Jesus Christ – The Same Yesterday, Today and Forever 

Hebrews 13:8 is one of those verses in Scripture that become so familiar to us that, without ever meaning to, we can almost stop hearing what it is actually saying. I’ve heard it quoted countless times, usually as a beautiful reminder that Jesus doesn’t change – and that, of course, is absolutely true. But the more I’ve spent time in Hebrews, the more I’ve realised just how much weight sits behind those few words.

Lifted beyond

Because Hebrews doesn’t simply tell us that Jesus never changes. It spends almost the entire letter showing us who this unchanging Jesus actually is.

From its opening sentences, our eyes are lifted beyond the Jesus we meet walking the roads of Galilee to the eternal Son who was there before anything existed at all. He is the One through whom God made the universe, the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, the One who sustains all things by His powerful word. Before Bethlehem, before Abraham, before Eden and before the foundations of the earth were laid, the Son was already there in eternal glory.

Hebrews doesn’t simply tell us that Jesus never changes. It spends almost the entire letter showing us who this unchanging Jesus actually is.

I’ve found myself sitting with that thought because it’s so easy to become familiar with the humanity of Jesus without allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed by who it was that actually became human. The baby lying in the manger was the One through whom the stars had come into existence. The man who became tired beside a well was sustaining the universe even as He sat there. The hands that touched lepers, broke bread and washed the disciples’ feet belonged to the One through whom creation itself had been made, and the voice that spoke so tenderly to the broken was the same voice by which all things are held together.

Entering humanity

Yet Hebrews doesn’t leave us looking at Christ from a distance in His eternal glory, because this eternal Son willingly entered the creation He had made and became like us. He knew hunger and exhaustion, rejection and suffering, and He was tempted as we are, yet remained without sin. Because He entered our humanity so fully, Hebrews tells us that we have a Great High Priest who is able to sympathise with our weakness. The One seated in heaven is not distant from the reality of being human. He knows what it is to suffer, to be tempted, to grieve and to endure.

Then Hebrews takes us to the cross, where all of its language of priesthood and sacrifice suddenly finds its fulfilment in one Person.

Under the old covenant, priests repeatedly brought sacrifices before God because those sacrifices could never finally deal with sin. Year after year the offerings continued, each one pointing beyond itself towards something greater that had not yet come. There was always another sacrifice to make and another offering to bring because the work was never truly finished.

The Priest became the sacrifice

Then Christ came, and instead of entering God’s presence carrying the blood of another sacrifice, our Great High Priest offered Himself.

What generations of sacrifices could only point towards, Jesus accomplished completely in a single offering.

That is one of those truths in Hebrews that I don’t think we should ever allow ourselves to become desensitised to. We can know the story of the cross so well that, without ever meaning to, we stop feeling the sheer weight of what actually happened there. The Priest became the sacrifice. The One without sin willingly carried ours, and what generations of sacrifices could only point towards, Jesus accomplished completely in a single offering.

Hebrews tells us that when He had offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, He sat down at the right hand of God. That detail matters because His sitting down tells us something about what had just happened. The work was finished. There was no further sacrifice waiting to be made and nothing left for humanity to add to what Christ had accomplished.

The cross was sufficient because Christ is sufficient.

And the Jesus who died is not a figure who belongs only to history, because death could not hold Him. He rose, ascended and now lives forever as our Great High Priest, interceding for those who come to God through Him. Hebrews presents us with a Christ who has conquered death, entered the heavenly sanctuary on our behalf and become the mediator of an eternal covenant that does not depend upon the changing circumstances of this world.

Same Jesus today

It’s only after showing us all of this that the writer eventually gives us those familiar words: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

Read on their own, those words are comforting. Read after everything Hebrews has just revealed about Him, they are staggering.

The Jesus who carried our sin to Calvary, walked out of the tomb and defeated death has not changed.

The eternal Son through whom creation came into being is the same Jesus today. The Jesus who had compassion on the broken, touched those everyone else avoided, commanded storms to be still and called the dead back to life has not changed. The Jesus who carried our sin to Calvary, walked out of the tomb and defeated death has not changed. The Great High Priest who entered God’s presence on our behalf and lives to intercede for us has not changed, and the King who will one day return in glory will forever be exactly who He has always been.

But there is something about where Hebrews 13 sits that has made me think about this verse differently again.

A great shaking

Immediately before it, Hebrews 12 speaks about shaking.

