“The Case for Jesus Christ: His Immutability”

Perhaps, this evening, you would like to turn to the book of Hebrews with me - Heb 13.

And we will read verses 7-8: ‘Remember your leaders who have spoken unto you the Word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.’

The writer to the Hebrews commented on one of life’s sure changes. 

In this passage, he told his readers to ‘...remember your leaders who spoke the Word of God to you. Consider their way of life or, the issue of their lives, and imitate their faith.’

It appears as though he is speaking of the leaders of the faith community who have passed on.

Their function, apparently, was primarily that of teaching and preaching the Word of God.

And the Church was exhorted to consider their way of living - and follow ‘the example of their faith’.  

That is, ‘these leaders have worked and lived among you, and left for you an inheritance of the example of a model of life and faith for you to see and follow.

But - they are dead, now - their lives and their influences were transitory.’

And, in contrast to this change in the life process that is so certain, he went on to say, in v 8, ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.’

Earthly leaders come and go, but Jesus Christ is the same always - He is unchanging.

He is not like man in His influence and work.  

They need not think that He is different now or will be different in the future from what He has been in the past.

Past or present makes no difference to the eternal Savior - no matter what ages lie ahead, Christ will be unchanged through them.

What Jesus Christ was yesterday, He is today, and He remains forever the same.

And, so, the thought goes on in v 9 with: ‘...do not be moved from your mooring of Christ’s eternal sameness by all sorts of strange teachings; for it is good, beautiful, noble,
the right thing that - with gratitude - you should be getting confirmed and strengthened by God’s spiritual strength...’.

That spiritual strength was to be found and known in the Jesus Who is always the same, immutable.

Why does the Scripture speak of Christ’s changelessness?

First, we know that the record of Christian thought shows that men’s beliefs about Jesus Christ change from age to age.

That is nothing new: the Bible has already shown us that quite adequately and vividly.

For example, in 2 Cor 11:3-4, the Corinthians were inclined to follow false leaders, as these verses and those of 13-15 suggest.

2 Cor 11:3-4 reads: ‘But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray, corrupted, seduced from your single-minded faithfulness, fidelity, sincere and pure devotion to Christ.’

And in v 4, he chided them a bit by saying, ‘You put up with it alright, when some interloper preaches a second Jesus (not the Jesus I preached), or when you are treated
to a spirit different from the Spirit you once received, and to a different gospel than the Gospel you received.’

There were those who were preaching a different Jesus from the Jesus Paul had met and preached, of the One Who was the Son of God and became flesh, was crucified, arose, and now is seated on God’s right hand in His changeless nature.

The Corinthians - in accepting the false teachings of some of their leaders - were in danger of being led astray, of being corrupted from the simplicity, the singleness of devotion, the purity, the chaste conduct of a Christian.

So Paul warned them against this great danger.

He did not specify exactly what the false teaching was but he knew that their preaching of a different Jesus would lead to a different gospel.

Any picture other than Who Jesus was, and now is, would rob the Gospel News of its meaning and power.

A Christ stripped of the glory of His eternal sameness has no sweeping significance of His gift of the meaning of life and the reality of God.

A different Jesus would create a different spirit in the Church as it did in Galatia when the Judaizers rejected Christian freedom and wanted to shackle believers with Jewish legalism.

The Corinthian Church was already infected by worldly philosophies, partyism, and immorality, much to the dishonor of the power of Christ.

Different Gospels are on the circuit today, you know:  sometimes it is in the form of a Jesus who was merely a descendant of David, or who was merely a teacher, or a social reformer, or just the best of human kind.

Or, it may be the offer of good advice, instead of the Good News; or the presentation of an ideal instead of the offer of the power and victory of Christ available through Him; or, it may be the substitution of good works and the legal observances for salvation by Christ Who has dealt with all of man’s sin and guilt.

A different Gospel can come in all forms - please believe me on that one.

Men’s beliefs about Him may change from age to age but that alters nothing at all; Jesus Christ remains ever the same.

The Scripture speaks of His immutability for another important reason: it is the point of Christ’s sameness that anchors the Church. 

It is His changelessness that is the mainstay the Church holds on to when it is called to deal with ‘all kinds of strange teachings’ and the many problems, cares, and activities of the Church.

How is this?   We turn to Col 1:18-19 for the answer.

‘He is that Head Whose Body is the Church: He is its origin, since His was the first birth out of death, that He, in all things is pre-eminent, supreme.’ 

‘For in Him the complete being of God, by God’s own choice, came to dwell.’ 

This Christ, through Whom creation took shape, became the Incarnate Christ, the Christ of human history Who created the new spiritual community, the Church, in Whom all the fullness of God is present. 

He is the Church’s Head, the Church’s leader - in all things, He occupies first place.

This is the Christ in Whom all the powers of the Godhead, - of the deity, of the aggregate of all the Divine attributes, virtues, and His ascendant features - live.

If, then, it is the good pleasure of God that all this fullness is in Christ, this means that Christ in God is made known to us as He Who is Eternal.

