I want to begin with two texts of scripture in this session on God's immutability and impassibility. Two texts of scripture followed by uh a reading from confession 2:1 and then we'll pray. Malachi chapter 3 verse 6, for I am the Lord. I do not change. Therefore, you are not consumed, oh sons of Jacob. And then also Acts 14 verse 15, starting in verse 14 there. But when the apostles Paul and Barnabas heard this that they were being worshiped as if they were Olympian gods. When they heard this, they tore their clothes and they ran out among the multitude crying out, saying, "Men, why do you these things? We are men of the same passions with you and preach to you that you should turn from these vain things to the living God who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all things that are in them." In our confession again from the beginning, the Lord our God is but one only living and true God, whose subsistence is in and of himself, infinite in being and perfection, whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but himself, a most pure spirit, invisible without body parts or passions, who only hath immortal immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto. Immutable, immense, eternal, and comprehensible, almighty, every way infinite, most wise, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the council of his will and most uh most uh pardon me, working all things according to the counsel of his immutable and most righteous will for his own glory. most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, and with all most terrible and just in his judgments, hating all sin, who will by no means clear the guilty. I wanted to read the entirety uh because in this it includes the statement that God is most free, most loving, most terrible in his judgments and also passionless all in a single article. Uh and so some of what we want to do uh in this session is consider how these things actually hold together uh in our confession and theologically. Well, let's ask the Lord to help us as we come to this time. Our God in heaven, you indeed do not change. Many good and perfect gifts come down from you, the father of lights, but with you there is no variation or shadow due to turning. Lord, when you swore an oath, you swore by yourself because you could swear by none higher. The importance of this, Lord, is that you are unchangeable and therefore your word and your promise to us is unchangeable. We bless you and we thank you for your immutability and all the consolation that it brings to us, the hope and strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us that are grounded in your immutability. And Lord, as we consider that we men of like passions are distinct from you, that you are not like us, subject to passions, help us to see the meaning of this, Lord, not just as a strange saying perhaps, but see the meaning of it as that which grounds your perfect and infinite and abound an abundant love for us. That your being most loving is indeed because you are without passions, not in spite of it. Teach us the meaning of this. Help us by your spirit we pray in this time ahead. In Christ's name we ask it. Amen. Classical Christian theism is deeply devoted to the absoluteness of God with respect to his existence, essence and activity. That God does not depend upon what is not God to be God or do what God does. We mentioned in a previous session in the second London confession. Then we call God most absolute which is an interesting language. There are relative absolute beings, beings that are relatively immutable and yay, even relatively relatively impassible. I speak here of the angels, not to derail myself uh in that regard, but God is most absolute, most loving, most free, and his immutability and impassibility are key aspects of this confession. There's nothing behind God or outside of God that could increase God, that could change or alter God, that could augment his infinite fullness of being per impossibility. To augment infinity is just an absurdity on its face. God cannot subject himself to changes or to passions. For this reason, that every change and every passion involves a cause that brings to the subject that is changed or undergoes passions an actuality of being that is somehow distinct from the subject itself. Changes make things be somehow. Passions bring about new states of being and actuality in things. Passions are causes and change requires or or require causes. Changes require causes. A cause simply put again a few just principles here to guide our discussion is something that makes things to be. Now, not all causes make things to be existentially. In fact, the only true existential cause, the one whose power and causality places outside of nothingness is God. In him we live, move and have our being. Acts 17:28. So God is that existential cause. The one who makes things be absolutely and existentially. The created principle by which he makes them be is what we call his is what we call essay. The act of existence is that created principle by which he causes you to be as opposed to not. But then there are also causes that cause things to be we might say formally speaking. They don't give existence, but they do give manners of whatness. You thought I was going to say it in a more normal way than that, but I chose not to. Manners of whatness. I could even say um variations of quiddity, which helps about two of you, I think. But the point is this, that causes can make things to be existentially or they can make things to be what they are. So, if I picked up this plastic water bottle, um, we could talk about its cause that makes it be as opposed to not be at all. Or we could also talk about the cause that makes it to be, um, cylindrical in shape and of such a consist consistency. And what causes it to be crinkly? What is it about the nature and disposition of its matter that produces this sound when gr when grasped? That sort of thing. We when we talk about causes, we're talking about what it make what makes things to be existentially or essentially or quitatively. But this is what all causes have in common. All causes produce states of being. All causes produce states of being. Since God is wholly uncaused and self-sufficient in the plentitude of his being, he cannot be moved to further actuality. Every change, every mutation requires a newness of being acquired. If something has changed, we can say from what and into what. Every change has a from what and an into what. And then it also has some power mechanism, a cause that accounts for the newness of being. Such movement in God would suggest some imperfection or absence of being and goodness in him. And the simple reason is this that you can only change into what you aren't, not what