JESUS CHRIST IS THE SAME
David J Hutson
Hebrews 13: 8
This scripture has been much on my mind and heart today, and the hymn our beloved brother has given out (Hymn 29) seemed to confirm bringing it forward at this time. What a comfort it is to know this glorious Man, Jesus Christ! This verse is not so much the assertion of who He is in His Person, the One “who is over all, God blessed for ever” (Rom 9: 5), the One of whom it could be said as to His Person, “he who is, and who was, and who is to come” (Rev 1: 8); but refers rather to His Manhood.
The order here is, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and to the ages to come”. “Yesterday” refers to a period of time; what a time it was, the “yesterday” of Jesus! We can take account of that precious life here and all that was seen there, all that He was in the revelation of God, all that He was in the display of the grace and love of God to man; and how that “yesterday” came to an end. Who can say as to what that was, the closing up of that life? It is not as our lives are closed through the frailty and weakness of the condition in which we are, but He laid down His life in order that He might take it again, John 10: 17. But what that involved for Him, that death! As one could say, ‘For Him, death was death. Man’s utter weakness, Satan’s extreme power …', JND CW vol 7 p169. What can we say as to the close of that “yesterday”? Where would we be apart from the close of that “yesterday”?
But oh the wonder of it, that was not the end! His “yesterday” was not the end: “yesterday, and to-day”. How wonderful, beloved, that we can have a living link with this glorious Man “to-day”! What an extended period that has been, the “to-day”! How soon it will end we do not know. We might say it could be today, but what a period it is now when the Holy Spirit has come and the assembly is here, and Christ is to be known as in relation to His body “today”: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and to the ages to come”. All that love, all those feelings that were expressed in His “yesterday” are expressed today. What a comfort that is to us in our weaknesses. As it says also in this epistle, He is able “to sympathise with our infirmities”, chap 4: 15. What a comfort is this glorious “to-day” in its application to us, when we think of the feelings that were expressed in His “yesterday”.
But He is still “the same”, “the same yesterday, and to-day, and to the ages to come”. How wonderful that time will be when “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”, 1 John 3: 2! We shall no longer need Him as Saviour as we do now. As another has said, the last act of salvation is when He comes to change “our body of humiliation into conformity to his body of glory”, Phil 3: 21. We shall be saved even out of the mortal condition to be with Him for ever; as it says, “to the ages to come”.
I say no more, beloved, but it was just as pondering this for some time today, and our brother’s hymn so related to it that I felt I should bring it forward that we might all have some impression of the glory of this blessed One, some impression of what He is to us. I know not the pressures and the troubles that are upon each one who is here. May it be a comfort to you, dear brother and sister: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day”; and, as we have this appreciation of Him, may it stimulate us in relation to our present answer to Him! Surely we would be stimulated in that blessed desire of His to remember Him in the time of His absence in view of the time when He will be manifest in glory, and we shall be with Him “to the ages to come”.
May the Lord bless the word!
Edinburgh
11th November 2014