The God We Worship Is... Impassible

This is seventh in a series called The God We Worship Is…

After some time, we will notice that some of the attributes of God are confessed because they are necessary consequences of other attributes. For instance, simplicity is confessed because it follows from aseity. In this case and in the same way, impassibility is confessed because it follows from aseity and immutability.

Impassibility, simply put, states that God does not have passions. The 1689 London Baptist Confession states in Chapter 2.1:

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 is immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible…

But what does it mean that God has no passions? Two things.

Firstly, it means that God cannot change in emotions. This follows from His immutability. Since God is absolutely unchanging in His being, it then follows that He cannot change in emotions. This is because His emotions are not anything apart from Him, a la simplicity. His being is not distinct from His emotions. God does not move from a state of one emotion to the other, because He is perfect as He is. As we saw in the previous article, all change derogates from God’s perfections.

Secondly, it means that God cannot be made to change in emotions. This follows from His aseity. Since God is self-existent and independent, He cannot be made to do anything by His creatures. He is not acted upon by His creatures and they cannot make Him change. Any change that His creatures experience are in themselves and not Him. When a person believes in Christ and is saved, he moves from God’s wrath to God’s grace. But we must not conceive that movement as a change in God’s emotions. Rather, it is the person himself who changes; God has eternally been favoured to good and opposed to evil. A man in Christ therefore experiences the same immutable God differently, without any change in God’s emotions at all.

Impassibility therefore does not mean that God is immobile or that He does not have emotions. The Scriptures do tell us that He does love and direct His favour towards His people. However, impassibility safeguards our speech of God, making sure that whatever God is feeling towards us is not reactionary. He loves and is compassionate, but that is not caused by virtue of His creatures. Rather, He is the fullness of being and directs Himself towards those whom He loves because of Himself. God is untouched by the cares and worries of the world. He does not suffer when the world suffers, nor does He emotionally react to the troubles and turmoil of the days.

This is highly unpopular. Most people today are eager to give platitudes that make God a suffering God: “God sees your heartbreak and weeps with you.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Jürgen Moltmann drew from Elie Wiesel’s book Night, in answering the question: Where was God when the SS hung a Jewish youth during the Holocaust? Wiesel’s answer: God is hanging there on the gallows. The world sees the suffering and evil and wants God to suffer with it – a suffering God, they say, is a caring God. Conversely, an impassible God who cannot suffer with the world is uncaring.

But do we not see that it is precisely the God who cannot suffer who is best placed to deal with suffering? If God suffered with the world, then He who knows all suffering and endures all suffering must be the most miserable being ever in existence! But God is maximally alive, maximally joyous, Father begetting Son and breathing Spirit. A fireman is in no position to put out the fires of the house if he lights himself up in order to experience and understand the pain of fire. In the same way, a God who is mired in strife and sorrows is in no position to deal with the sufferings of the world.

Instead, the impassible God stooped to the level of creation and took upon Himself a human nature, that He might suffer with His creatures, while still remaining eternally impassible. In the person of Jesus Christ then, we see deity with humanity, impassibility with passibility. The impassible God now suffers according not to His divine essence, but His human essence He freely took to redeem His creation. If God was not impassible from the beginning, we would lose all wonder and glory of that simple short verse in John 11:35: Jesus wept. The eternal Son, eternally impassible in Himself with Father and Spirit, now weeps as He feels the sorrows of human loss within His heart. That which He always knew by intellect, He now knows by experience. The wonders of the Incarnation are only made apparent to us if we first confess that God is impassible.

Impassibility also ensures that God will not change in His love towards us. What a frightening thought, if God were to react emotionally towards our behaviour! If God’s love or wrath depended on my actions, I would have no hope that I am eternally secure in Christ. For I am ever changing and if God were to change with me, I have no security of salvation whatsoever. God does not regret and He will not regret saving us, no matter how many times we fall.

How often we have seen amongst ourselves, how marriages break down simply because they are “just not feeling it”! Impassibility, on the other hand, guarantees that our Bridegroom towards us will never be “not feeling it”. Rather, He has eternally set His love upon us, that in time He would redeem us from bondage, and bring us into the Eternal Marriage where we shall love Him as He first loved us. Never will He change, and in Him do we find our everlasting hope.

• 1 Samuel 15:29