The Same Yesterday

The Same Yesterday

An elderly missionary had watched empires rise and fall in his lifetime, seen two world wars, political revolutions, and cultural upheavals he could never have imagined in his youth. He was asked at ninety what had sustained him through so much change. He smiled: 'I found very early that the things I could count on were very few. Most of what I trusted changed or failed. Then I found that Jesus doesn't change. And once you find something that doesn't change, everything else becomes manageable.' He paused. 'He was the same in 1940 as in 1980 as today. That's not nothing. In a century of change, that's everything.'

Hebrews 13:8 is placed between a warning not to be carried away by 'strange teachings' (verse 9) and an instruction to hold to leaders whose faith was evident. The unchanging Christ is the anchor against doctrinal drift and the foundation of faithful leadership. In a culture addicted to novelty and exhausted by change, the immutability of Jesus is a radical counter-claim. He does not update with cultural trends. He does not moderate His claims for new audiences. The Jesus of the Gospels is the Jesus of today — the same compassion, the same authority, the same demands, the same grace. You can bring yesterday's unresolved problems to today's Jesus without reintroduction. He already knows the file.