Three Things God Can’t Do

Wait! What do you mean God can’t do something? God is all powerful, omnipotent. He can do anything he wishes to do. This idea that God cannot do something might seem radical, even heretical to many. But wait and see. There might be something to this. The idea of God not being able to do something seems to be a contradiction, that it goes against common sense, but might it be actually true? This is called a paradox. Scripture can help us to understand this paradox.

In Hebrews 6:18, we are told that it is impossible for God to lie. Why? Because God, in his very being, is truth itself. He is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He is the source and the goal of truth, perfectly. Therefore, there can be no falsehood in him. He cannot deny or turn against himself. But we can, and do, every time we lie. In the words of St. John Chrysotom, God is the very anchor of truth. God’s truth, is like an anchor when dropped from a boat, it does not allow the boat to be carried away and being depended upon, makes the boat steady. Because God is truth in its perfection and in its fullness, when we live in accord with his truth, his wisdom, we are enabled to find and to keep to the narrow path that leads to his kingdom.

In Malachi 3:6, we read: “I am the Lord I do not change.” In theological terms this is called ‘immutability’, that is, ‘a state of being that is unable to change.’ God is, was, and always will be the same. This is expressed in the prayer known as the Glory Be, “Glory be to Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.” It is precisely because of this immutable nature of God that we can, with all humility, put our faith and turst in him in all things. God’s faithfulness and dedication to us, his promise of mercy, forgiveness, and redemption, never changes.

If God could change, it would mean that God is not perfect. He would be a god of whimsy like the pagan gods, or the gods of worldly ideologies, changing with every shifting breeze. If this was so, we could not put our trust in God. Indeed, it would be foolish to put our faith in such a being. Because God proved himself faithful in the past, observing and keeping his every promise to the Chosen People through his Incarnation, death, and resurrection, we can believe that he will be faithful to us now, and in the future. This is why we can truly and humbly put our trust in God and all of his promises.

The third thing that God cannot do is think like us. God is omniscient and knows all things past, present, and future. He cannot be surprised by anything. As we see in Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun” for God. After all, God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. We, on the other hand, are both finite and fallen. We are divided within and without. Because we are divided, we are capable of sins great and small. Truly, we do not think like God. God, in his perfect love, thinks only of our salvation.

We, all too often, think no further than our own skin, our own self-referential nerve endings. He acts only out of love, always for our good. We act out of self-interest, out of our prejudices and fears. God does not and cannot think like us. The proof that his way of ‘thinking’ is different from ours is the Cross. That is the paradox of paradoxes. God willingly let go of divinity and came into the world as one of us in all things but sin, even suffering and dying for we who are his all too often rebellious children for love’s sake. And this is why at the name of Jesus, every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth, should bend, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:5-11). Amen.