Since God is pre-eminent, has shown Himself pre-eminent in Christ, His Son, His fullness abides permanently in Christ.

Christ was not here, then, on a temporary journey through human life as one of the Church’s many leaders.

The constancy of His Headship governs the Church’s direction into God’s final and eternal Plan.
 
Ps 33:11: ‘...the Eternal’s purpose stands forever, and what He plans will last from age to age.’

Rev 1:8: ‘I am Alpha, I am Omega, the beginning of all things, and their end, says the Lord God, the God Who is and Who was, and Who is the coming, the Almighty.

Thus He stands as the unchanging One in His care of and love to the Church, and all the members of it, throughout all times and ages.

His certain changelessness is the Church’s anchor and security!

A further reason Jesus is so presented in His eternal sameness is to produce something in man that will testify and display a faith that reverberates this truth of His eternal sameness.

The whole Bible has this thread of gold woven all the way through it, either in the way of prophecy, or in the onward-looking anticipation, or in its history. 

It is not given to us just to present Jesus as the Son of God.

If the Scriptural intention was just to establish the fact of Jesus Christ as God’s Son, then that could have been done in a theological writing. 

And, it is not a matter of just yielding our understanding to that truth of Him or perhaps just assenting to it, or of not denying it.

The object was not that men should accept with their understandings the truth concerning Christ’s nature and offfice only.

No - it is that man should be affected, let it do its work, and lead to a faith in Him.

Did you catch what verse 9 of Heb 13 said when I read it earlier?

‘...do not be moved from your mooring of Christ’s eternal sameness...you should be getting strengthened by God’s spiritual strength...’. (Berkeley Version)

His eternal sameness affects us when we stay moored, anchored to it.

It produces that faith that echoes this Truth.

‘These things are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His Name.’ (John 20:31)

It includes the fact that ‘we might have life in His Name’ - that we might really, truly live in the power of His Name.

Living in the power of everything that His name is and represents will do its work in, upon, and through us - it can be no other way!

Jesus Christ does not change - we do, and - let me add - in this life in Christ, we must change - we must be conformed into His eternal likeness, into His eternal character, into His eternal virtues, into His eternal purpose.

His immutablility ought to affect us, ought to do its work in us, and ought to lead us to a deep, abiding faith in Him that reverberates that one central truth of His Person.

There is life in that great Christ Who is the same yesterday and today and forever - in that revealed character of Him by which He is made known to us as the Christ and the Son of God.

The unchangeableness of Jesus is no longer a speculation - it is clearly written in the history of men’s lives.

He has done, is doing, and will continue to do what He set out to do.

By His power, men of leprous and foul tastes have been made clean.

Dishonest men have been led to the truth.

Weaklings have been made strong.

Hard hearts have been melted into tenderness.

Wanderers have been brought home to Him.

Even those who are constantly running away from Him cannot escape Him.

I have seen men on their death beds who would have  nothing much to do with Him in their lifetimes, yet, they called out to Him in their dying moments.

There was nothing left in them to run - in their helplessness and in all their pain, their only voice left cried out:
‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!’

Even those who blaspheme Him find in their violent hatreds that He is still present.

His judgment has become the conscience of the race, and however men love darkness, they can never quite succeed in banishing or forgetting the Light of His Eternal Love.

Men nailed Him to the Cross and watched Him die.

When He had taken His last breath, they breathed a sigh of relief.

But the grave could not contain Him - He overcame death.

This was and is the power of His indestructible life!

He never fluctuates - He never changes - His mercy is always sure - His forgiveness is forever the same.

His intercession is always unfailing.

He is always trustworthy to do ‘exceedingly above all we  could ask or think’.

His pre-eminence is permanent; His leadership is forever.

He, Who was, at one time in human history, clothed in human flesh, is the same Eternal Being as He always was and still is.

He is not a fading memory that we worship.

Now - I ask you: if Christ is not eternal, is not immutable, would we be prospering spiritually in serving a capricious Christ - a Christ of men’s creations?   

Would the Spirit within the Church be alive, vibrant, perpetually advancing in Him if He were a dead, sterile Christ, having been here only temporarily?

Would we make it through to the end of our time here on earth unbeaten, unscathed without His eternal, conforming grace to change us?

As for me - I shout a resounding ‘NO!’ and I would pray your hearts echo the same response.

The power and the permanence of Jesus Christ makes us agree with Peter who wrote: ‘Now that, by your obedience to the Truth, you have purified your lives so that there is  
growing up among you a genuine, brotherly affection, love one another earnestly with all your hearts, since your new life has come, not from perishable, but from imperishable seed, through the message of the living, everlasting God.

All mankind is like grass; all their splendor like the flowers of the field.

The grass dries up; the flowers fall off.

But the declaration, the teaching, the Word of the Lord lives on forever.

And this Word is nothing other than the Gospel which has been preached to you.’  (1 Pet 1:22-25) 

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever!

Thank God!

Amen.