God Does Not Make Mistakes

Once again the clever devices of Satan are on full display with this statement. It is simple enough to evoke an expected response, “it must be true”, but ambiguous enough for its faults to not be evident. It can lead to doctrinal error. The fallacy of “once saved, always saved” is predicated on this misleading statement. You will find Calvinists using this phrase quite often.

A definition of the word, mistake, is: “an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance”. Another definition says, “a wrong judgment”.

The ambiguity of a mistake is further exacerbated in the context of other words associated with it; namely, accident or unintentional negligence. The former implies no human fault while the latter conveys some kind of human fault.

There seems to be an interplay or some degree of interrelation between accidents, mistakes, and negligence. For instance in a simple case, negligence may cause an accident. Then there are complex, chain of events set in motion by some particular force that resulted in the happening of an event. “Acts of God” are sometimes used to describe some of these kind of things. Then there are “pure” accidents that have no identifiable cause other than the application of the course of nature or the laws of physics.

The point is that there are complex things in play when we use the word, “mistake”, some of which may not be known or cannot be known. Thus, to use the ambiguous word, “mistake”, to characterize an attribute of God can be very misleading. Since the Bible never uses this phraseology to describe God’s Character or Attributes, neither should we.

Let’s digress into the hypothetical of whether God makes mistakes or not. You could say God has made mistakes at various times in the Old and New Testament. Consider:

• destruction of the earth through the flood
• the rebellion when Moses went up the mountain to receive the 10 commandments
• appointment of Saul as the first king of Israel
• the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18: 23-35)

In all of these examples, God allowed the natural course of bad events to occur, and He held humans responsible for the end result. In other events, God changed His Mind (repented) of the evil that He intended to carry out or at least delayed it.

• the intercession of Moses when the Israelites rebelled at the foot of the mountain where Moses gave them the 10 commandments
• Jeremiah 26:13 – God promises to not execute a pronounced judgment
• 1 Chronicles 21:15 — God repents of destroying Jerusalem completely.

The entire Old Testament is filled with stories of God repenting of an intended evil that He has pronounced, conditional on human response. Repentance is a major theme of how God has worked and continues to work on the earth during the current, evil age.

Furthermore consider the lamentation of Jesus over Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!”

God’s intention was to save Israel, but the hardness of the Israelites prevented Him from saving them. This scripture has incredible, mind-boggling ramifications since it speaks to God’s intention to prevent something that happened but didn’t have to happen! That throws a wrench into the equation of us really being able to comprehend that God knows the beginning to the end and the end from the beginning, since it allows for a type of dynamics to occur in between that could change the course of what happens from beginning to end.

Imagine that: that God knows the beginning to the end, but also allows for changes to occur during that interim dependent on human response! As humans, we cannot grasp things like this. They fall into the category described well by this scripture in Isaiah 55:9:

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Now consider the Way of Love…

Love makes tons of mistakes. It should be no surprise that in a lot of cases the outcome of Love is regret, remorse, sadness, and suffering from the one giving it because of the evil or indifferent responses of the ones receiving it. Yet Love continues.  It does not cease.  It perseveres.  As 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 says:

Love is patient, love is kind… It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Again it is written in Matthew 7:6:

Like all the other myths or fallacies described in these pages, the simple solution is to go back to the Bible and stay there.  Don’t add to God’s Words.