April 12, 2006

Never Changing God

God does not change! That is great news to us, leaning upon the Rock. Here is a quote from A.W. Tozer about the immutability of God, who he can't and doesn't change. More to follow.

"For a moral being to change it would be necessary that the change be in on of three directions. He must go from better to worse or from worse to better; or, granted that the moral quality remain stable, he must change within himself, as from immature to mature or from one order of being to another. It should be clear that God can move in none of these directions. His perfections forever rule out any such possibility.
God cannot change for the better. Since He is perfectly holy, He has never been less holy than He is now and can never by holier than He is and has always been. Neither can God change for the worse. Any deterioration within the unspeakably holy nature of God is impossible. Indeed I believe it even to think of such a thing, for the moment we attempt to do so, the object about which we are thinking is no longer God but something else and someone less than He. The one of whom we are thinking may be a great and awesome creature, but because he is creature he cannot be the self-existent Creator.
As there can be no mutation in the moral character of God, so there can be none with the divine essence. The being of God is unique in the only proper meaning of that word; that is, His being is other than and different from all other beings. We have seen how God differs from creatures in being self-existent, self-sufficient, and eternal. By virtue of these attributes God is God and not some other being. One who can suffer any slightest degree of change is neither self-existent, self-sufficient, nor eternal, and so is not God."

from "The Knowledge of the Holy" A.W. Tozer

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