by Garrett Glende

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” These are Paul’s words in Romans 11:33, proclaimed in response to eleven chapters of recounting the wonderful plan of salvation through faith in Christ’s atoning sacrifice. What Paul is admiring here is the wisdom of God in bringing about His redemptive plan, which will also be our focus of study this week as we look at one of God’s communicable attributes. The wisdom of God is communicable insofar as we are able to make wise decisions that would bring glory to Him. We cannot fully know the wisdom of God (some things will happen without us knowing why), but the Christians do have the ability to seek after and apply godly wisdom to their lives.

Throughout Scripture, the quality of wisdom is ascribed to God. According to Wayne Grudem, the wisdom of God “means that God always chooses the best goals and the best means to those goals.” Not only does God know all things, but He also acts in such a way that the best possible outcome occurs. We see the wisdom of God in creation, as the psalmist writes, “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Psalm 104:24). Job calls God “wise in heart” (Job 9:4), and Paul says that He is “the only wise God” (Rom. 16:27). We simply need to direct our eyes to the world around us and see the greatness of God’s wisdom in creating such a place. It was wise of God to make us with hands to hold things and mouths to eat with, yet this wisdom stretches far beyond our human existence. All of creation is purposefully and deliberately molded in such a way so that it works the way it does.

The pinnacle of the wisdom of God is seen through the events that took place on a hill called Golgotha. Here it was the will of the Lord to crush His Son for the sins of His people, providing a solution to the problem of sin, but all the while maintaining His holiness and justice. It is through the cross that we see most clearly the full spectrum of God’s character. We see His righteousness, justice, and wrath in punishing sin. And we see His love, grace, and mercy in providing a means of salvation for those who were once His enemies. Working off of Grudem’s definition of the wisdom of God, we can see clearly that the redemption of sinners was ultimately the most God glorifying goal and He chose the most God glorifying means to accomplish this goal. The cross is the apex of the glory of God because it so marvelously reveals the character of God without diminishing any one of His attributes. This is why Paul can make such an exclamation at the end of Romans 11 and say that he preaches Christ, the power and wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:23-24). The world says a man dying on a cross to save sinners is a foolish message, but we know that Christ has risen from the dead and we are able to see the incredible wisdom of God in the gospel.

The doctrine of the wisdom of God should have a direct influence on the way we live our lives. As Christians, we seek to live with wisdom, but how can we decide what is wise and what is not? Often times, there doesn’t seem to be a right or wrong choice, so it comes down to the amount of wisdom you can offer. We can extrapolate helpful guide to making these types of decisions by looking at the wisdom of God. Seeing that God expressed His wisdom most vividly through the cross, we must apply the same sort of rubric to our decision making process. We must evaluate each possible action in light of its reflection of the gospel. Ask yourself, “How does this choice magnify the death and resurrection of Christ?” In this way we walk in the wisdom of God by choosing to live guided by what God sees at wise, namely the exaltation of the glory of the cross.

First Corinthians 15 provides us with another similar principle. There were some in the church at Corinth who apparently denied the reality of the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. 15:12). Paul makes the case that if there is no resurrection, then not even Christ has been raised, therefore “we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19). Times haven’t changed much since then and there are still many who deny the resurrection. They deny all things supernatural and live their lives with no regard for eternity. But Christians must have the opposite perspective, setting their minds on things above. Unbelievers should look at our lives and pity us because we will not gather our treasures here on Earth. They’ll look at the choices we make and think we are fools. But all of it depends on whether or not Christ has indeed been raised. So the question to ask is, “Is this choice foolish if Christ has not come back to life?” Granted, there are some choices that are foolish regardless of Christ’s resurrection, but it isn’t difficult to identify those. We should seek to live foolishly in the eyes of the world, counting all as loss in view of knowing Christ and proclaiming His gospel to the nations.

by Garrett Glende

Last week we looked at our ability to know God, concluding that although God is ultimately beyond our finite minds, we can still know Him in a true way. This brings us to the next chapter of Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology which focuses on the incommunicable attributes of God. There are about 25 attributes listed over the next three chapters and if I spent an article on each attribute of God mentioned this series would become even that much longer. Needless to say, I think it’s going to be long enough already. So the next two articles will each focus on a single attribute of God, one incommunicable and one communicable. The term “incommunicable” is meant to distinguish certain aspects of God’s character, specifically those that cannot be shared by man. One example of an incommunicable attribute is omnipresence, which man cannot even come close to relating to. Something such as love or mercy would certainly be able to be expressed in some capacity by humans, thus qualifying them as communicable attributes. We can also think about these as either shared (communicable) or unshared (incommunicable) attributes. One of God’s incommunicable attributes is His immutability, or unchangeableness. This attribute of God will be the focus for now, and we’ll look at a communicable attribute next week.

Grudem defines the immutability of God, writing that “God is unchanging in His being, perfections, purposes, and promises, yet God does act and feel emotions, and he acts and feels differently in response to different situations.” A biblical basis for this definition comes from verses like Psalm 102:26-27 where the psalmist thinks of all creation and declares that “they will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end.” God proclaims His longsuffering and patience with the people of Israel in Malachi 3:6, saying, “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob are not consumed.” Even more, James relates the fact that all good gifts are from God to His immutability when he writes, “every good and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). All of these verses describe the fact that God does not change in His person or character. We can always be sure that God is a loving, faithful, and just God because He is unchanging in His being.

God is also unchanging in His purposes, as everything that He has purposed will come to fruition. He does not decide to do one thing and then not follow through with it. We see this clearly in the person of Christ, as He was tempted many times to avoid the cross, but always was faithful to the eternal plan of the Father. In fact, there are many instances throughout the ministry of Christ where He does something in order to fulfill the prophecy spoken long before. Psalm 33:11 says, “The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.” Isaiah 46:9-11 wonderfully demonstrates the unchanging purposes of God, saying “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.”

Although the Bible is clear that God does not change in His person or purposes, there are many passages that speak of God changing His mind or feeling sorry for an action that He had done. So does this mean that we cannot trust what Scripture says about God’s immutability? Grudem responds to this challenge, saying that “these instances [God being sorry for making man on earth, withholding judgment on Nineveh, etc.] should all be understood as true expressions of God’s present attitude or intention with respect to the situation as it exists at that moment…God responds differently to different situations.” For example, God promised judgment would fall on the wicked city of Nineveh, but the situation changed once the city became repentant. Seeing the new circumstances, God chose not to cast judgment upon them. “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it” (Jonah 3:10).

Because God’s law and standards never change, then neither should ours. It’s common for us to mold our morality to our circumstances rather than keeping it in line with God’s unchanging truth. This happens often in dating relationships where as the couple grows closer, their standards for purity become more and more loose until they fall into sin. God’s requirements regarding sexual purity have never changed, but some couples claim that certain sins become permissible because they’ve been in the relationship long enough. Just because you think you’re going to marry someone doesn’t give you the right to act like a married couple, ignoring God’s commands about premarital sex. This is just one way in which we shift God’s law to meet our desires, and there are many others.

The immutability of God is a wonderful truth for the Christian to come to grasps with. Imagine if it were the case that God did change who He is. What then would be our basis for our salvation? Could we even be sure that we are still saved, or has God decided to change the methods and requirements for salvation? We would live in constant fear and insecurity because we would not be able to rest on the unchanging nature of the gospel. Seeing that the canon is closed and God does not give any new revelation, we would not even know if He changed at all. Thankfully, God does not deal with us in this way. We can stand before the throne confident that He will receive us as His own because of the constant truth of the gospel. Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice on our behalf has always been and will always be the only way to secure eternal life.