The Unchanging Christ

OW far back does this “yesterday” go? The limit must be found by observing that it is “Jesus Christ who is spoken of — that is to say, the Incarnate Saviour. That observation disposes of the reference of these words to the past eternity in which the eternal Word of God was what He is to-day. The sameness that is referred to here is neither the sameness of the Divine Son from all eternity, nor the sameness of the medium of revelation in both the old and the new dispensations, but the sameness of the human Christ to all generations of His followers. And the epoch referred to in the” yesterday “is defined more closely if we observe the previous context, which speaks of the dying teachers who have had the rule and have passed away. The “yesterday” is the period of these departed teachers; the” to-day is the period of the writer and his readers.

But whilst the words of my text are thus narrowly limited, the attribute, which is predicated of Christ in them, is something more than belongs to manhood, and requires for its foundation the assumption of His deity. He is the unchanging Jesus because He is the Divine Son. The text resumes, at the end of the Epistle, the solemn words of the first chapter, which referred the declaration of the Psalmist to” the Son ‘* — Thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.*’ That Son, changeless and eternal by Divine immutability, is Jesus Christ, the incarnate Redeemer.

This text may well be taken as our motto in looking forward, as I suppose we are all of us more or les« doing, and trying to forecast the dim outlines of the coming events of this New Year. Whatever may happen, let us hold fast by that confidence, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.”

I. — I apply these words, then, as a New Year’s motto, in two or three different directions, and ask you to consider, first, the unchanging Christ in His relation to our changeful lives.

The one thing of which anticipation may be sure is that nothing continues in one stay. True, that which is to be hath already been “; true, there is” nothing new under the sun “; but just as in the physical world the infinite variety of creatures and things are all made out of a few very simple elements, so, in our lives, out of a comparatively small number of possible incidents- an immense variety of combinations results, with the elfect that, while we may be sure of the broad outlines of our future, we are all in the dark as to its particular events, and only know that ceaseless change will characterise it, and so all forward looking must have a touch of fear in it, and there is only one thing that will enable us to front the else intolerable certainty of uncertainty, and that is, to fall back upon this thought of my text, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.”

The one lesson of our changeful lives ought to be for each of us the existence of that which changes not. By the very law of contrast, and by the need of finding sufficient reason for the changes, we are driven from the contemplation of the fleeting to the vision of the permanent. The waves of this stormy sea of life ought to fling us all high and dry on to the safe shore. Blessed are they who, in a world of passing phenomena, penetrate to the still centre of rest, and looking over all the vacillations of the things that can be shaken, can turn to the Christ and say, Thou Who movest all things art Thyself unmoved; Thou Who changest all things, Thyself changest not. As the moon rises slow and silvery, with its broad shield, out of the fluctuations of the ocean, so the one radiant Figure of the all-sufficient and immutable Lover and Friend of our souls should rise for us out of the billows of life’s tossing ocean, and come to us across the seas. Brother! let the fleeting proclaim to you the permanent; let the world with its revolutions lead you up to the thought of Him that is the same for ever. For that is the only thought on which a man can build, and, building, be at rest.

The yesterday of my text may either be applied to the generations that have passed, and then the to-day *’ is our little life; or it may be applied to my own yesterday, and then the to-day is this narrow present. In either application the words of my text are full of hope and of joy. In the former they say to us that no time can waste, nor any drawing from the fountain can diminish the all-sufficiency of that Divine Christ in whom eighteen centuries have trusted and been “lightened, and their faces were not ashamed.” The yesterday of His grace to past generations is the prophecy of the future and the law for the present. There is nothing that ever any past epoch has drawn from Him, of courage and confidence, of hope and wisdom, of guidance and strength, of love and consolation, of righteousness and purity, of brave hope and patient endurance, which He does not stand by my side ready to give to me too to-day. “As we have heard so have we seen in the city of the Lord of Hosts.” And the old Christ of a thousand years is the Christ of to-day, ready to help, to succour, and to make us like Himself.

In the second reference, narrowing the “yesterdays” to our own experiences, the words are full of consolation and of hope. “Thou hast been my Help; leave me not, neither forsake me,” is the prayer that ought to be taught us by every remembrance of what Jesus Christ has been to us. The high-water mark of His possible sweetness does not lie in some irrevocable past moment ot our lives. We never have to say that we have found a sufficiency in Him that we never shall find any more. Remember the time in your experience when Jesus Christ was most tender, most near, most sweet, most mysterious, most soul-sufficing for you, and be sure that He stands beside you ready to renew the ancient blessing and to surpass it in His gift. Man’s love sometimes wearies, Christ’s never; man’s basket may be emptied, Christ’s is fuller after the distribution than it was before. This fountain can never run dry. Not until seven times, but until seventy times seven; perfection multiplied into perfection, and that again multiplied by perfection once more, is the limit of the inexhaustible mercy of our Lord. And all in which the past has been rich lives in the present.

Remember, too, that this same thought which heartens us to front the inevitable changes also gives dignity, beauty, poetry, to the small, prosaic present. Jesus Christ is the same to-day!’ We are always tempted to think that this moment is commonplace and insignificant. Yesterday lies consecrated in memory; to-morrow radiant in hope; but to-day is poverty-stricken and prose. The sky is furthest away from us right over our heads; behind and in front it seems to touch the earth. But if we will only realise that all that sparkling lustre and all that more than mortal tenderness of pity and of love with which Jesus Christ has irradiated and sweetened any past is verily here with us amidst the commonplaces and insignificant duties of the dusty to-day, then we need look back to no purple distance, nor forward to any horizon where sky and earth kiss, but feel that here or nowhere, now or never, is Christ the all-sufficient and unchanging Friend. He is faithful. He cannot deny Himself.

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