What is divine impassibility?
Behind the word "impassibility" lies a plain question: can anything outside God act on Him, wound Him, or change Him? The writers in this collection answer from two directions at once — God is complete in Himself and never changes, yet He is not a cold or indifferent God, and in His Son He entered real suffering.
God Is Enough in Himself
Nothing outside God supplies Him with anything. His happiness does not depend on having someone to love, though love does go out to its object.
J. N. DarbyGod is enough for Himself, and goodness makes Him infinitely happy in Himself. Goodness is happy if it has no object, though it is happy in goodness when it is exercised toward one. So it is free, because it is enough for itself. This is why, although in certain relationships man may be the image of God, he cannot be enough for himself, and so be free and sovereign, and so it is not said of him that he is love, though he is to walk in it.
That is the practical force of the doctrine: God's love toward you is not a reaction produced in Him by anything you brought.
He Does Not Change
The same writers root every dealing of God — severe or tender — in a nature that cannot shift.
Hamilton SmithAll God's dealings, whether in judgment or mercy, are founded on the unchangeableness of His nature. For this reason we have the formal declaration of the unchanging character of God before the call to repentance. "For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed" (verse 6). God does not change in holiness, and therefore He must chasten His people when they sin. Neither does God change in His purposes of grace and blessing, and therefore His people are not consumed.
But Not a God Who Cannot Feel
Here the writers push back hard against a version of the doctrine that makes God unable to be moved. One of them takes the word head-on while looking at Abraham on the mountain with Isaac.
Frederick W. GrantIs our God revealed as an impassive God who does not feel? We must not ascribe to Him human defect or frailty, surely, but must we not credit Him with love? He would rather come under the charge of defect than that we should think this of Him. "God is not a man that He should repent," yet He will talk about repenting. Not only did it repent the Lord that He had made man, but "it grieved Him at His heart." It is blessed to know such a heart, and to know that what the Son of His bosom suffered, the bosom that held the Son suffered also.
(Where older translations read "repent," the ESV has "regretted" in Genesis 6:6 and "change his mind" in Numbers 23:19.) Commentators differ in emphasis here — some guard the truth that God is not subject to passions, others insist just as strongly that His grief and love are real.
Where the Idea Goes Wrong
Pressed too far, a God who cannot be affected becomes a God who cannot speak. Darby traces that outcome in a writer who denied that God can make Himself known to man.
J. N. DarbyThis statement declares God's total incapacity to communicate with man. He must remain, so far as He is concerned, an unknown God, perhaps an Epicurean — that is, an indifferent — God. He is shut out from any expression of love to His creature, as well as of righteousness. Would He raise man to a greater knowledge of Him? He cannot. Would He show any love to him in his sins and sorrows? He must resign Himself to be silent, shut up in His own perfection — if you can call it perfection when love is inactive and unable to tell itself to the one it loves.
Why the Bible Talks of God Changing His Mind
Scripture uses our vocabulary, and that explains the passages that seem to cut against His unchangeableness.
The Bible TreasuryGod is not a man, that He should repent as to His eternal and unchangeable counsels and unconditional promises, which "are without repentance." But in His grace He may repent of — that is, not carry out — a threatened judgment, as in the case of the city of Nineveh. We must remember that the Spirit of God condescends to express Himself after the human way of speaking, because of our weakness.
Suffering Came by the Manhood He Took
The question finally lands on the cross. The Son did suffer — and He suffered in the humanity He took, with His deity giving Him the capacity to bear it rather than an escape from it.
William KellyFor His divine nature shielded Him from no pain, grief, humiliation, or suffering, but rather gave His Person the competence to endure perfectly, while everything was accepted in absolute dependence on His Father and subjection to Him.
The same care is taken over His death.
Truth & TestimonyWe may shrink from saying bluntly, "God died." How can God die, who has immortality and is the Source of life? First, the One who died was God the Son, not the Father or the Holy Spirit. Second, He did not die as God, but in the Manhood He had taken. But to qualify a statement is not to deny it. The fact is that God the Son became a Man for this very purpose, that He might die.
Summary
- Full. God is enough for Himself; His goodness is happy with or without an object, so His love toward us is free, not drawn out of Him by need.
- Unchanging. Because His nature cannot shift, He must chasten sin and cannot abandon His purposes of grace — the same immovability behind both.
- Not cold. The writers reject an "impassive God who does not feel"; He is grieved at His heart, and the bosom that held the Son suffered too.
- Spoken. A God incapable of being moved would be an indifferent, unknowable God; Scripture instead uses human speech, so "repenting" describes a withheld judgment, not a changed mind.
- Incarnate. The Son took manhood so that He could suffer and die; His deity screened Him from nothing, but made Him able to endure it all.