you are. Change requires a newness of being. It also requires as a precondition a lacking of exactly and precisely what it is that you changed into. Okay? So I can change from standing to sitting, but I can't change from standing to standing. I can change from standing here to standing there, but I can't change from standing to standing. I can't change into what I am. For instance, I can't become human. I am that. I can't become someone who's standing up because I am that. We become what we aren't. We don't become what we are. Or if we become what we are, we become what we are in kind through an enrichment. In other words, still some kind of additional actuality of being. Herman boink in his reformed dogmatics distills the basics of divine immutability very succinctly. He says every change is foreign to God. In him there is no change in time for he is eternal nor in location for he is omnipresent nor in essence for he is pure being. John Owen writing in the 17th century puts it this way. God alone hath all being in him. I'm gonna I'm gonna butt in. You get to butt in when they're not here to stop you. So I butt into my quotes. Um God hath all being in him. He is the I am that I am. But for a thing to change, there is a requisite not being. Does this make sense? If you're going to gain being, you have to not have it to gain it. But if God is fullness of being, if there's no posity or lack of being in God, if his name is I am that I am, and he is the ising one, if there's no nonis that characterizes God, that is to say, possibility for being what he isn't yet, if that isn't real in God, then any possibility of change is completely off the table at that point. God alone hath all being in him. Hence, he gives himself the name I am, says Owen. He was eternally all and when all else uh and when all things else that were made or now are or shall be were nothing. His point is the world didn't add something to God. The world didn't change God. God didn't become when the world became. God is not in some kind of relationship where he makes the world be new and the world makes him be new somehow. In this state of infinite and eternal being and goodness, antecedent unto any act of wisdom or power without himself to give existence unto other things, God was and is eternally in himself all that he will be and all that he can be unto eternity. God is being, not becoming. Back to Owen. For where there is infinite being and infinite goodness, there is an infinite blessedness and inf and happiness where unto nothing can be added to God. Nothing can be added to God. God is always the same. All things that are make no addition unto God. No change in his state. his hap, his blessedness, happiness, self-satisfaction, as well as all of his other infinite perfections were absolutely the same before the creation of anything. Um, that sentiment is widespread, we could almost say universal in the early generations of the reformation. It's also quite universal in the medieval church and among church fathers uh with very few exceptions. and those usually leading to some kind of heresy um or another. Um it's now not uncommon uh and I won't name names uh in this event but it is not uncommon to read even reformed authors contemporary ones speaking of God in creation and when God says it was you know he saw all that he would made he had made and behold it was very good characterizing that as if the world brought a new state of joy to God that prior to having the world God lacked. My kids went to a BBS once uh and they came home, not at our church, a different church, and they came home from the BBS. I said, "What'd you learn at BBS today?" And they said, "Um, we learned that God made the world uh because he was lonely if that was your church." Okay. You know, and I I said, "Uh, no." Because the idea was and now God has a world to keep him company. And so God moved from a state of loneliness to companionship. and the world is actually a you know a plus to God, a boon to God, a windfall. Let's I mean that's a bad VBS, but that's also in books of reformed literature that have come out in the last 20 or 30 years. Um let's consider the theological framework of divine immutability and then we'll look at a few particular texts. The doctrine of immutability is strongly supported by other Christian doctrines. I want to look at at one in particular and then I'll just make a side reference to simplicity since we already talked about that and I want to focus here especially on what's called God's assay or sometimes his independence. God's a Latin aay which just means that God is of himself or from himself. It's kind of if you ask the question why God the answer would be God. In fact, it wouldn't even be quite correct if you wanted to be really if you wanted to be that guy and be precise about it. It wouldn't even be quite correct to say if I said why God if you said well because and I I'd say let me stop you right there because are you telling me you found God's cause? I wouldn't I just want to if somebody says why God I just say God's why God. I just leave the because out of it because God isn't caused. The why is not answered by a causal principle. God has no causal principle. He is the universal causal principle. All things are from him, through him, and to him. But he himself has no causal principle. Nothing made him, nothing caused him. There's no because. Now, this does not mean that there's no reason for God. God is the reason for God. He's just not the causal reason for God. That's in a nutshell. Um, if you want another nickname for um it just means of himself. So, this is just God's of himself. Believe me, oity sounds cooler than of himself. Um this is God's self-sufficiency that God is the reason for God that God doesn't depend on what is not God that he is his own fullness of being. Herman Bobing says when God ascribes this aity to himself in scripture he makes himself known as absolute being as the one who is in an absolute sense by this perfection he is at once essentially and absolutely distinct from all creatures. It's an important doctrine. God's acai. No angel is aay. Angels derive their is from God who gave it. They are not of themselves. They are rather from God or of God. But God is of himself. The English Puritan Steven Charach makes a point similar to this. He says, "God is of himself from no other." I'll interrupt really quick. Every time a Puritan says God is of himself, they are confessing the doctrine of divine aeti. God is of himself from no other. Charoch says God hath no original. I do like that statement. God hath no original. In other words, God is not the copy of or the derivation of some prototype. He is the original, but he doesn't have an original. God has no source. He is the source of