit up there kind of looking to see what...
It's speaking to us in the manner of man. Right? God is wholly other. He's in a different category than us.
In order for him to effectively communicate to us, he has to use our language, or we're not going to get it. The confession also says in 2.1 that he's known only by himself. That doesn't mean we can't know truth about God, but it means that the one who only knows God is God. ultimately, right? But he does reveal himself to us.
So just look at the convention that the biblical authors use here. Then the Lord saw. Then, the whole idea that, oh, all of a sudden God now sees. God is eternal.
God is over all. God sees everything all the time, all at once. There's no sort of gradation of thought with God. There's no sort of deduction or induction with God.
There's no learning process with God. There's no getting more information. When God says to Adam and Eve, who told you? The question isn't for God.
The question is for them. You see, God is not devoid of knowledge. God is not absent of any understanding. He speaks to us in the manner of men.
Keep that little phrase in your head. In the manner of men. Notice Genesis 6 5. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth and he was grieved in his heart. How come we take heart anthropomorphically and we realize that the spirit being doesn't have a heart, it's speaking in the manner of man, trying to communicate something to us at our level. How come we don't apply that to the preceding statement that he was grieved, right? It's not not teaching us anything.
It's still teaching us that God hates sin, God is a holy being, God is righteous and just, and God's view of sin is in this particular order. But to say that he was grieved or sorrowful in the sense that you and I grieve in sorrow? That's simply not true of God Most High. So when we talk about anthropomorphism and anthropopathism, what these things relate are in fact true.
There's been those who have said, when you reduce things to anthropopathism, you say there's no truth value there. No, there is truth value. We're learning what sin looks like. We're learning about the holiness of God.
We're learning about the character of God. Just like when we say, God really doesn't have a right arm, we still understand that he's full of power, might, and strength. You see, the truth is communicated regardless of the figure, but the figure doesn't have to be taken literally. You see that?
It's very important. So when we come to this whole idea of the use of figurative language in the fourth place,
Proper and Improper Predication
there is what's called proper and improper predication. Remember that word predication? That's when you ascribe or describe or say something about God. The Bible does that properly and improperly.
Just get out of your head what you think properly and improperly means there. Properly means something that is proper to God. When we say God is love, that is proper to God. That is a proper predication.
When we say God is spirit, that's a proper predication. That is actually true of God in his essence, in his essential being. But an improper predication is when we say God has an arm, when we say God has eyes. It is saying something about God that is improper for the purpose of teaching us something.
There's a purpose that God has in using these improper predications, because you remember, it's not like slug, dog, man, angel, God, so he's just talking down to those lower in the food chain. No, it is slug, dog, man, angel, God. For him to communicate with us, there are times he has to use these improper predications so that we'll get it. You see?
We don't understand things about God unless, the way Calvin says, he lisps to us. In fact, let me quote Calvin from the Institutes. He says, the anthropomorphites. What do you think the anthropomorphites did?
The anthropomorphites, we just said anthropomorphism, is ascribing human features to God. There was a group called the anthropomorphites that believed that God had human features. There are those today who think that God has human features. If God appears to men and he has feet, well therefore God must have feet.
These are improper predications. They're designed to teach us something, but not that God has feet. So listen to Calvin. The anthropomorphites also who imagined a corporeal or a human or bodily God from the fact that scripture often ascribes to him a mouth, ears, eyes, hands, and feet are easily refuted.
For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to lisp in speaking to us? When you talk to your one-year-old, you don't talk to him or her the way we're talking now. You say goo-goo-goo-goo. You say funny things, goofy things.
You make faces at them. You do some shenanigans so you can connect with them. You see, that's what Calvin's saying. The nurse lisps to the infant.
Because if you say, infant, I want you to eat your banana. I want you to lay down. I want you to pull the blanket over, put your head down, and have a nice eight hour nap, the infant's going to look at you like you're a bug. They're not going to know what you're talking about.
So you've got to guide them and say funny things and put them in their place. I love the way he says this, who even of slight intelligence does not understand that as nurses commonly do with infants, God is want and a measure to list in speaking to us. Thus, such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. You see, he's saying that this does not describe God in his essence, It's not that God has hands, God has feet, God has eyes, God has ears.
It's not describing him in his likeness, but rather it is accommodating the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this, he must descend far beneath his loftiness. In order for him to talk to us, he has to use our language, or we're not going to get it. It is that simple.
Calvin then applies this principle. For my money, Gil and Calvin is as good as it gets in terms of theologians. They both wrote systematic theologies, and they both wrote Bible commentaries. You see, sometimes you have guys that are strong in Bible, but they're not too good in systematic theology.
Sometimes you have guys that are strong in systematic theology, but not so strong in Bible. You see, Calvin and Gil both did Bible commentary, and systematic theology. So when you see in the institutes Calvin give principles, you can read them in the commentaries being fleshed out. The same with Gill.
You see the principles of interpretation that he uses in his systematic theology. You read his commentaries, and you see it fleshed out. You see it applied. You see it put into practice.
So listen to how Calvin deals with Genesis 6.6. He says, the repentance, this is what it says, the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth and he was grieved in his heart. The repentance, which is here ascribed to God, does not properly belong to him. Remember, proper predication and improper.
