What does it mean that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8)?

(Vv. 8, 9). In verses 8 and 9 we pass from the leaders who have gone from us to Jesus Christ who remains. Others pass away and others change, but “Jesus Christ (is) the Same yesterday, and today, and for ever.” At times we speak of the former great men of God as if, with their passing, we were almost left without resource. In so speaking there is the danger of putting an unintentional slight upon Christ. They have gone, but Christ remains with perfect love in His heart and perfect power in His hand. He too is the Head with perfect wisdom for His body. There is not a difficulty that He cannot enable us to overcome, not a danger from which He cannot preserve us, and not a question that may arise which He cannot settle. He is our stay and resource — our all. With this blessed presentation of Christ as the unchanging One the Epistle opens; and with this it closes. In the first chapter He is hailed as the abiding and unchanging One — “Thou remainest” and “Thou art the Same.” Others pass away but He remains: others change, but He is the Same. Seeing then that Christ is our resource, let us not be “carried away with various and strange doctrines.” Have we an itching ear seeking new light, or fresh light as people say? Let us beware lest, by our restless search after something new, we are carried away from Jesus Christ.

Blessed be God, Jesus Christ is the same today that He was yesterday. You can look back upon His yesterday and know that He has not changed one iota; upon the throne of God He is the same gracious Saviour He was upon earth; He does now for us just what He did for poor wretches then. We can take up every illustration, every case of mercy bestowed upon the undeserving and the needy when He was on earth and say, Jesus Christ is the same today. That earthly life which closed with the cross, and all the blessed results of redemption, have the stamp of eternity upon them. Upon the throne of God, He is the same Jesus — the same as to His person and as to His work as when He was here.

And as to the future? Will it not be the Lord Jesus, with the same tender love, as He was in the past? Cast your eye forward as far as faith can reach, as far as the word of God unfolds the future to us, throughout the boundless ages of eternity, Jesus Christ abides the same. His yesterday on earth is the same as His today on the throne; and forever His future will present to us the One who never changes; the One who is, who was, and is to come — God and Man in two distinct natures, but one person forever.

But a far higher object follows: the great Sufferer, He of all glory who always abides. "Jesus Christ [is] yesterday and today the same, and for ever (unto the ages)." Such is the true meaning. There is no real ground for viewing it in apposition with "the end (or, issue) of the conversation" that precedes, which not only violates grammar but destroys the bearing of both clauses. It does beautifully introduce Him who not only remains alive again for evermore, but changes not. It is the creature's weakness to change. And of all creatures none more given to change than man, though he be head of all and endowed beyond all on earth; yet most changeable, like a reed bending to every wind through his will and his passions. But here we have real man, and tried as none other ever was, yet the Unchanging One, as indeed He was and is God no less really. What a stay for our faith! For we who believe on Him have still the fallen nature; and who so competent as He to deliver us from our liability to swerve from the good, holy, and true into some snare of the enemy! To look to Him, depend on Him, delight our souls in Him, follow Him, is an immense safeguard, given of grace to this end; and He knows how to keep and hold the least stedfast of saints that wait on Him. Truly He is the rock that never moves, to sustain such as without Him must be the sport of wind and wave.

His person is thus fixed and stable for eternity. The anointed Jesus is still "the same." But so is all that He deals with or handles; as this epistle, in the progress of it, also discloses, whether it be His blood, His priesthood, His covenant, or His kingdom. There is no secret principle of decay, no blemish or cause of death, anywhere. No taint or uncertainty is found here, but stability attaches to each and all — "the same yesterday, to day, and for ever."*

Thus, before the Spirit of God speaks of "eternal salvation" (Heb. 5:9), the "unchanging priesthood" (Heb. 7), "eternal redemption" (Heb. 9:12), "eternal inheritance" (Heb. 9:15), the ever-efficacious sacrifice, (Heb. 10), the "immovable kingdom" (Heb. 12:28), the "everlasting covenant" (Heb. 13:20), He reveals the wondrous truth of the person of the Lord Jesus from Whom the blessings enumerated take their character of "eternal." Because He is the same and His years unfailing, His work abides without decay. Because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever, the lustre of the believer's portion in Him is undimmed, its value undiminished, and its possession unalterably secure.