things that have a source, but he himself has no source. God hath no original. He hath no defect because he was not made from nothing. He hath no increase because he has no be he had no beginning. He was before all things and therefore depends upon no other thing. That which had no beginning cannot begin to be in any respect because then that would be exactly a beginning. If God is without beginning then God cannot begin to be. Bobing says it's evident from the word uh this is evident from the word oayity. God is exclusively of himself not in the sense bobbing says of being self-caused but being from eternity to eternity who he is being not becoming. So what we mean by God's self-sufficiency is not that God made God. Uh there maybe we should just get clear on this. We should get clear on this. God cannot cause himself to be because nothing can. And it's not because he lacks power. It's because absolute existential self-causation is absurd. It's as the kids say, it's not a thing. It's not a thing. Um, and here's the reason why you should I mean, just saying it's not a thing, that just sounds like I'm pounding the pulpit and saying just not so. And it isn't so, but there's a good reason why it's not so. Um, and just stay with me for a moment. Um, making or causing, which is an operation, requires that the cause exist. Like, let me change it for you. Here's my bumper sticker version of it. If you aren't, you don't. I mean it for everything. If you are or you could put a If you don't exist, there's no you to do stuff like make things exist. This is why God cannot be self-caused. Self-causation is absurd. Self-causation is absurd. Um, God is not I I I'm even hesitant to use the language of God being like self-dependent or God only depends upon God. It's not even like that. like I kind of depend upon myself in some respects. Meaning parts of me depend upon other parts of me. Like I depend upon my heart to pump blood through my body. But what I'm really saying is one part that has a need is supplied by the other part that's got the supply. And so self-dependence in a composite being isn't nonsensical. It does make sense. And we might even call that self-sufficiency. But even self-sufficient, do I do this? I'm looking at the time. Yeah, why not? This is this is what you paid you. No, but it's what you paid for. Self-suff, even self-sufficiency isn't quite it exactly if we're being technical about it because self-sufficiency um means to um make under. You hear the fick and self-sufficiency. There's the maid and then there's the sub. Um that God makes under. Um I can do this like I can bear down and take care of myself like eat dinner, comb my hair, brush my teeth, and I can I can actually depend upon myself in some ways. the parts that need help get help from the other parts that can supply it. And in that respect, I'm self-sufficient, I suppose. I mean, my wife would dispute how self-sufficient I am, but there are a bits of it anyway. Um, but that's because parts are depending upon other parts that are also intrinsic to me, hence self-sufficiency. God doesn't even depend upon God. When I said earlier that God does not depend on what is not God to be God, I was not suggesting necessarily that God depends upon himself. What we should say about God is God just is. And in fact, that's actually how the Bible describes it. God just is. He is his own is. It's not even a dependency thing. Uh if I can put it that way. In uh two two passages I want to look at just very briefly in the book of Job to kind of bring bring this out. In Job chapter 22, uh his friend thinks scare quotes around that. Elephas challenges him with a question. In Job 22 2 and 3, Elifaz says, "Can a man be profitable to God? Though he who is wise may be profitable to himself and then he asks this, is it any pleasure to the Almighty if you are righteous or gain to him if you make your ways blameless?" In other words, um, can you help God? Can you give God what God lacks? Can you be God's benefactor? I did I gave you my little lesson on thick f facts. So now I get to do things with it. A benactor. You hear that? You see the fac in there, right? Fact, the factor. A factor is a maker. A factoum is a made thing. But a factor is a maker. And then ben is good. And a benefactor is someone who makes good for, right? And a bene usually we think of it in terms of money, but a benefactor is someone who makes good for others. God is a benefactor. He's the universal benefactor. From him we receive life, breath, and all things. Acts 17:25. So, he's the benefactor. The question is, God is a benefactor. Granted, does God have benefactors? Do you get what I'm after with this? I'm not asking is God, in this case, the benefactor. What I'm asking is, are there benefactors that benefit God? And even the word benefit means that which is made good. A benefit is that same root actually is that which is made good. God's a benefactor, but he's not a beneficiary. A beneficiary is someone who has good made for him. A benefactor is someone who makes good for another. God is a benefactor but not a beneficiary. And so I'm sure with all this Latin that Elifaz didn't know, he asked this question. Can a man be profitable to God? Is there any pleasure to the Almighty if you're righteous or gain to him if you make your ways blameless? In other words, does your obedience and does your worship and everything else that you do for God, does it actually put God into a better place? Are you his benefactor? It's a rhetorical question. The answer is supposed to be no. Ah, why it works in the book of Job, I suggest this to you anyway. Job does probably in his lower moments suggest that his righteousness, which is I think real, does in a certain sense oblige God to give him an answer. If you want the worst of the worst of it, the second half of chapter 31, right where Job that the words of Job are ended, um, they end well, there are other words later on that are very good, but those ones end, I think, rather poorly, in which Job says that he would declare his righteousness to God. He would wear it on his head like a crown and appear before him. The scene is a courtroom, and he's effectively subpoening God into his own courtroom to give witness to him. And his leverage is, I'm righteous. I'm righteous. And LA Faz sniffs the problem here. You're kind of making it sound like this is a quidd proquo with God. You help God. Now time for God to help you. And are you thinking God's like that? Because that's not Well, the thing is Job, it's like so many people. Job's theology is better than his words sometimes because there are places in Job where it's very clear that he believes in God's oayity, self-sufficiency, and immutability. But then when he makes this argument about