The Changeless Saviour

THE Apostle Paul in writing to the Hebrews at a time when God had shaken the heavens and the earth, encourages them with the assurance that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever” (Hebs. xiii. 8). It is a message as much needed to-day as when first delivered by the Apostle to the Hebrew Christians in their dangerous and distracted state. The experiences through which they were passing had an unsettling effect upon them as is evident from what the Apostle says about them. The uncertainty and the instability of all things around them were a temptation to them to give up the things that could not be shaken. It was in such circumstances as these that the Apostle directed their attention to the unchangeableness of the Saviour. The subject is one of supreme importance, especially in such times as we live in, when things which were once considered so stable are shaken to their very foundations. In such circumstances it is well that God’s people should turn their eyes unto Him “who is from all changes free” and to Jesus Christ, their changeless Saviour.

1. He is changeless in His love. There is no ebb or flow in this tideless ocean. There is constant ebb and flow in their love to Him but it is not so with His love to them. It is well that it should be so. On His side there is abiding constancy; on their side there is fluctuating inconstancy. Hence we find the Apostle taking up an unassailable position in his challenge: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (Roms. viii. 35). Whatever effect tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword might have on their love to Him these in no way interfered with His love to them. It is the changelessness of Christ’s love that emboldens the Apostle to give utterance to the assurance: “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Roms. viii. 38, 39). No circumstances which will ever arise in the lot of God’s people, no enemies that will ever assail them, no temptations that may beset them or darkness that may meet them on their way to their everlasting home will in any degree interfere with Christ’s love to them. No doubt there may be the hiding of His countenance for sins committed but still it remains true with them as the Psalmist says: “If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless my loving kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail” (Ps. lxxxix. 30-33). The changelessness of Christ in His love to His people is like a fixed star to which they may turn their eye in the day when all around them is change and when they are being reminded of the transitoriness of all earthly things.

2. He is changeless in His power to save. The strength that is in His arm is not lessened by the passing of the years. The arm of the strong man feels, in due course, the weakening that comes through the lapse of time and the decay of the vital energy in his mortal frame. It is not so with Christ. His arm is as strong to-day as when He made a path through the Red Sea, levelled mountains, and dried up rivers for His redeemed in the days of old. We are too ready to forget this truth and in forgetting it we lose much of the comfort it is fitted to impart. We read of His mighty triumphs of grace in the past. This is the mighty Lord who saved Manasseh, who arrested Saul of Tarsus, who called Levi the publican to follow Him and a host of others who are now praising His name eternally in Heaven. That is so, but unbelief says He is no longer working miracles, that day is past, and it may even go a step further and say His power is no longer in evidence. The Lord who is thus dishonoured challenges the unbelieving heart with the question: “Is my hand shortened that it cannot save?” It is as mighty and powerful as ever and it is as capable of reaching the deepest depths as it was of old. There is no change in His power. The mighty power which is in operation when a soul is brought from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light knows no change.

3. There is no change in the Saviour’s willingness to save. Unbelief may say at times well, let it be granted that He is as powerful to save as ever, but is He as willing? Every sinner saved since the days of the Apostles is proof that He is as willing to save as ever. He is still standing pleading with men. The Saviour who pled with tears is the same Saviour still; He has not ceased to show that He is waiting to be gracious; His promises have not changed; His invitations are still the same and His encouragements have lost none of their appeal. Men may say that He is not as willing to save as they are to be saved. That is a base and groundless taunt to throw at the gracious One who came to seek and save the lost. His coming into the world, His humiliation when in it and His unknown sufferings in Gethsemane and Calvary are the answer Truth gives to the baseless charge.

4. There is no change in His faithfulness. His truth is pledged that all that He has said concerning His people in their journey through the world, in their experiences at death and in their happy enjoyments in the life beyond will be fulfilled. If it were not so He would have told them. There is no change here. He never hinted to His disciples that in the ages to come there would be any change in these matters. And to harbour such a thought is to question His unchanging faithfulness. Our space for the present will not allow us to continue farther but these are a few of the aspects in which it can be truly said that Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, to-day and forever.