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Heb. 1: 10-12.--Creation itself will change and pass away, but "Thou remainest . . . . .
Thou art the same".
Heb. 2:-12:--Moses, angels, priests, sacrifices, kingdoms, tabernacles and covenant; all
seen to be transient.
Heb. 12: 27 - 13: 8.--"We receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved." "That those
things which cannot be shaken may remain." "Jesus Christ the same."
If immutability be an attribute of Deity, we cannot but glory in the fact that it is here
unreservedly accorded to the Lord our Saviour.
"The Divine immutability, like the cloud which interposed between the Israelites and
the Egyptian army, has a dark as well as a light side. It ensures the execution of His
threatenings, as well as the performance of His promises; and destroys the hope which
the guilty fondly cherish, that He will be all lenity to His frail and erring creatures, and
that they will be much more lightly dealt with than the declarations of His own Word
would lead us to expect. We oppose to these deceitful and presumptuous speculations the
solemn truth that God is unchanging in veracity and purpose, in faithfulness and justice."
(J. Dick).
"I change not."
"This God is our God."
#8. The holiness of God.
"Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil" (Hab. 1: 13).
pp. 223 - 226
We have learned that God, Who is Spirit, has been manifested to us as light and love,
and in the section headed "immutability", that He is light, where there is no variableness
or shadow of turning. We now turn to another attribute of God that follows from the fact
that He is light:--
"God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all" (I John 1: 5).
The holiness of God is such that there can be no possible countenance given to sin,
impurity or iniquity in any form:--
"Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look upon iniquity" (Hab. 1: 13).
Unregenerate man will, in self-justification, often lay claim to righteousness, good
living or morality, but scarcely ever to holiness. Holiness, too, is so remote from earthly
experience that the word scarcely enters into the vocabulary of everyday life. Such
words as "right" and "wrong", "good" and "bad", "just" and "iniquitous", are the
everyday language of commerce, but one would have to travel far to meet the
stenographer who had used the word "holy" once in a year's correspondence. Holiness,
above all things, belongs to God. It is this attribute that is ascribed with threefold
emphasis by the Seraphim and Cherubim, night and day:--