how his own righteousness will be the argument by which he calls God to give an answer, um it sounds almost like he's treating God like a beneficiary who then owes a debt of gratitude. God owes no debt of gratitude. Job 35, Elifaz, not one of the three friends, the young man who is sitting on the side of the circle, also not one whose words are anywhere rebuked in the book of Job. Job does not rebuke him. God does not rebuke him. and the three friends do not rebuke him. Job rebukes Mrs. Job. The three friends rebuke Job. Elifaz the God rebukes Job. Elhu rebukes Job. God rebukes Job and the three friends. Eliu rebukes Job and the three friends. No one rebukes Eliu. That is important. It is important. Um not even God. Uh I think he's the setup act. I think he's sort of the preacher of wisdom who's in a certain sense warming Job up for the big show which is chapter 38 and following when God appears in the whirlwind before him which is only to say you don't have to spit the seeds out. It's always hard with Job's friends like how much theology do I take from them because I just read Elifas. Well, listen to Eliu or Elhu chapter 35 6 and 7. Well, I know I need to I need to frame it. He says, "Look at the heavens and see and behold the clouds. They're higher than you. Okay, this is an announce. So I maybe I'll put it like this. Um there's a there's a kind of relative transcendence of the clouds over you. And I like like to ask the question, what have you done for the clouds lately? Weird question, I know. What have the clouds done for you lately? Shade, rain. The clouds benefit you, but they're not really in a relationship where you can return the favor. There's not a kind of give and take quid proquo with the cra the clouds. They just give to you and then they sail on and you don't give anything back to them. He's using this as a kind of metaphor for your relationship with God. And then when we come to the one who's absolutely transcendent, not just relatively transcendent like the clouds, what does he give you? Well, everything, life, breath, and all things. What do you give him? Listen to these words. Verse six. If you sin, what do you accomplish against him? And if your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to him? More literally translated, what do you make to be in him? For instance, can you make God feel pain? That would be to produce a state of being in God that was not actually in God prior to your producing it in God. Then there would be something in God that is real in which God was in a state of being produced by you. God is not in that kind of relationship with us. It doesn't mean that he doesn't care about sin or isn't opposed to it. But our sin doesn't actually detract from his goodness or his blessedness. It opposes it in the sphere of our existence, but it does not detract or take away from it. If you're righteous, what do you give him? And here's the key thing in what does he receive from your hand? And then he says, 'But your right your wickedness affects a man such as you and your righteousness a son of man. It it does matter. Your wickedness does actually hurt some people and your righteousness does help some people. Uh it's just not God. And he's not saying God doesn't care about these things. But he doesn't care about them the way you and I care about them. The way you and I care about them is because we are the recipients of them. God cares about them because he made man in his image and he made man to be upright. And man has sought out many devices as Ecclesiastes says. Um the reason that God cares is because he's perfect and the just judge of all things. But his care is how can I put it this way? His care is not the product of your agency. He cares because he's good. He cares because he's altogether righteous. He doesn't care because he needed you to make it so. Because then then you would be the cause of a state of being in God. caring doesn't mean he doesn't care. It just means you're not the one who made it. So, um Calvin expands on this passage in his sermon uh this way, this Elihu passage. He says, "But we must apply this doctrine to the present intent of Elihu, which is that God is not like mortal men, this is key, which are moved and touched." God is not like mortal men moved and touched by others. And why he says, "Why are men this way?" Why? Because they have need of another's help and cannot set light by or disregard other men's force. In other words, we need like I need to be stirred up by the actions of others upon me. Um, I need help because I'm not purely actual and boundless in being and I do need to be stirred up to care. God doesn't because he doesn't lack care. This is Calvin's point. He finishes it this way. Thus you see what the causes what the cause is that we be moved and carried to and fro. We are moved by others. We are changed by others. We undergo changes and others cause them. Calvin concludes this one thought. But there must no such doages enter into our head concerning God. I like that old English translation of whatever his French was doages. So anyway, part of part of this session is to just get that false dotage, false thoughts out of your head. Lest we conclude that this is just the bad council of Job's friends, God appears as I mentioned in the whirlwind and speaks to Job. And in Job 41, God says this to him, who has preceded me that I should repay him? Everything under heaven is mine. So this is the point. U antic is older. It could say anticipated me. We might use it more idiomatically. We might say who has gotten the upper hand on God, right? Or who has anticipated him such that I should repay? To whom is God in debt? Um I often illustrate this with uh my experience working many years of a graveyard shift and I had two jobs, a graveyard shift and then I would go to work at the university. And if the university campus was closed, my other graveyard shift never closed for anything. Uh, and so there'd be a snow day and I' I'd know that instead of going to campus, I would be driving home and my township required that at the end of snowfall, I had 24 hours to completely clear the sidewalk adjacent to my property. I just was on a strange property and had a long sidewalk and I did not have a snowblower. I just had a shovel and a sun. That was my plan. Uh, but also it was a good workout. So I would anticipate something and I had two strange driveways and I had something like four hours of shoveling in front of me after working all night. And on occasion I would come home and I would see my sidewalk completely plowed and cleared after having worked all night. Uh because my neighbor Steve with his gigantic Troy built blower would just come and clear my sidewalk for me in 15 minutes. And uh it seemed that I owed I owed