The Unchanging Christ

“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” —Hebrews 13:8

The verse which precedes our text reads: “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.” Then comes this sentence: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” He is the end of all their conversation.

This word “conversation” takes in two great principles, the idea of talking and the thought of what folks are. This is the consummation of the living of those who have preached the Gospel; this is the consummation of those who have talked in preaching the Gospel; this is the ultimate aim of all their preaching, of all their living—the fact that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

It seems strange that this should be the consummation of all conversation of the Gospel, but here is the remarkable statement, that the end of all preaching, the end of all Christian living is this great, momentous, outstanding fact that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

When God spoke to Moses out yonder by the burning bush, He said, “I AM THAT I AM hath spoken.” This is a most wonderful statement of one of the great attributes of God—His immutability. We, who are human, are all the while changing. We start [as] peculiar looking affairs, babes. Of course we admit that every mother’s baby is the most beautiful creature that was ever born; but we all know it is not so. There never was a beautiful new baby in the world. After a baby breathes a few times and laughs a little, it begins to take on the semblance of a human being. When a mother shows me her beautiful child, I often tell her it looks almost like a human being—just to see her face. It is remarkable that we think they are pretty. But they change, a year goes by, and they do not look as they did a year ago. We reach the prime of life, go beyond the beauty period into a decline, the body changes, the things about us change, and the poet cries out:

“Change and decay in all around I see;
O, Thou who changest not, abide with me.”

This changelessness of Jesus Christ is an attribute to which you can afford to give your attention, for it will steady your life, it will balance your thought, it will strengthen your heart. Every force, every temptation about you is for the purpose of changing you. The devil’s business is to make change, sudden change. Quick issues come up that turn life. The life that you had last week is not the life you have today, but everything has been changed. The death of one human being will change the whole outlook of life; the loss of money will change a whole career; the loss of a friend will change a life and you can never be the person you would have been had these things remained within your life. To us who are human, the fact of change is the most awful of all awful things. The most terrible of all changes is death, which changes us from a living, vibrating, thinking, loving, joy-receiving, talking human, into a thing of cold clay, and we are fearful because of the changes that might take place. Fears come because of this changing of life.

With life constantly changing, there must be this in our hearts to enable us to stand steady, that He changes not. This is the ultimate of all of our thinking, of all of our preaching, of all of our Christian living—that Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Yesterday

It seems strange that the Scriptures should call our attention to the word “yesterday,” for there is no measure to time. We make a very convenient measure in the year, the trip of the earth around the sun, and we divide that into seasons—winter, glorious spring, summer and autumn. Then we divide it up into months, and we have our calendar fixed so that when there are too many days in the year, we cut a few off or put some more in. We have a slipping place in February where we even up the calendar once in so often. That is our time system, and it is very crude and poor, but there isn’t any such thing to God as time. There is a day to us in the revolution of the earth, a time when the moon shines, a time when the sun shines, but that has no effect at all upon the things of God.

The planets are changing. The one great outstanding fact that proves evolution to be incorrect as a theory of life, is that the planets are going to pieces, the sun is burning out, the earth’s crust is changing, metals and chemical elements change to lower orders of elements. They are not going up, they are going down. Against this awful fact of change and decay, science has tried to build a theory that we are going up.

In every department of life there is decay. Science has found that men once did not use wagon wheels. They slid things along on a sled. Then they built a round wheel, then combined four wheels and had sense enough to get animals to pull their wagons, and in our day, gasoline is the motor power. Because of this fact, science thinks man is making great advances. Scientists do not recognize that when God made man, He made him in His own image.

Everywhere in the world, in human life, in animal life we find the decaying of that which is elemental, of that which was the production of God, because of the curse which came upon man. Because man has torn himself from God, and has been cursed of God because of sin, and is striving to make his own way back to the tree of life, men have thought there was such a thing in life as evolution. Everything in life contradicts the theory, however, and there is change and inevitable decay all about. Men who are honest in their thinking know that by the effort of man we are not going on toward a great golden age which is to be the outcome of the wonderful work and genius of man.

Back of all this change, is there nothing that remains steadfast? Yes, there is something that lasts, a person, the Lord Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Yesterday is a peculiar word with God, a measurement of time. We call yesterday that trip which the world made so that the sun shone on one side of it a few hours, and on the other side of it a few more hours. Everything in our yesterday has vanished, has passed, but everything in God’s yesterday remains. Everything that he did, he does now; everything that He was, He is now. Past always means decay, past always means the old thing that is put in the ash can. Yesterday, to us, is garbage; but to God it still exists. There is no castoff with God as far as He is concerned. He does not fold up His garments and put them away; he discards none of His clothing because it is threadbare—it never wears out. The clothes of God never change. Oh, how rock-ribbed becomes your foundation when you remember that Christ never changes, and that when He says anything it is going to come to pass! He never changes; His yesterday is today.

