Jesus Isn't the Lincoln Memorial

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8)

This is one of those Bible memory verses that most Christians seem to know by heart. But what does it mean? I’ll admit that I can tend to do my mental translation of this verse into something like, ‘The way I picture Jesus? That’s the way he is all the time’. It’s like standing in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln. You can be pretty sure if you leave and come back in a year he won’t have moved a finger. He’s the same all the time. Easy to find, but not that helpful when you find him.

I’m reading Sinclair Ferguson’s excellent devotional book, “In Christ Alone”, and the other addressed this verse in a way that knocked me back a step.

Do not mistake the meaning. This is not the immutability of the sphinx – a Christ captured once for all in never-fading still photography. This is the changelessness of Jesus Christ in all His life, love, holiness, grace, justice, truth, and power. He is always the same for you, no matter how your circumstances change.

Say this to yourself when you rise each day, when you struggle, or when you lay your head down sadly on your pillow at night: ‘Lord Jesus, You are still the same, and always will be.’

The immutability of Christ is the changelessness of the Christ revealed in the Gospels. All that He proved to be in His ministry is an indication of the way He really and always is. That is why it is legitimate for us to see the Gospel accounts not only in the context of redemptive history but as portrayals of the character of the Christ who lives forever. We are able to say, ‘If Jesus was like this then, Jesus is like this now.’… From first to last then, fix your eyes on Jesus. He never changes! (p. 66, 67)

The sameness of Jesus means that he will respond to my many needs in a way that is entirely consistent with who he is revealed to be in the Gospel.