Summary
Impassibility: God Is Not Moved from the Outside
Does God ever have a bad day? Does he get cranky, fall into a mood, swing between highs and lows because of what is happening around him? The historic answer of the Church is no. This is the doctrine of divine impassibility: God does not change emotionally in response to his creation. He is not acted upon from the outside. Whatever creatures do, God remains who he eternally is.
To grasp this, it helps to begin with its opposite. Human beings are passible—we are moved. A string of red lights stresses us; a green light cheers us. A child's "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day" piles up small misfortunes that reshape his mood by bedtime. Outside circumstances reach in and stir our feelings. That is the human condition. Impassibility is the negation of this in God: nothing outside of him reaches in to stir, alter, or trigger his inner life.
Scripture, of course, speaks freely of God grieving Psalm 78:40, being angered Deuteronomy 1:37, being pleased 1 Kings 3:10, and rejoicing over his people Zephaniah 3:17. These are not denied. The question is whether God is moved into these emotions from outside himself, or whether they are the constant outpouring of who he eternally is. The key text is 1 John 4:16: "God is love." Note the order. We cannot reverse it and say "love is God." God is not moved to love; he is love. He does not fall in love, grow in love, or mature in love as we do. He does not survey humanity, find something attractive, and warm to us by degrees. He simply loves, because love is what he eternally is “Impassibility” 6-26-22.
The same holds for his other emotions. Humans must be moved to mercy—an advertisement showing suffering animals exists precisely because our compassion has to be triggered. God does not need to be moved to mercy; he is merciful. He does not need to be stirred to hate injustice; he hates injustice. He does not need a particular sin to provoke him before he grieves over sin; he grieves sin as God. When Scripture shows God expressing anger, joy, or sorrow, these are not reactions that have changed him. They are the perfect, constant expressions of his unchanging character meeting his creation in time.
This is why impassibility belongs together with God's immutability, the truth that God does not and cannot change. Because he does not change, his emotional life cannot change either. His love is not warmer today and cooler tomorrow. His mercy is not larger when we please him and smaller when we disappoint him. His grace is not heightened by our charm or diminished by our failure.
And here is where the doctrine becomes pure comfort. If creatures could reach in and alter God's affections, there would be no assurance that his love, grace, and mercy toward us in Christ would hold. The atonement itself—the Father sending the Son as the propitiation for our sins 1 John 4:10—rests on a love that was not coaxed out of God by anything lovable in us, but flowed from who he eternally is. Because God is not like us, his love toward sinners in Jesus Christ cannot be shaken. That is very good news indeed.
Video citations
- “Impassibility” 6-26-22 — Would you open your Bible's please with me for our study today to the book of First John? We're going to study out of the fourth chapter. If you're using a Pue edition of Holy Scripture, you'll find…