How good of our God to give us (ourselves changeful in a changeful scene where naught is dependable) One Who is unchanging and in Whom we, and all we possess that is worth possessing, are secured from the depredations of the foe and from the corruption of evil within and around us. May we with the tenacity of faith lay hold of this blessed attribute of the Person of the Lord which alone can keep us "steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord." W. J. Hocking.

A. I do not doubt that so it was with these servants of the Lord, as it should be with all of us who love Him. But this scripture says nothing about it, speaking of two wholly distinct matters. (1) Ver. 7 calls on the Hebrew Christians to remember their guides, who (the which) spoke to them the word of God, revealed truth in general; and to follow their faith, surveying throughout the issue or termination of their career. Their "conversation" in the sense of Christian course was closed. The saints who remembered them would do well to imitate their faith when here. (2) Ver. 8 introduces a new subject: if there be any link with ver. 7, it is a contrast with the faithful servants who were gone. "Jesus Christ [is] yesterday and today the same, and forever." He is declared to be, the man, the unchangeable. What a safeguard against being carried away by various and strange teachings! Christ truly known satisfies the heart and gives rest to the mind otherwise greedy of novelties. Thus do even the naturally fickle become by grace restful and stable as they grow up to Him in all things.

Full indeed of strong consolation is all this. This is Jesus our Lord, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; the same in the day of His ministry, after His resurrection, now in the ascended heavens, and so for ever. And as He sustains the same character, and approves Himself by the same grace after as before the resurrection, so does He redeem all His pledges left with His disciples.

He is "the same yesterday, and today, and for ever," in His own proper glory. With Him "is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," according to His essential, divine nature. But so in His knowledge of us, His relationship to us, His affections for us, and His way with us.

Over this epistle, read in this light, the believing soul might breathe out the words of Psalm 90. "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations." For it is a psalm which recognises the vanity or perishableness of everything by reason of sin, and that through Christ alone is anything to be "established." He imparts "glory" and "beauty" according to that psalm, but stability also. It is like the apostle's thought in 2 Cor. 1. However uncertain other things may have been (even, if the Corinthians pleased, his purposes concerning them), yet the gospel was firm, the promises of God to the believer Yea and Amen, and the believer himself an established, anointed, and sealed one for ever. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to day, and forever.

In chapter 1 the apostle looks at the stability of Jesus. He quotes Psalm 103 where, Messiah bewailing the shortening of His days, His withering like grass, His passing away like a shadow, Jehovah promises Him that He should be "the same" still for ever and ever, when all else has decayed. It is the same word (ho autos) in Hebrews 1:12, Hebrews 13:8. His person as God is the foundation of all His offices and works. In this way the Epistle opens with the most glorious proclamation of this truth. Heaven and earth pass away, but Christ does not. The works of God's hand perish, but the one of God's anointing never can.

In this connection, moreover, we are told — and it may be as comprising the faith of these departed teachers — that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and for ever." They may disappear from the scene, but He abides, and abides as our unchanging and unchangeable resource. Amid all our vicissitudes, and even amid all our failures and unfaithfulness, if our hearts are but stayed on this blessed truth, we need never be discouraged or disheartened. Christ remains, and here we can rest. He is ever the same, and He will never cease to care for His Church. What comfort to us in our conscious weakness! and what an antidote to our apprehensions, and to our craving after visible helps! Nor let us forget that His truth is bound up with His immutable character. We must not therefore be carried about with divers and strange doctrines. When standard-bearers fall, it is but a summons to us to hold fast all the more tenaciously the testimony they proclaimed. "Behold, I come quickly: hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown." (Rev. 3:11.) E. D.