Proper is God is love, God is holy, God is righteous. But improper is God is grieved, or God relents, or God repents, or God has hair, or God has feet, or God has eyes. Those are improper predications. So he says, the repentance which is here ascribed to God does not properly belong to him, but has reference to our understanding of him.
It is for us that this language is in the scripture. We go to the nature of God text. He does not change. That means he doesn't have emotional flux.
He doesn't react. He doesn't respond. He doesn't have a bad day. He never has a case of the Mondays.
He never feels icky. He's always the same. He is God. He is lisping to us to teach us truly what he thinks about sin. what he thinks about man in sin, what he says concerning his own holiness and his uprightness, and the expression of his judgment and righteousness that is to follow when he pours out the flood upon an apostate race.
Calvin says, that repentance cannot take place in God easily appears from this single consideration, that nothing happens which is by Him unexpected or unforeseen. You see Calvin says there's no repentance because there's nothing that's unforeseen, there's nothing unexpected. God doesn't ever look down upon the creation and say, wow, I can't believe they're actually doing that. How can it possibly be in light of the fact that Paul the Apostle tells us that he predetermines and purposes all things that come to pass?
You see, it's Ephesians 1.11. It's not Westminster Shorter Catechism that teaches us concerning God's eternal decree of whatsoever comes to pass. So you see, he knows what's coming. He sees what's happening.
He's not caught unawares. He's not caught off guard. He doesn't react. He doesn't respond.
He uses this language to teach his creatures what we ought to think concerning his holiness, what we ought to think concerning man's sinfulness, and what we ought to appreciate in terms of his redemptive course and how he's going to remedy this situation. Many of the commentators, the old boys, with reference to 1 Samuel 15, they say, to will a change is not a change in the will. To will a change, God's decree, God's purpose, God's plan all along. envisioned the fall of Saul for the installment of the Davidic dynasty. I mean, that goes back to Genesis 3.15.
So to will a change does not mean a change in the will. This is how Gil describes verse 11 in 1 Samuel 15. We're going to be finished in just a minute. Which is not to be understood.
The text again, I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king. Gil says, which is not to be understood of any change of mind, counsel, purpose, or decree in God, which is not consistent with his unchangeable nature. You see, the Bible says, I, the Lord, do not change. James tells us there is no shadow of turning.
There's no variation in our God. He is the same constant, consistent, faithful, rock-solid being upon whom we can cast our anchor and never be frustrated. He goes on to say, but a change of dispensation and outward dealings and is spoken after The manner of men. You see, this is commonplace in the older theologians when they deal with this doctrine, because they understand there are things that are spoken to us that are after the manner of men.
Hands, feet, all these things ascribed to God are after the manner of men. So is emotional turmoil. So are these fluxes. So are these changes.
These are after the manner of men. who, when they repent of anything, change the course of their conduct and behavior. And so the Lord does without any change of his mind and will, which alters not. And though he changes the outward dispensations of his providence, yet he never changes and alters in the matters and methods of his grace. It is the sinner that changes.
It's not God. It's our relation to him that changes. God does not change. That is settled through and through in the scripture.
And just in conclusion,
Samuel's Confession of God's Unchangeableness
if ever there were a candidate to modify the doctrine of divine impassibility, one would think it would be Samuel. Right? I mean, verse 11. Does it get any clearer?
God says to Samuel. That's what 10 says. The word of Yahweh came to Samuel saying, I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king. Of anybody in the world that could have taken that and said, well, wait a minute.
Maybe that means God does change. Maybe that means there is flux. Maybe that means there is increase. Or there is decrease, or there is this turmoil, or there is emotivity, or there is relational affectability.
No. What we find in verse 29, Samuel maintains the consistent testimony of Scripture concerning the essence and being of God, and also the strength of Israel, will not lie nor relent. For he is not a man that he should relent. Remember I told you that creator-creature distinction is most important.
The Bible everywhere upholds it. He is not a man. See implication. He's in a different category.
Men relent. Men change. Men are full of emotional flocks, but not God. Not God ever.
It's interesting. In this very passage, what happens? Samuel changes. Samuel says that he's not going to go with Saul, and he ends up going with Saul.
Samuel's a man. Men change. Men do this sort of a thing, but not God. God's will and decree and purpose was always for the installment of the Davidic dynasty.
Along the way, when there's sin and there's evil and there's wickedness, God says these things. He speaks in the manner of man so that we see the rupture and the breach that sin does bring. We see the holiness and the righteousness and the goodness of our God. And we see what rebellion ultimately does deserve the judgment and the punishment of God.
So there is truth revealed to us in these figures of speech, but the truth is not that God has hands, God has feet, and God has bad days, where God fluctuates or expresses emotivity that is somehow inconsistent with the essence of God as it is revealed in Holy Scripture. All right, well, I'll close in prayer, and if anybody has a question, we can take that.
Closing Prayer
Our Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for theology and for the ability to take scripture and to compare it with other scripture and to be able to hopefully bring it together and synthesize it. to show and to demonstrate and to see that there are no contradictions, there is no paradox, there is no conflict in holy writ. All that it reveals to us concerning God is clear, it is concise, it is for the benefit of your preachers. I pray that we would receive these things, and they would be of benefit and help to us, that each and every day that we flocks and that we emote and that we have all this turmoil, our God changes not.
Our God is glorious, and our God is always most loving and most gracious to us. Go with us now, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.