him something. And uh on on a few occasions, I walked into the house and I would smell cookies baking. I think, "Hi, I just got home from work. The cookies are baking and my wife's there. They they're for Steve. They're you're going to be taking over taking them over there as soon as they cool." Okay. Um and I would walk over to Steve's house and I'd knock on the door and I'd give him a plate of cookies for my wife and this is what I would give him. Thank you, Steve. An expression of gratitude. Seems right. In fact, it'd be kind of surirly and ingracious of me if I just took what Steve gave and did not discharge a debt of gratitude. Steve produced good for me. He was my benefactor and I was his beneficiary and he changed my mourning by doing my work for me. Uh and then I owed him a debt of gratitude and I went and I said thank you. Do you know that ver those verses in the Bible where God says thank you? No. Right. Um they're not there. God never says thank you to anyone in scripture. He manifests his moral approval or pleasure upon the righteous. No doubt. But God never says thank you. And the reason is a little bit on thank you. This is for free. But this is how thank you works. Thank you is a very small time discharge of a debt of gratitude when someone gives to you something that you need. And even something as small as holding a door or putting food on a plate for you to get out of this room, I'm going to need access. And if someone gives me the access I need, aka holding the door for you, then you have supplied for me something in which I in in which I was in need. And I say to you, thank you because you have now given to me the good that I needed that I was going to have to go and get for myself. I mean, it might be a small thing, but thank you is always an expression of gratitude for some benefit received, but God has no benefactor. And he receives no good. And the reason he receives no good is not because he doesn't want anything from you. Um, it's because he doesn't lack anything. Look at 41. Everything under heaven is mine. His absolute universal proprietorship, his ownership of everything means that the breath by which you give him praise is already his breath. The glory that you attribute to him is not new glory he lacked. It's just his ancient eternal glory now being given expression by you. But his glory isn't brighter because you glorify him. and his joy and his happiness in himself is not made happier because you came along and plucked up his spirits. Rather, God is allsufficient in himself, lacking no state of being, being itself. There's nothing into which he might change and no cause that might change him. In scripture, there are several passages that stipulate this uh directly. Steven Charno says, "He who has no being from another has not being from another cannot but always be what he is. God is the first being, an independent being. He was not produced of himself or by any other, but by nature always hath been and therefore cannot by himself or by any other be changed from what he is in his own nature." There are a couple texts. I've mentioned two of them already. The first Malachi 3:6, I the Lord do not change. Just says it on the face of it. James 1:17 also says it quite clearly that every good and perfect gift comes down from the father of lights with whom there's no variation or shadow due to turning. I want to be careful on this. There are variations in the gifts that come down. Sometimes sickness, sometimes health, sometimes poverty, sometimes wealth. There are es and flows in the quantity and the quality of God's distribution of gifts in his wise and fatherly distribution. There is an unevenness over a lifetime in the gifts he gives us. What we should not do is conclude that when there's a change in the gifts, you know, when you lose your health and you're sick, that there's a change in the giver. That would be a false inference. I was healthy. God loved me. I'm sick. What happened? Nothing. Every good and perfect gift comes down from the father of lights. But with him, there is no variation or shadow due to turning. God does not change. His gifts may. the giver doesn't. That's the important thing for our faith. A text I want to just look at briefly uh to kind of head off a modern misconception on this is Psalm 102 uh verses 23-28. Psalm 102 uh there is as you're turning there uh just to mention there is a kind of trend out there even in some reformed circles that suggests that divine immutability only means that God cannot be changed by another. that others cannot change God, but that doesn't mean that God cannot sovereignly change himself. So God may sovereignly decide to mutate himself somehow, but it's okay because he's good. He's powerful, and as long as we don't have other others changing God, it's all good. But that is a kind of selfmutation. And so God would not be immutable, he'd be selfmutated on that account. And I I want to propose that that is not the traditional doctrine of divine immutability. A more scandalous version of that says um that God is changed by creatures as long as he chooses to have the treat the creatures change him. As long as he sovereignly chooses them that the creature be the agent that mutates him then we're we're all Calvinists still because we got sovereignty, you know, making the jagged pill go down kind of easy. Um but it's not a good pill. Psalm 102, the psalmist says, "He's weakened me in my way. He's shortened my days. Jesus said, "Oh Lord, don't take me away in the midst of my days. Your years are throughout all generations. Of old, you laid the foundation of the earth. The heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will endure or remain. Yes, they will grow old like a garment." Now, watch this last line of verse 26. Like a cloak, you will change them and they will be changed. So, he's talking about the changes in the heavens, which are the least changing of all things. I mean, even mountains on earth change before like phases of the moon do. An earth mover could take out a mountain but the faces of the moon are going to remain. But he says even the heavens change and the one who changes them is God. So in the verse 26 this is what we have. Things changed by God. Hold that in your mind. Look at verse 27. But you are the same or you are he and your years have no end. What he's and and verse 27 is a is a contrast a juosition to verse 26. Verse 26 is things changed by God. Verse 27 in contrast to things changed by God. God. Does that make sense? I think the newer the newer approach to immutability that says no, immutability just means things can't change God. It doesn't mean God can't change God. Here's a verse that says God is not among the things God changes. God is not among the things God