The Unchanging Christ: The Same Yesterday

The Unchanging Christ: The Same Yesterday

All of my life I have heard the plea for a relevant “new Christ for a new age.”

The truth is Jesus Christ is God’s final word to men in all ages. He is relevant for every age. He is “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb. 13:8).

The same Jesus sits today “on the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb. 1:3). He is the same person as He was when here on the earth.

When we read the words, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday” we are carried back to the long ages before He became flesh. I can point to a date, time, and place when I was born. However, Jesus did not begin to live when He was born in the flesh of the virgin Mary in Bethlehem. He simply changed His robes.

The apostle Paul tells us Jesus was in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, divested Himself of His garments of glory that had been His from all eternity and clothed Himself in the garments of a common household slave in the flesh and was obedient unto death. He was God-man. He was fully God and fully human (Phil. 2:5-8).

The absolutely essential fact is He was the same in past eternity; He changes not.

I search for an absolute in an age of change; He changes not, and I therefore have security.

He came from the Father and He returned to the Father. He dwelt in the ageless past in the bosom of His eternal Father. The apostle John tells us, “in the beginning was the Word.” When everything else had a beginning He already existed and He had no beginning. His beginning had no beginning. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men” (John 1:1-4).

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday . . .” His eternal existence is declared in these words, “in the beginning was the Word.” He is no vacillating whim of the age. “The Word was with God,” a distinct personality of the true and perfect deity because “the Word was God.” His personal relationship with the Father is unchangeable. He “was in the beginning with God,” and because of His resurrection and ascension, He still is in the presence of the Father in a perfect relationship.

Moreover, His understanding of man never needs to change. No one knows me like the one who made me. “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.” “In Him is life.”

Where would you turn for a relevant Christ that is not found in the historic Christ? Would you, like the modern self-made cults, turn to your own making, or to some new age “enlightenment”?

God in Christ has already become one of us in order to demonstrate His love for us, and to show us what God is really like. God came and revealed Himself to sinful and disobedient rebellious men.

I don’t need a greater “light.” I only need to respond to the One true and all supreme Lord of all creation. Why should I turn to some lesser “light”? All other spiritual lights are only creepy shadows of the one who masquerades as “the angel of light,” Satan himself.

We don’t have to look afar to discover what evil lurks within the heart of man. God has fully revealed Himself (Heb. 1:1-3), and man in his stubborn rebellion cries for something greater and better like selfish, pampered, narcissistic children whining for something new.

God has spoken. He has not changed and He will not. He is the same as He was yesterday, and I find stability for my soul and eternal peace with God. Because He is the same I have eternal security of a right relationship with Him, not of my self-making, or choosing, but in His all-sufficient wisdom and grace.

Because He is the same yesterday, I know that what He has said will still remain true for you and me today. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

That great truth will not change, because our Savior changes not. His word and eternal promises remain the same throughout all eternity. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” Thank God.

Selah!

Message by Wil Pounds (c) 2006