If His yesterday is today, why does He call it yesterday? Ah, there is a marking of time with God, but it is entirely different from our marking of time. God marks time by the achievements of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the marker of time in the eternities. What He does is the marking of yesterday, of today, of tomorrow. The yesterday of God was all a plan and all a purpose that was in Christ Jesus—all that was in His mind through the millions of years that had passed and gone. God never started, and He will never finish. If He started, He would finish, but He did not start. If we start, we will finish; if we did not start, we will not finish. The guarantee that I am never going to die is that God is eternal, and when I am born again, I am baptized by the Holy Ghost into the eternal quality, I partake of all that He always was; therefore, I partake of all that He always shall be, I am grafted into eternal life.

Eternity

Eternal life is as far from our human conceptions as the north is from the south. We have always seen things start, we have seen spring time, and summer, and those awful autumn breezes come down with their hissing sound, mocking our glorious summer dreams. We have seen things start and finish, but oh, get the idea that God never started and He will never finish. When Jesus Christ came to save you, He wanted to baptize you into something that always did exist and always will exist, and that is eternal salvation and eternal security. My guarantee of salvation is not by an end of Christ but by the life of Christ, and since He is eternal and I am a joint-heir with Him, and by the Holy Ghost am baptized into His body, and He is the head, and I am a co-partner with Him and am partaking of His life and abiding in Him as a branch abides in the vine, I know that I have eternal life in Christ Jesus. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and I am baptized into a stream of life that never started and never will have an end.

Here is a great circular cable. Where is the end of it? Where is the end of a circle? Can you think of it? But it is there—a complete thing. When Jesus appeared to John there was a golden girdle roundabout Him, to show the eternal existence of God—no start to Him, no finish. His eternity is beyond our conception, but it is the most stabilizing doctrine that in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, there is no change, no fluctuation, no starting something and finishing it. If God created a world and did not put it in Himself, it would decay. If God made trees and did not make them partakers of Himself, those trees will deteriorate and go down out of the way and He can make others. The snow-capped mountains were made by His hands, they will wear out and He will make others. The stars may wax old and be folded up like a garment, for they are not part of Him, they are but the work of His hand. He can make more, He can throw out stars as He fed the multitude on that lakeside one day—this glorious Christ who is eternal.

Oh that the Holy Ghost might come upon us and give us a sense of the fact that God is eternal, that He is not wishywashy, He is not elected today and defeated tomorrow, He is not running for office back there and turned against now, but He always was, He always will be, and if I am in Him, I am in eternal life. Eternal life cannot be ascribed to any tree or anything of the vegetable, animal, or mineral kingdom; but when Jesus Christ died on Calvary, He, for the first time, made something that will never have an end. He was working through the myriads of the millions of years to come to the place where He could make something like Himself, to put something into Himself.

Adam and Eve were made in the image of God, but I want to say to you it was a likeness—something like Him in essence. Nowhere in the Scriptures are Adam and Eve said to be made in the essence of God. Nowhere was the devil made in the essence of God—he was a creature. He was the handiwork of God, God rolled and shaped him and gave him life force and told him to go on, but he fell from his high position. Oh that God might come to you and show you that when Jesus died on Calvary, He put everything that Adam was away, and all that sin was away, and when He rose from the dead by His glorious power, He put you into the Godhead and made you eternal with God, and you will never die. Glory be to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, and taketh it away forever!

He brought many sons into glory that day. The yesterday of God was all the working out up to Calvary, and when Calvary was finished, on that dark ninth hour, that finished yesterday. Everything back of that hour when He cried, “It is finished,” is all yesterday.

Today

Everything this side of Calvary is today, today, today. We are creatures of the day, not of the night; we are creatures of life, not of death; we are creatures of Christ, not mortal, but immortal, waiting to be clothed upon with immortality, waiting to put on all the manifestation of His life, today, glorious today—our yesterday becomes today. Calvary marked time for God, and in heaven they only know time up to that day, they only know one night, and that was the night when he died, that awful black time when He put all that was out of existence, when He wiped out all of the sin of the race, when He put away all weakness, when He put away all curse, when He paid for every bit of change, when He paid for every mistake, when He put away all that decays, when He paid completely and fully for every creature’s sin.

Today we wait for what? We wait for tomorrow. Only three days with God—yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I haven’t time to go into all the glories of today. We have today because the sun set back there and closed up the whole Adam’s regime, closed the devil’s regime, closed hell’s regime and made a new today, and is asking us to enter into today.

Tomorrow

This full completion you may not recognize until, tomorrow, you look back at it as yesterday. When we are raised and seated with Him we will look back and call today yesterday; but now we are waiting for tomorrow. We are waiting for our clothes to come. They are already ordered and paid for, and they will fit when we get them. We are to have a new body, and the crown we have won. That is tomorrow—the greatest event taking up most of the Scriptures, that glorious coming of the Lord Jesus Christ from glory, when tomorrow shall dawn upon the race and the nations shall know war no more. That which Christ finished yesterday will take place tomorrow, and in the interim it is today.