changes. I think the older doctrine of absolute immutability remains strong. Steven Charno says, "If God doth change, it must be to either a greater perfection than he had before or to a less. And if to a greater, he was not perfect and so was not God. And if to a worse, he will not be perfect and so no longer and so be no longer God after that change." I've heard objections to this, but I haven't heard good reasons for the objections. Some will say, "Well, I don't agree that all change is for the better or for the worse." But if what God changed into was good, and if it were a change, it have to be a new good, then we would have to say that God was less than fully perfect hitherto prior to or or prior to uh receiving that new good. What divine immutability does not mean and then we'll transition to its close cousin impassibility for our last few minutes. What immutability does not mean, it does not mean that God is uninvolved with the world. It means that he doesn't have to undergo changes in order to get involved. Like I was I'm I was scheduled to be involved in this conference. And so here I am and uh I had to undergo some changes in order to achieve this involvement uh at least this particular kind of involvement. Um namely I had to undergo a locomotive change from Philadelphia to the Frasier Valley. I had to get from there to here. My involvement required some kind of mutation. Not a big-time mutation, uh, you know, just a mutation in place, but I had to change places in order to be involved. So that my involvement ordinarily requires a whole series of mutations in order for the involvement to be achieved. You get that? And people think God doesn't change. But to be involved, you have to undergo change. Uh, not necessarily. Think of it this way. If you're already perfectly and absolutely involved, let's let me break a second. How involved is God in the world? How about this? In him, we live, move, and have our being. I I actually can't even quite describe that. That's involvement of a level of intimacy and exactness and universality that I cannot even comprehend. God is not uninvolved. The world wouldn't exist if he wasn't immediately making it to like that's involvement at the existential level. God is involved at the level of is the most fundamental. Um God doesn't move from uninvolvement to involvement. Therefore, he doesn't need mutation in order to get involved. He's not uninvolved. You only need to undergo change to get involved if in fact you're somehow not involved previously. It also doesn't mean that God is lifeless. Carl Bart once said that the an absolutely immutable God would be death. To be immobile and immutable is to be dead. And if God is immobile and immutable, God is dead, said Bart. But that's because Bart bought into Hri Berson's vital lawn in which movement and change is the only movement and change are signs of life in finite beings, but they are not the essence of life. They are only signs of life in finite entities. For God to move or change and to therefore enter into new states of being and actuality would only prove life in God if he were a finite being who was acquiring his life bit by bit one moment after the next. Tom Weinandi says one should not be misled into thinking God's immutability is like the immutability of a rock only more so. What God and rocks appear to have in common is only the fact that they do not change. The reason for their unchangeableness is for polar opposite reasons. The rock of Gibralar does not change or changes very little because it is hardly inact at all. And the changes that it does undergo is mainly from outside causes, wind and rain. God is unchangeable not because he's inert or static like a rock, but for just the opposite reason. He is so dynamic, so active that no change can make him more active. He is act pure and simple. Change into what? because there's nothing there's no good state of being that he isn't. Um therefore unchangeable not lifeless life. I made that word up but it works. Lifefulness. Um that's why he doesn't change. All right. A final consideration in our final minutes. Um this also means by implication that God is not passionate about you or about anything. And perhaps counterintuitively, that is also why he is most loving and most caring. Most loving and most caring. And in fact, if he were passionate in his love or care for the world, I would submit that that would be a less than complete care. Now, I got to build up to this. So, a few things on God without passions. The doctrine of impassibility means God is without passions. Our confession says that he's without passions. God neither undergoes a effective changes nor feels the actions of creatures upon himself. Obviously closely allied to immutability. Wandi summarizes the doctrine this way. Impassibility is that divine attribute whereby God is said not to experience inner emotional changes of state whether enacted freely from within or affected by his relationship to an interaction with human beings in the created order. In other words, Wandi is saying God doesn't produce passions in himself and things outside of God do not produce passions in him. Now, this obviously will strike people as strange. I mean, even listen to the language of our confession. He's without passions. And then the same article goes on, most loving, most gracious, merciful, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness. So passionless and most loving. And then going on, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, and with all most just and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin. So how can you have God most loving, hating all sin, and totally passionless? just seems like what we should say is exactly the opposite. That he's extremely passionate about those he loves and about the sin that he hates. I actually want to propose that this most loving though is because of the manner of its impassibility. The underlying concern of impassibility is to safeguard the fullness and perfection of God's being. Now, good motives don't always make good theology, but this one does have good motives, and it is good theology. God is not the one whose greatness is beyond measure or who is most absolute if he in any way depends upon a cause. Yet, every passable being subject to passions depends for some features of its being on whatever rouses it to new states of affection, positive or negative affections. So let's define a few terms. First, understanding passions. Maybe we mean something different by this term. Um passions are effective states of being like joy, fear, compassion, uh anger, pain. The lexical or def or sort of dictionary meaning of the term uh comes from the Latin pio or pi p a ti and it means to suffer to submit to undergo or to