XXXIII.
THE UNCHANGING SAVIOR.
"Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever." HEBREWS
xiii. 8.
THREE times over in this chapter, the closing
chapter of an Epistle the study of which has been so pleasant and helpful,
the sacred writer urges his readers to think kindly of those who ruled
over them. The full force of the Greek word is better represented by the
marginal rendering guide, than by the word rule. But in any case he referred
to those who were the spiritual leaders and teachers of the flock. The
three injunctions are-Remember (ver. 7); Obey (ver. '7); Salute (ver. 23).
It is a proud name for the Christian minister to
be called a leader. But unless he has some other claim to
it than comes from force of character, eloquence, or intellectual power,
his name will be an empty sound, the sign of what he might be rather than
of what he is. Those who are qualified to lead other men must be themselves
close followers of Christ; so that they may be able to turn to others and
say, "Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ;" "Be followers
together with Me."
But the Christian minister must also watch for souls
(ver. 17). He is not sent to his charge to preach great sermons, to elaborate
brilliant orations, or to dazzle their intellects; but to watch over their
souls, as the shepherd watches over his flocks scattered upon the downs,
while the light changes from the gray morning, through the deep tints of
the noon, into the last delicate flush of evening far up on the loftiest
cliffs. He must indeed keep careful watch, for he must give an account
in the evening; of his hand every missing one will be required.
It is told of the holy Melville, that his wife would
sometimes find him on his knees in the cold winter night; and on asking
him to return to bed, he would reply, "I have got fifteen hundred souls
in my charge, and fear that it is going ill with some of them." It is not
difficult to remember or obey or salute men like that. They carry their
Master's sign upon their faces. They are among Christ's most precious gifts
to his Church.
But there is this sorrow connected with all human
leaders and teachers. However dear and useful they are, they are
not suffered to continue by reason of death. One after another
they pass away into the spirit world, to enter upon their loftier service,
to give in their account, to see the Master whom they have loved. The last
sermon lies unfinished on the study table; but they never come there to
complete it. The final word is spoken. The closing benediction is given.
The ministry is done. But what a relief it is to turn from men to Christ:
from the constant change in human teachers to the unchanging Master; from
the under-shepherds who are here today but gone tomorrow, to the chief
Shepherd and Bishop of souls who watches his sheep in the evening shadows
of this era, equally as in the first bright beams of its Pentecostal morning!
This is the meaning of our writer (ver. 7). The
verb is in the past tense: "Remember them which had the rule over you,
such as spoke unto you the word of God: the end of whose life considering,
imitate their faith." Evidently they had been lately called to witness
the end of the life and ministry of some who had been very precious to
them. And, as their hearts were sorrowing, their attention was turned from
the changing guide and leader to the ever-living, unchanging Lord, Jesus
Christ, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.
WHAT IS DENIED. It is denied that either time or
mood or circumstances or provocation or death can alter Jesus Christ our
Lord.
Time changes us. Your portrait, taken
years ago, when you were in your prime, hangs on the walls of your home.
You sometimes sadly contrast it with your present self. Then the eye flashed
with fires which have been quenched with many tears. Then the hair was
raven and thick, which is now plentifully streaked with the gray symptoms
of decay. Then the face was unseamed by care, unscarred by conflict; but
now how weary and furrowed! The upright form is bent, the step has lost
its spring.
But there is a greater difference between two mental
and two physical portraitures. Opinions alter. The radical becomes conservative;
temper changes, and affections cool. Names and faces which used to thrill
are recalled without emotion. Faded chaplets lie where once flowers of
rarest texture yielded their breath in insufficient adoration. Thus is
it with those who are born of woman. Time does for them what hardship and
authority and suffering would fail to effect. And sometimes the question
arises, Can time alter him whose portrait hangs on the walls of our hearts,
painted in undying colors by the hands of the four Evangelists?
Of course, time takes no effect on God, who is the
f AM; eternal and changeless. But Jesus is man as well as God. He has tenses
in his being: the yesterday of the past, the to-day of the present, the
to-morrow of the future. It is at least a question whether his human nature,
keyed to the experiences of man, may not carry with it, even to influence
his royal heart, that sensitiveness to the touch of time which is characteristic
of our race. But the question tarries only for a second. The moment it
utters itself it is drowned by the great outburst of voices which exclaim,
"He is the same in the meridian day of the present as he was in the yesterday
of his earthly life; and he will be the same when to-morrow we shall have
left far behind us the shores of time and are voyaging with him over the
tideless, stormless depths of the ocean of eternity."
