The next attribute is God’s unchangeableness. ‘I am Jehovah, I change not.’ Mal 3:3. I. God is unchangeable in his nature. II. In his decree.
I. Unchangeable in his nature. 1. There is no eclipse of his brightness. 2. No period put to his being.
[1] No eclipse of his brightness. His essence shines with a fixed lustre. ‘With whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.’ James 1:17. ‘Thou art the same.’ Psa 102:27. All created things are full of vicissitudes. Princes and emperors are subject to mutation. Sesostris, an Egyptian prince, having subdued divers kings in war, made them draw his chariot, like horses, as if he intended them to eat grass, as God did King Nebuchadnezzar. The crown has many successors. Kingdoms have their eclipses and convulsions. What is become of the glory of Athens? The pomp of Troy? Jam seges est ubi Troja fuit [Now corn grows where Troy once stood]. Though kingdoms have a head of gold, they have feet of clay. The heavens change. ‘As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed.’ Psa 102:26. The heavens are the most ancient records, where God has written his glory with a sunbeam, yet these shall change. Though I do not think they shall be destroyed as to their substance, yet they shall be changed as to their qualities; they shall melt with fervent heat, and so be more refined and purified. 2 Pet 3:12. Thus the heavens shall be changed, but not he who dwells in heaven. ‘With him there is no variableness, nor shadow of turning.’ The best saints have their eclipses and changes. Look upon a Christian in his spiritual estate, and he is full of variation. Though the seed of grace does not die, yet its beauty and activity often wither. A Christian has his aguish fits in religion. Sometimes his faith is at a high tide, sometimes low ebb; sometimes his love flames, and at another time is like fire in the embers, and he has lost his first love. How strong was David’s grace at one time! ‘The God of my rock, in him will I trust.’ 2 Sam 12:2. At another time he says, ‘I shall one day perish by the hand of Saul.’ What Christian can say he does not find a change in his graces; that the bow of his faith never unbends, the strings of his viol never slacken? Surely we shall never meet with such Christians till we meet them in heaven. But God is without any shadow of turning. The angels were subject to change; they were created holy, but mutable. ‘The angels which kept not their first estate.’ Jude 6. These morning stars of heaven were falling stars. But God’s glory shines with a fixed brightness. In God there is nothing that looks like a change, for better or worse; not better, because then he were not perfect; not worse, for then he would cease to be perfect. He is immutably holy, immutably good; there is no shadow of change in him.
But when Christ, who is God, assumed the human nature, there was a change in God.
If the divine nature had been converted into the human, or the human into the divine, there had been a change, but they were not so. The human nature was distinct from the divine. Therefore there was no change. A cloud over the sun makes no change in the body of the sun; so, though the divine nature be covered with the human, it makes no change in the divine nature.
[2] There is no period put to his being. ‘Who only has immortality.’ I Tim 6:16. The Godhead cannot die. An infinite essence cannot be changed into finite; but God is infinite. He is eternal, ergo, he is not mortal. To be eternal and mortal is a contradiction.
Use one: See the excellence of the divine nature in its immutability. This is the glory of the Godhead. Mutableness denotes weakness, and is not in God, who is ‘the same, yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.’ Heb 13:3. Men are fickle and mutable, like Reuben, ‘unstable as water.’ Gen 49:9. They are changeable in their principles. If their faces altered as fast as their opinions, we should not know them. Changeable in their resolutions; as the wind that blows in the east, presently turns about to the west. They resolve to be virtuous, but quickly repent of their resolutions. Their minds are like a sick man’s pulse, which alters every half hour. An apostle compares them to waves of the sea, and wandering stars. Jude 13. They are not pillars in God’s temple, but reeds. Others are changeable in their friendship. They quickly love and quickly hate. Sometimes they will put you in their bosom, then excommunicate you out of their favour. They change as the chameleon, into several colours, but God is immutable.
Use two: See the vanity of the creature. There are changes in everything but in God. ‘Men of high degree are vanity, and men of low degree are a lie.’ Psa 62:2. We look for more from the creature than God has put in it. It has two evils in it; it promises more than we find, and it fails us when we most need it. There is failure in omni. A man desires to have his corn ground, and the water fails; the mariner is for a voyage, and the wind does not blow, or is contrary; one depends upon another for the payment of a promise, and he fails, and is like a foot out of joint. Who would look for a fixed stability in the vain creature? It is as if one should build houses on the sand, where the sea comes in and overflows. The creature is true to nothing but deceit, and is constant only in its disappointments. It is no more wonderful to see changes fall out here below, than to see the moon dressing itself in a new shape and figure. Expect to meet with changes in everything but God.