by Garrett Glende

Moving forward in Grudem’s Systematic Theology, we come to the study of the doctrine of God, theology proper. Last week, we covered the issue of God’s existence and learned that man is without excuse when it comes to acknowledging the reality of its Creator. All men know that God exists, but there are those who choose to suppress this truth and those who are illuminated by the Holy Spirit to submit to the Father. The question now is, “Can we truly know who God is?” Thankfully, God has not hidden Himself from us. In addition to general revelation through nature, God has revealed Himself to us through His word, where we are able to learn about who He is and how He has redeemed a people for Himself. Without this insight into God’s character, we would be left to ourselves to imagine exactly what God is like. Yes, we could look around at the vastness of creation and perceive that God is creative and powerful, but we would not necessarily understand His wrath or righteousness. For this kind of knowledge, we need Scripture to enlighten us. Our sinful natures are prone to misinterpret what we see in nature, so special revelation is necessary for a true knowledge of God. This is a different type of knowledge than one acquires in a chemistry class, a spectrum of facts and theories. We can look around and see things about God, but we still may not know Him in a way that leads to salvation. An encyclopedic knowledge is insufficient to have a true relationship with God. Instead, we must be reborn and quickened by the Spirit to see our need for a redeemer. When brought before the Scriptures, we will then be able to see God clearly and develop a personal relationship with Him.

Although we can learn many things about God through the Bible, there is certainly a limit to this knowledge. The infinitude of God implies that we, as finite creatures will never be able to fully grasp who He is, yet we can still know Him truly. At the end of Romans 11, Paul has just finished unpacking the wonderful truths of God’s plan of salvation and declares “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” The Psalms are filled with statements attesting to the vastness and incomprehensibility of God: “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable”; “Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure”; “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it” (Psalm 145:3; 147:5; 139:6). In these verses we see that many different attributes of God are unknowable. We are able to understand certain aspects of the holiness of God or the justice of God, but we will never fully exhaust all there is to know about these things. In this way, even the man who has been studying Scripture his whole life cannot say that He fully knows God.

However, we are sure that what we do know about God is true knowledge. Grudem writes that “even though we cannot know God exhaustively, we can know true things about God. In fact, all that Scripture tells us about God is true.” It would not be false to say that God is holy, loving, just, or righteous, even though we don’t fully comprehend these aspects of God. The type of knowledge that the Christian has of God is intimate and personal. God is not just a list of facts stored away in our brains. We know God himself, not just things about Him.

Granted the fact that we will never be able to fully exhaust our knowledge of God, why then would we ever consider our knowledge sufficient? Just because “his understanding is beyond measure” does not mean that we should never seek to attain it. It should encourage us all the more to study all that we can about God and persuade us to draw closer to him. If we are ever satisfied with our current understanding of our Creator, then we don’t understand how glorious and satisfying He really is. It’s common for many to feel like they’ve come to firm understandings of the basic truths of Christianity (the gospel, God’s love, God’s mercy) and then never take the time to study them further. But the truth is that we will never be able to fully grasp any of these things, so we must continue to seek after a deeper knowledge of them. As we do, our relationship with God will grow deeper, strengthening our faith in our wonderful Lord and Savior. We should never be content with our present comprehension of God and we must be especially careful not to overlook the depths of His grace and mercy shown through the gospel.

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by Garrett Glende

Last week we looked at our ability to know God, concluding that although God is ultimately beyond our finite minds, we can still know Him in a true way. This brings us to the next chapter of Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology which focuses on the incommunicable attributes of God. There are about 25 attributes listed over the next three chapters and if I spent an article on each attribute of God mentioned this series would become even that much longer. Needless to say, I think it’s going to be long enough already. So the next two articles will each focus on a single attribute of God, one incommunicable and one communicable. The term “incommunicable” is meant to distinguish certain aspects of God’s character, specifically those that cannot be shared by man. One example of an incommunicable attribute is omnipresence, which man cannot even come close to relating to. Something such as love or mercy would certainly be able to be expressed in some capacity by humans, thus qualifying them as communicable attributes. We can also think about these as either shared (communicable) or unshared (incommunicable) attributes. One of God’s incommunicable attributes is His immutability, or unchangeableness. This attribute of God will be the focus for now, and we’ll look at a communicable attribute next week.

Grudem defines the immutability of God, writing that “God is unchanging in His being, perfections, purposes, and promises, yet God does act and feel emotions, and he acts and feels differently in response to different situations.” A biblical basis for this definition comes from verses like Psalm 102:26-27 where the psalmist thinks of all creation and declares that “they will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end.” God proclaims His longsuffering and patience with the people of Israel in Malachi 3:6, saying, “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob are not consumed.” Even more, James relates the fact that all good gifts are from God to His immutability when he writes, “every good and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). All of these verses describe the fact that God does not change in His person or character. We can always be sure that God is a loving, faithful, and just God because He is unchanging in His being.

God is also unchanging in His purposes, as everything that He has purposed will come to fruition. He does not decide to do one thing and then not follow through with it. We see this clearly in the person of Christ, as He was tempted many times to avoid the cross, but always was faithful to the eternal plan of the Father. In fact, there are many instances throughout the ministry of Christ where He does something in order to fulfill the prophecy spoken long before. Psalm 33:11 says, “The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.” Isaiah 46:9-11 wonderfully demonstrates the unchanging purposes of God, saying “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.”

Although the Bible is clear that God does not change in His person or purposes, there are many passages that speak of God changing His mind or feeling sorry for an action that He had done. So does this mean that we cannot trust what Scripture says about God’s immutability? Grudem responds to this challenge, saying that “these instances [God being sorry for making man on earth, withholding judgment on Nineveh, etc.] should all be understood as true expressions of God’s present attitude or intention with respect to the situation as it exists at that moment…God responds differently to different situations.” For example, God promised judgment would fall on the wicked city of Nineveh, but the situation changed once the city became repentant. Seeing the new circumstances, God chose not to cast judgment upon them. “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it” (Jonah 3:10).

Because God’s law and standards never change, then neither should ours. It’s common for us to mold our morality to our circumstances rather than keeping it in line with God’s unchanging truth. This happens often in dating relationships where as the couple grows closer, their standards for purity become more and more loose until they fall into sin. God’s requirements regarding sexual purity have never changed, but some couples claim that certain sins become permissible because they’ve been in the relationship long enough. Just because you think you’re going to marry someone doesn’t give you the right to act like a married couple, ignoring God’s commands about premarital sex. This is just one way in which we shift God’s law to meet our desires, and there are many others.

The immutability of God is a wonderful truth for the Christian to come to grasps with. Imagine if it were the case that God did change who He is. What then would be our basis for our salvation? Could we even be sure that we are still saved, or has God decided to change the methods and requirements for salvation? We would live in constant fear and insecurity because we would not be able to rest on the unchanging nature of the gospel. Seeing that the canon is closed and God does not give any new revelation, we would not even know if He changed at all. Thankfully, God does not deal with us in this way. We can stand before the throne confident that He will receive us as His own because of the constant truth of the gospel. Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice on our behalf has always been and will always be the only way to secure eternal life.

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