“I watch and wait,
Not knowing what may befall;
But knowing this,
That He who loved and died,
He knows it all.”

He has given me today, He bought it and paid for it and offers it to any man or woman who will take it—yesterday, glorious yesterday. We anchor over that one word and call it the blood, the blood which has all been spilt. He will never have to spill any more, it is finished, it is all perfectly done. When He dropped His head on Calvary, it was finished, and we could have a new day. He arose and exhibited Himself to men and said, “Handle Me and see. A spirit hath not flesh and bone as ye see me have.”

Our day is a day of faith, a day of trust, a glorious day. We can live today because He lives. The hardest thing God the Holy Ghost has to do is to make us believe that we have a today. How dare we live in yesterday? All the power of Jesus Christ is exhibited today. He says, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth,”—not tomorrow. We will not need any faith tomorrow—it will all be sight. Today is the day of faith. It has all been done, it went down with the Son, and at Calvary it was all finished. I am forgiven, I am a child of God, I am redeemed, I am His and He is mine.

The world is waiting for us to have a Christ who does not change. We have yesterday, today, and tomorrow, but there is no change in this person, the same One who died on Calvary is forever seated in glory. God is not changing His program for something new, but has one plan—the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world—the life of Christ for His own in our today and in our tomorrow just the same. Humanly speaking, we have boyhood, so different from manhood, and so different from old age. We have girlhood, young womanhood, motherhood, all so different; but Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. When I meet Him face to face, I will not be surprised, I will be delighted, and the greatest delight of my heart will be that the Christ I have known in my closet will be the same one that I see face to face.

The glory of Pentecost was that the same Holy Ghost that came into their hearts that wonderful day was the very Christ with whom they had walked. That was the joy of it, that the One who had been on the outside of them was now on the inside. That is the comfort of it and the glory of it, and the glory of tomorrow will be that the One who died yesterday and the One I trust today is the same One that I will walk with tomorrow, forever.

Oh what a salvation is this? What a glorious Christ is this, who changes not, who changes never, eternally the same! When He talked to the Pharisees, when He conversed with the woman at the well, when He stood with hands tied before Pilate, when He hung on the cross, when He was preparing that little resurrection breakfast for the disciples, when He was bigging Thomas put his fingers into the nail holes and the spear wound in His side—He was the same Christ. When He lifted His feet from the ground and went into glory, He was the same Jesus, when the Holy Ghost came, He was the same Lord, no difference.

When you go to your shop, you are a different man than you were in your home. You are different as a father than you are as a chum. You are different as a shopman than as a husband. But not He. Oh, the sweetness of the even keel of Jesus Christ as He goes from yesterday to today, from today to tomorrow. He is not a creature of the human imagination or of literature, he is not the concocted scheme of men, for men would put change into any invention of theirs, but God makes Him the same yesterday, today, and forever.

This is the consummation of all our preaching. Are you preaching victory? Then He is the same, His heart is the same, His plan is the same, His joy is the same, His program is the same, His method of salvation is the same, there is no change in Him anywhere, yesterday, today, tomorrow, the eternal, everlasting Lord Jesus. He revealed God, and you will know God because He says to Philip who demands "Show us the Father and it sufficeth us,” “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, three in one,—if you know one you know the whole Godhead. We know the Father because we know the Son, we know the Holy Ghost because we know the Son. The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus, and Jesus Christ reveals the Father, and the Son reveals the Holy Spirit, all one, eternal—yesterday, today, and forever. Thank God our wobble and change and decay are coming out some day, for we will be complete in Him, and all that He put away on the cross will be put away completely tomorrow; but today I am trusting Him, for He is trustworthy because He does not change.

The glory of your faith is in what Jesus is. The world is waiting to see a life possessing continuity. The world cries out, “Oh, to see a man or a woman who leads a holy life, a life of victory, through Jesus Christ!” “Oh,” you protest, “but you do not understand my home relation, my business relations or you would not ask me to lead a holy life under such circumstances.”

Look at Calvary. He is the same. Look at the resurrection. He is the same. See Him talking to Moses and Elias. He is the same. Read what He said to Isaiah. He is the same. Notice what He says to David, to Peter, to Paul; He is just the same. See Him saving the Ethiopian, the Jew, the Gentile—He is just the same. He does not change; therefore I can walk out today—not on shifting sand—but on solid rock, the ground that never shifts. This is the object of all our conversation, the object of all our holy living,—Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

“Take the world, but give me Jesus;
All its joys are but a name.
But His love abideth ever
Through eternal years the same.”

All things may change, but Jesus never. Glory to His matchless name! Because He does not change, you can be the same on the street as in church, the same in the shop as in the home, steadfast and constant, abiding in Him, asking Him to put the flesh life on the altar, while you stand by, saying, “Burn on, oh fire of God, burn on,” that I may abide in the shadow of the Almighty and walk constantly in the fulness of the Holy Spirit, in fellowship with Him, with the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, continually cleansing me from all sin.