If we could ask the blessed dead if they had found
him altered from what they had expected him to be from the pages of the
holy Gospels, they would reiterate the words of the angels-this same Jesus;
they would tell us that his hair is white as snow, not with age, but with
the light of intense purity; that his face shines still as the sun in his
strength, with no sign of westering; and that his voice is as full as when
he summoned Lazarus from the grave, as mellifluous as when it called Mary
to recognize him. Time is foiled in Jesus. He has passed out of its sphere,
and is impervious to its spell.
Moods change us. We know people who
are like oranges one day and lemons the next; now a summer's day, and,
again, a nipping frost; rock and reed alternately. You have to suit yourself
to their varying mood, asking to-day what you would not dare to mention
to-morrow; and thus there is continual unrest and scheming in the hearts
of their friends.
But it is not so with Jesus. Never tired, or put
out, or variable. Without shadow cast by turning. In his earthly life,
wherever we catch sight of him-on the mountainside, on the waters of the
lake, beneath the olive trees in the evening; in the synagogue, or alone;
at work in the sunlight, at prayer in the moonlight, at supper in the upper
room, he was always the same Jesus. And the apparent exceptions when, for
a certain purpose, he entered his manner and made himself strange, only
brought his essential sameness into stronger relief. And so is he to-day.
And we shall become happy and strong when we remove from all thought of
others' moods or our own, and settlt down under the unchanging empyrean
of his love.
Circumstances change us. Men who in
poverty and obscurity have been accessible and genial, become imperious
and haughty when they become idolized for their genius and fawned on for
their wealth. The butler who would have done any favor for Joseph in the
prison forgot him when he was reinstated in the palace. New friends, new
spheres, new surroundings, alter men marvelously.
What a change has passed over Jesus Christ since
mortal eyes beheld him! Crowned with glory and honor; seated at the right
hand of the Father; occupied with the government of all worlds; worshiped
by the loftiest spirits. Can this be he who trod our world, confessing
his ignorance of times and seasons, surrounded by a handful of the poor
and despised, an outcast and a sufferer? It is indeed he. But surely it
were too much to expect that he should be quite the same! Nay, but he is.
And one proof of it is that the graces which he shed on the first age of
the Church were of exactly the same quality as those which we now enjoy.
We know that the texture of light is unaltered;
because the analysis of a ray, which has just reached us from some distant
star, whence it started as Adam stepped across the threshold of Eden, is
of precisely the same nature as the analysis of the ray of light now striking
on this page. And we know that Jesus Christ is the same as he was; because
the life which throbbed in the first believers resulted in those very fruits
which are evident in our own hearts and lives, all having emanated from
himself. He has to govern the worlds; but he is still as accessible to
the vilest, as gentle and tender-hearted, as humble and lovely, as when
that Jewish woman could not restrain her envy of the mother who had borne
him, and when he sat to rest amid the sycamores of Bethany, and the sisters
rested by his feet.
Sin and provocation change us. We
forgive seven times, but draw the line at eight. Our souls close up to
those who have deceived our confidence. We are friendly outwardly, but
there is frost within. We forgive, but we do not forget; and we are never
the same afterward as before. But sin cannot change Christ's heart, though
it may affect his behavior. If it could do so, it must have changed his
feelings to Peter. But the only apparent alteration made by that sad denial
was an increased tenderness and considerateness. "Go, tell my disciples,
and Peter, that I am risen." "He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve."
"He said unto Peter, Lovest thou me?"
Your sins may be many and aggravated; and you are
disposed to think that you should give up all profession of being his at
all. But you do not know him. He is not oblivious to your sins; he has
noticed each one with sharp pangs of pain. His eye has followed you in
all your way ward wanderings; but he is absolutely unchanged. You are as
dear to him as when, in the first blush of your young hope, you knelt at
his feet, and were clothed, as the old warriors used to be, by a stainless
tunic over your armor of proof. Naught that you have said or done has lessened
his love by a single grain, or turned it aside by a hair's-breadth. He
loved you in eternity; he foreknew all that you would be before he set
his heart upon you; he cannot be surprised by any sudden outburst of your
evil. You may be, but he cannot be; and he laid his account for this, and
more, when he undertook to redeem. Your sins, 0 child of God, can no more
alter your Lord's heart than can the petulance of a child alter its mother's.