The writer takes us back to God’s voice at Sinai and then quotes the prophet Haggai: “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” Hebrews explains that this shaking means the removal of what can be shaken so that what cannot be shaken may remain, before reminding us that we are receiving a Kingdom that cannot be shaken.

Then, only a few verses later, we are told that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.

I don’t think we should rush past those two truths sitting so close together.

Everything that can be shaken will eventually be shaken, while Christ remains exactly who He has always been.

We are living through a time when so much that once appeared permanent no longer does.

There is something about that which feels particularly important for the Church to remember because we are living through a time when so much that once appeared permanent no longer does. Cultures shift remarkably quickly, governments change, institutions we trusted prove themselves fallible, values that seemed deeply established can be overturned within a generation, and circumstances in our own lives can change so suddenly that we are left wondering how something that felt so secure could disappear almost overnight.

Seeing Jesus first

The danger is that we can become so absorbed by what is happening around us that we begin to interpret Jesus through our circumstances rather than interpreting our circumstances through Jesus.

When everything feels uncertain, we can begin to wonder whether God is still in control. When darkness appears to increase, we can quietly behave as though the authority of Christ has somehow diminished. When prayers aren’t answered in the way we expected, or the future doesn’t unfold as we imagined, we can allow our circumstances to tell us something about the character of God that Scripture has never said.

Hebrews turns that completely around.

It doesn’t ask us to look at the stability of the world and from there decide whether Jesus can be trusted. It tells us to look first at Jesus, to see Him as the eternal Son, Creator, King, Great High Priest, perfect sacrifice, conqueror of death and mediator of the eternal covenant, and then to look at everything else from the security of knowing that He has not changed.

Christ remains

The world may shake, but His throne does not. What we thought was permanent may prove temporary, but His promises have not become less trustworthy. Cultures may move further from Him, but His authority has not diminished, and the Gospel has not somehow become less powerful because another generation has decided it no longer needs God.

The Gospel has not somehow become less powerful because another generation has decided it no longer needs God.

I wonder whether some of what we experience as frightening instability is actually exposing the things we were never meant to build our confidence upon in the first place. Hebrews doesn’t promise believers that nothing around us will shake. It tells us almost the opposite. Things will shake, and some of what we assumed was permanent will prove not to be, but what cannot be shaken will remain.

And at the centre of everything that remains is Christ.

That changes the way I think about security because biblical security was never the promise that my circumstances would remain predictable. It is the certainty that Christ remains faithful within them. The early believers who first received Hebrews understood opposition, loss and uncertainty in ways many of us have never experienced, yet the writer doesn’t reassure them by promising that life will become easier. Again and again, he lifts their eyes to Jesus and reminds them who He is.

I wonder whether we need exactly the same reminder.

We can become so attached to predictability that we mistake it for security, and then when the things around us begin to move, we wonder where God is in all of it. Yet the Christian hope has never rested upon an unchanging world. It rests upon an unchanging Christ.

The more I’ve sat with Hebrews 13:8, the less it feels like a gentle reassurance and the more it feels like a declaration of enormous consequence. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever, which means everything Hebrews has told us about Him remains true right now. He is still the eternal Son through whom all things exist, still the King seated at the Father’s right hand, still the Great High Priest who understands our weakness, still the perfect sacrifice whose blood has dealt completely with sin, still the One who has conquered death and still the mediator of a covenant that cannot be broken.

Hebrews brings us to a place ... where our eyes become so fixed upon Jesus that when everything capable of shaking begins to move, we still know where to stand.

Knowing where we stand

None of that is waiting to become true again when the world settles down. None of it depends upon what happens next.

It is true now.

And I think that is where Hebrews ultimately wants to bring us. Not to a place where we become better at predicting what will happen next, nor to a faith that depends upon everything around us remaining familiar, but to a place where our eyes become so fixed upon Jesus that when everything capable of shaking begins to move, we still know where to stand.

Because the great certainty of the Christian faith has never been that tomorrow will look like yesterday. It is that the Jesus who was faithful yesterday will be exactly the same when tomorrow comes. Long after everything we thought permanent has passed away, long after every earthly kingdom has had its day, He will still be who He has always been: the eternal Son, our Great High Priest, the risen King and the One whose Kingdom can never be shaken.

--------------------

Hannah Damary-Thompson is Commercial Director at Specialist Wind Services, working across the UK’s onshore and offshore wind sector. She is a mother of four, attends Powerhouse Church in Doncaster, and is currently writing her first book, Diary of a Disciple.