Were the sufferings of the Christ endured by a mere human person they would not have the redemptive value necessary to bring us to God. But the blood which was shed was the blood of a divine person, making it infinite in value and worthy to purchase lost souls. Thus, we see the immense love and wisdom of God, “who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man.”

God cannot suffer. Or, to use more technical theological jargon, God is impassible. To the contemporary Christian, this seems an odd, if not distasteful claim. Does it not hurt God when His creatures reject Him? Is He not disappointed when we sin against Him? Do not even the scriptures speak of God being grieved in His heart (Gen. 6:6, Is. 63:10)? Furthermore, if God cannot suffer, how can He know me and know what I experience? Can a God incapable of suffering truly love me if He doesn’t suffer when I suffer?

These objections are not silly or unfounded, but neither are they new objections to the classical doctrine of divine impassibility. The Church has dealt with these thorny questions for centuries. Even so, almost all Christian traditions have held that the doctrine of impassibility is vital. James Dolezal points out that, “Historically [impassibility] commanded wide ecumenical backing, being maintained by the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Reformed, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, and more.”^[1] Indeed, the 2^nd London Baptist Confession, 39 Articles, and Westminster Confession, all affirm that God is “without body, parts, or passions” (2LBCF 2.1). We would be wise to heed the words of Chesterton to never take down a fence until we know the reason it was put up, and the wisdom of Solomon to, “not move the ancient landmark that your fathers have set” (Prov. 22:28). As we shall see, Divinity cannot suffer, yet in the incarnation God the Son does enter into our human experience and suffer to manifest His love to us, thus bringing us to Himself.

Impassibility

When we say that God is without passions, we are saying that He does not have changeable affections, that the Divine Being cannot suffer (which implies the want or the lack of anything good), and He does not experience emotions the way that human beings do. Certainly, God is love (1Jn. 4:8) and He loves His people (Ps. 36:7), yet He cannot be passively affected in His emotions by His creatures.

There are several biblical and theological arguments in favor of this doctrine. First, the doctrine of impassibility is a corollary to the doctrine of immutability. God does not change (Mal. 3:6, Num. 23:19), therefore neither does He experience emotional flux, at one moment sad, at another moment happy. In considering the doctrine of God’s immutability, some may attempt to argue that, while God does not change in His essence, He does undergo some external and relational changes, i.e. His will and His affections undergo change. This is similar to the way in which we, as humans remain who we are, yet undergo various external changes as we age and grow. In this way, God can remain unchangeably who He is, yet His external affections and His will and His relationship to His creatures can change. But the apostle James would disabuse us of this notion. He says that with God, “there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Ja. 1:17). There is no change in God of any sort, not even a shadow of change. (For a discussion on how we are to understand the scripture passages that refer to God being grieved and regretting His actions, I would refer you to the excellent article in this series by Sam Renihan on Analogy and Simplicity.)

The light of nature confirms the necessity of an unchanging God. Turretin says, “[God] can neither be changed for the better (because He is the best) nor for the worse (because he would cease to be the most perfect).”[2] Since God is immutable and unchanging such that there is not even a shadow of change in Him, then it must also be said that He has no passions and that He cannot suffer. He cannot go from a state of perfect blessedness and happiness to a state of grief or sorrow or a state of pleasure to a state of pain.

Second, to say that God can suffer is to reject the omnipotence of God. What creature has the power to harm God? In order to maintain the Creator/creature distinction, we must affirm God’s impassibility, because a failure to do so is to affirm that God can, in some sense, be subject to the actions of His creature. But God is infinite and transcendent. He depends on no one and nothing for His existence, being, and perfect blessedness. As the only truly self-sufficient One, He cannot be moved or acted upon by any of His creatures such that they could harm Him in any way. A creature cannot cause any emotion to arise in God because this would make some aspect of God dependent upon an outside cause. But no creature has the power to give to God anything that He does not already possess, nor to take anything from Him (Rom. 11:34-36). God cannot receive anything good from His creatures which He once lacked (i.e. joy), nor can His creatures take anything good from Him so as to deprive Him of His own perfections.

Third, the scriptures speak directly to God’s impassibility. The apostle Paul identifies God as the impassible One in Acts 14:15. While preaching in the town of Lystra, the inhabitants of the town began to worship Paul and Barnabas as gods. But Paul says to them,

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