WHAT IS AFFIRMED. He is the same in his Person (Heb.
i. 12). His vesture alters. He has exchanged the gaberdine of the peasant
for the robes of which he stripped himself on the eve of his incarnation;
but beneath those robes beats the same heart as heaved with anguish at
the grave where his friend lay dead. We shall yet see, though in resurrection
glory, the face on which stood the bead-drops of bloody sweat; and touch
the hands that were nailed to the cross; and hear the voice of the Son
of man. What does the mystery of the forty days teach us, except this,
that he carried with him from the grave, and upward to his home, the identical
body of his incarnation-though the corruptible had put on incorruption,
and the mortal had put on immortality? Thus he is the same as "Jesus."
He is also the same in his once (Heb.
vii. 24). Aaron died on Hor, and all his successors in mystic procession
followed him. Ancient burying-grounds are closely packed with the remains
of priests, abbots, and fathers. The ashes of the shepherds are mingled
with those of their flocks. The office remains, but the occupants pass.
But Christ, as the Anointed Priest, is ever the same. Unweariedly he pursues
his chosen work as the Mediator, Priest, and Inter cessor of men. He does
not fail, nor is he discouraged. Though the great world of men neither
knows nor heeds him, yet does he bear it up upon his heart, as when he
first pleaded for his murderers from his cross. "Forgive them, Father,
forgive them !" is his unwearying constant cry. And though the age be black
with tempest and red with blood, his pity wells up like one of those perennial
fountains which heat cannot scorch, nor cold freeze; because they draw
their supplies from everlasting sources. He is the same as "Christ."
WHAT IT IMPLIES. It implies that he is God. It implies,
too, that the Gospels are a leaf out of his eternal diary, and may be taken
as a true record of his present life. What he was, he is. He still sails
with us in the boat; walks in the afternoon with us to Emmaus; stands in
our rnidst at nightfall, opening to us the Scriptures. He wakes our children
in the morning with his "Talitha cumi"; calls the boys to his knees; watches
them at their play; and rebukes those who would forbid their Hosannas.
He feeds us with bread and fish; lights fires on the sands to warm us;
shows us the right side of the ship for our nets; and interests himself
with the results of our toils. He takes us with him to the brow of the
Transfiguration Mount, and into the glades of Gethsemane.
When we are slow to believe, he is slower still
to anger. He teaches us many things, graduating his lessons, according
to our ability to understand. When we cannot bear more, he shades the light.
When we strive for high places, he rebukes. When soiled, he washes our
feet. When in peril, he comes across the yeasty waves to our help. When
weary, he leads us aside to rest.
Oh, do not read the Gospels as a record merely of
the past, but as a transcript of what he is ever doing. Each miracle and
parable and trait is a specimen of eternal facts, which are taking place
by myriads, at every moment of the day and night; the achievements of the
ever- living, ever-working Lord. No lake without that figure treading its
waters. No storm without that voice mightier than its roar. No meal without
that face uplifted in blessing, or that hand engaged in breaking. No grave
without that tender heart touched with sorrow. No burden without those
willing shoulders to share the yoke.
Oh, take me not back through the long ages to a
Christ that was! He is! He lives! He is here! I can never again be alone,
never grope in the dark for a hand, never be forsaken or forlorn. Never
need a Guide, a Master, a Friend, or a Husband to my soul. I have him,
who suffices for uncounted myriads in the dateless noon of eternity. He
who was everything in the yesterday of the past, and who will be everything
in the to-morrow of the future, is mine to-day; and at each present moment
of my existence-here, and in all worlds.
The Revised Version adds a significant yea to this
verse, to bring out the emphatic accentuation which the writer lays upon
the unchangeableness of Jesus. It is well placed. And with what a thunder
of assent might that word be uttered! All who are of this opinion answer
YEA. First, the innumerable company of angels utters it; then the spirits
of just men made perfect reaffirm it; then the universe of created things,
the regularity of whose laws and processes is due to it, bursts forth with
one great Amen. God himself says Amen; "for how many soever be the promises
of God, in him is the yea: wherefore also through him is the Amen, unto
the glory of God.
Back to contents
Chapter XXXIV.
This document (last modifiedDecember 31, 1997) from Believerscafe.com
Home | Bible versions | Bible Dictionary | Christian Classics | Christian Articles | Daily Devotions
Sister Projects: Wikichristian | WikiMD
BelieversCafe is a large collection of christian articles with over 40,000 pages
Our sponsors: 