experience. In other words, to be on the receiving end of something that happens to you. When you go to a doctor's office, you sign in on a patient's list. piant meaning the entity who is there for undergoing literally what it means and it's actually the right word and we're still using it the right way I don't think people know why that's the right word but it is actually the right word now if you go in to see the doctor uh and the doctor just talks to you but doesn't do anything I had one of these appointments a few months ago where I felt like I self diagnosed gave all the possible uh remedies and what to do and the doctor just said sounds good and then I got a bill uh and seemed wrong to me that I got this bill and I'm I'm looking for a new doctor actually um because the doctor is supposed to perform let me just latinate latize here for a second operatio he's to perform operatio and then when I receive operatio from the agent the doctor the reception of the operation in the patient in patient is given the name Pacio. So Pacio is the operation of the agent in so far as it's received in the patient. And so he's the agent who operates and then I'm the patient, the entity who underos the operation and receives hopefully the medicinal form of health uh from his healing arts as he operates and then they send me a bill for it later on. I once drove I've shared this many times but it just it'll irk me till the end of my days. I think I drove by this billboard for like 5 years driving to work for a healthcare company that said we treat people not patients. But that's the reason I just d it drove me crazy is because it's metaphysically impossible. To be treated is literally to be the entity that undergoes pi. I don't think the Madison Avenue people knew that um who came up with the slogan. I think what they meant is we love you as PE. You're not just a sick body to me. You're a someone. That's that sounds nice. Like how are you at medicine? Uh but it's not what they meant is we're a healthcare company that takes like we want to know the names of your kids and how you're doing and how work is. And that's I like the you know I like the old bedside manner as much as the next guy. Um but what I really like is the operator who has the healing arts uh to apply them so that I can receive the potio of health from him. Uh in which case then I just want to say that's not true. You do if you treat them they are patients. What it really meant though, translated another way, is um we're a health care company that doesn't actually do anything for you, which is I think not the effect they were going for, but that's the effect it had on me. Um a passion is that which is undergone or received. George Kubert, a little bit of definition. George Kubbertton says it's the change received from an agent considered as taking place in the patient. Aquinus says, "Passion is the the effect of the agent on the patient." Here's the key. Every passion is a caused state of being into which one is moved by the activity of some agent. That's why you can see now that is why our confession says God is without passions. Passions are caused states of being that are made to exist in patients through the agency of operators who produce states of being in them through activity. And God has no states of being in him that are produced or the activity of another. Because all that is in God is God. We've already agreed, I think, that God does not depend on what is not God to be God. There is no state of being in God that is not actually just Godself. Otherwise, there'd be something in God, not God, making God be somehow. And that is bad. We know that. That's bad. Um, passions can be good or bad. Not all passions are necessarily painful. You can also undergo effects that are pleasurable. Um, even the term suffering doesn't necessarily it now has negative connotations broadly, but historically didn't necessarily have negative connotations. It's from the Latin compound sub. uh in Latin uh we have we still use this word actually we just use we just have anglicized it a bit f the the verb to ferry like he f you know he fied his comrade across the battlefield what does that word mean what does that mean you know to carry yeah he fied him you get on a ferry to carry your car across a waterway um and then to sub is to carry under or to bear under something you're carrying. And then English has just smoothed out subfere uh into suffer. Suffer is just an anglicizing of sub um and the question. So is all suffering bad? No. It depends on the cargo. In other words, it depends on what you're carrying under. So you can suffer good actually. Um so for instance, we often describe romance this way. Um, we say of someone who is falling in love that they're falling in love that they we might even say that they are smitten. Sounds nice. Uh, we might even call the object that moves them their crush. And I All of this is supposed to be joyful. Uh, so I digest a I wake up in the morning and I think to I mean I have other things that going on in my head but I think to myself don't fall, avoid being smitten and don't get crushed. It's a rule I live by except if it's love like do it to me, you know, like and you know what um a lovely wife or a lovely husband if I can say that um can do that to you. The loveliness of the other person moves you. it. And you know, you remember the falling in love stage early on when it it almost has like a physiological register. You feel funny even um that's suffering and it's the good kind. You can also suffer the bad kind. Someone kicks you in the shins and then you undergo and you you undergo a kick in the shins and then the passion is whatever results in you from the kick. So the physical passion would be the throbbing pain in your shin. The moral passion would be your moral disappointment in me. The emotional passion would be the anger you now felt toward me. And then the cause, the agent that made you in pain and angry would be the guy who kicked you. Right? So like if I kicked Sam in the shins and then Sam was holding his shin and say, "Oh, James, you know, Sam, what happened?" Well, are I'm in pain. What caused it? Dzel did. Um, are you angry? Yes. Who at Dzel for kicking me in the shins? and I would have been the agent and he'd be the patient. And that's another way of suffering, the bad kind. The point is this. God's love is not produced in him by the loveliness of those he loves. That's not that's not true of me. Like with my wife, I I don't love my wife impassibly. I love my wife passively. My my love, the feeling of love that I have for her was actually produced in me by her loveliness. the way she looked. Yeah, she's attractive. Um the things that she spoke about, the kind of person that she was, the beauty