The Divine Attributes of Christ: Part 3 - Immutability

TBC Glassboro Sermons and More · The Divine Attributes Of Christ: Part 3 - Immutability

The next attributes that Christ shares with God is immutability.  Immutability, according to Louis Berkof, “is that perfection of God by which He is devoid of all change, not only in His Being, but also in His perfections, and in His purposes and promises…”(1)  Thus, immutability means that God does not change.

• For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed. - Malachi 3:6
• Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. - James 1:17

God’s immutability also guarantees that what God says, He will do.

• 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 it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? - Numbers 23:19
• In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. - Hebrews 6:17-18

As God, Christ does not change.

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

However, immutability is not immobility.  Consider the incarnation of Christ.  At a moment in time, the second person of the Godhead took on human flesh and nature.  However, nothing changed in regard to His deity.  He remained one hundred percent God, while becoming one hundred percent human.

ENDNOTES:

1. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1941), 58.