of the inner person. Um all of these things move me to desire. That's what love desires. You know, love seeks unity. Um that love that love that's a passion is a love that is produced by its object. But if God loved that way, then the cause of God's love would actually be in the creature. Do do you follow me on this? The cause of God's love would be in the creature. And then several doctrines that we cherish that are biblical would actually fall to the side. Fall to the side. For instance, um, in Ephesians chapter 2, in Ephesians chapter 2, we're told of God's perfect love, that he loves us and that that love, that great love with which he loved us, chapter 2, verse 4, we're told in in verse 8, for by grace you've been saved through faith. One translation says, this is not of your own doing, but it's the gift of God. But actually, more literally, this is not exhon you. This is not the great love with which he loved you. It's not of you. This is not from your doing. But God's but God's great love is the reason by grace. Here's the point though. If God loved you passionately, it would no longer be grace. Do do you follow me on this? Like I don't love it's not there is a kind of gracious love that shows love to that which is unloly. And even humans can exhibit this in certain relationships. That's true. But if I told my wife for instance, you know what? My love for you, it's all of grace. They call that a bad date. Like that's that is not a just take me home. I love all of grace. I don't love her all of grace. It's her loveliness that actually moved me and drew her drew me to her and continues to do so. It's not all of grace. Actually, it is of her from her that I love. My love for her is in very many respects caused by her. God's love for you is not caused by you. It's purely beneficent and it's pure grace and it's pure generosity because it's a love it's a love that gives good. It's not a love that seeks good. In my wife, I'm seeking good that she has that I lack called her loveliness and that draws me to her. But in God, God is not seeking what he lacks when he places his love on the on the objects of his choice. He is rather giving love. If it were a passionate love, there would have to be a cause outside of God for that love. And solar gratia would have to be false. Does this does this make sense? I I think we need to think a little more about how some of our doctrines and our confession like in chapter 2 like God without passions is actually vital for maintaining our doctrine of solaria when it comes to salvation. If we give up if we give that up and we start thinking in terms of passionate love uh and God made the world because he was lonely and things like this then God becomes the beneficiary of his own creation. God owes a thank you and it's not all of grace and it's not pure beneficence. Now God is actually being moved and compelled by objects outside of himself to be the God that he is and to do what he does. And at that point he's not the one again from whom, through whom, and to whom are all things. Well, I think this is also on a final note why we could also say that God's love is most free. Most free. Most free because not necessitated by its object when he loves us. my wife, my love for my wife and my kids is not most free. And that doesn't mean that it's stingy. It may be that for other reasons, sin mainly. Uh it's not most free because in a certain sense, I can't help myself. There's a good that they possess that I seek and my love seeks unity with that good uh because I'm needy. So my love for my wife and my children is not most free. It may have free as there may be certain aspects in which it's free from certain kinds of bondage. But God is most free and in part because he doesn't depend upon some lovely object for the love he has for that object but only if he loves you with impassible love. One other thought just in conclusion it also means that God's love is unbounded. That God's love is not a caused state of being. Passions are finite, mutable, temporal, caused states of being and they may produce an intensity of feeling but they can never actually transcend that way of being caused, mutable, temporal. If I said that God loved you passionately, that would actually under that would understate the sheer dynamic intensity that he loves you with the infinite fullness of his being placed upon you according to his own good purposes from all of eternity in Christ Jesus. And if I called that passionate, that would make it far too unintent. This is pure, unbounded, dynamic intensity, but only if it remains an impassible love as we confess. Well, let's go to him in prayer. Thank him for his love. Our God in heaven, we thank you for the great love with which you loved us. And we thank you that it was not of ourselves that we are not the reason that you loved us, but it's your own bowels of compassion and mercy and kindness, sheer beneficence and gratuitity and grace that you do show us this love. For this we say to you, thank you and we bless your name who gives to all but receives from none and is such a perfect and wonderful benefactor. Lord, we bless you for life, breath, all things and most importantly that one thing that unites us to you and reconciles us to you in light of our sin. Your own son who loved us, who gave himself for us, who obeyed for us, died for us, is raised for us, intercedes for us, is coming again to get us. We bless you and thank you for him above all. Lord, teach us the meaning of our confessions and the deep and rich theology that is contained in them. Not just to know right answers, but to know you, the God about whom they speak. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Have our dinner break now. and I'll go ahead and pray for those of us who are going to stay here for dinner. But we do reconvene at 700 p.m. and I'm looking forward to seeing everybody again. So, let us pray. Our gracious God and holy father, as we consider this love that you have for us, it truly is amazing. Behold what manner of love the father has given to us that we should be called the sons of God. What a blessed reality. What a wonderful truth. We thank you for the gospel of our salvation and for what you have done in in and through the person of our Lord uh the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you for our brothers ministering to us today. Thank you for the brethren here at Free Reformed and for their kindness and the use of the building. Thank you for this food. We pray for your blessing upon us that you would nourish and strengthen us as we eat. May it be for your glory. May we enjoy fellowship amongst the saints and may you bring us together again that we may worship you and we ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
