“Changes,” a popular ’70s-era song, captures well the feeling many of us have toward the notion of change:
Everyone is going through changes;
No one knows what’s going on;
And everybody changes places,
But the world still carries on.
Love must always change to sorrow,
And everyone must play the game;
It’s here today and gone tomorrow,
But the world goes on the same.1
We can sense a cynical element in these lyrics. They paint a picture of men and women being trapped in a kind of endless cycle of events beyond their control and without any ultimate purpose.
But when we come to the Bible, we find the antidote to this dim outlook. In what is probably the best-known verse in the book of Hebrews, the author writes, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (13:8). No doubt, the original readers of Hebrews were facing changes. Verse 7 tells us that much. “Remember your leaders,” the author reminds them, “those who spoke”—past tense—“to you the word of God.” It seems that certain leaders in the congregation had moved on, no longer available to lead and to guide. Yet the people are reminded to maintain a steady focus on the one who’s always available, always the same, and never changing.
The Christian’s hope is in the one who does not change. But rather than simply say, “Jesus does not change,” the writer of Hebrews uses the language of “yesterday,” “today,” and “forever.” Each term highlights a unique dimension of our Lord’s enduring nature. Let’s briefly consider each one.
Jesus Yesterday
From the letter writer’s perspective, Jesus “yesterday” refers to His time on earth. Elsewhere, the author calls this period “the days of his flesh” (5:7). It’s a striking thought: Jesus living and ministering among the crowds, healing, teaching, serving. And although we can’t go back to the period when Jesus walked among us, we don’t have to wonder what He was like. We know because we have record of it in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Jesus understood His mission to be the fulfillment of Israel’s prophetic hopes. He was sent to preach the Gospel, free captives, and transform people’s lives (Luke 4:18–21). And that’s exactly what we find the Lord doing in the Gospel accounts. His disposition was compassionate. We see Him touching the untouchables and mingling with sinners. He put His finger on men and women’s true needs, not merely on their perceived issues. Unashamed to eat with such as these, Jesus at the same time called them to repentance and faith (Luke 5:32).
Further, His teaching was clear. Jesus learned by looking up and looking out. He studied, for example, as He walked through the harvest fields, which is why He could say, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground” (Mark 4:26). The crowds were astonished at the simple profoundness of Christ’s stories. He taught as one full of authority and in a way that they could grasp (Mark 1:22).
Because of the Gospel records, we don’t need to doubt what Jesus was like “yesterday.”
Jesus Today
But what about “today”? Because the pressing question is whether Jesus is still like that. In our human experience, we ebb and flow. How we are on Monday will likely be different than on Wednesday. We’re not the same people in our forties as we were in our twenties. We start our days energized and end them wearied.
Jesus touched the untouchables and mingled with sinners.
But not Jesus. He’s the same. What we learn about Him from “yesterday” applies to “today,” because He does not change. And the letter to the Hebrews affirms Christ’s sameness on at least two fronts.
First, we know that Jesus is able to save completely, because He always lives to make intercession for us when we come to God in prayer (Heb. 7:25). We read in the Gospels of Jesus reaching into people’s lives and transforming them, and there’s a real sense in which He continues to do that today. He appears in the presence of the Father on our behalf. That’s why we can sing, “Before the throne of God above I have a strong and perfect plea.”2
Jesus’ continuing ministry changes how we view prayer. Prayer isn’t a long list of desires and requests. It’s like cozying in, saying, “Jesus, all that I discovered about You yesterday is true and relevant today. I may not have Your arm around me physically, but I have Your enduring Word and Your indwelling Spirit. I have Your promises.”
Second, Jesus is the same in that He continues to sympathize with us entirely (Heb. 4:15). The Westminster Confession reminds us that Christ took upon Himself man’s nature “with all its essential properties and common frailties, yet without sin.”3 In other words, Jesus became part of what He created. He’s neither a phantom nor a concept but is today a flesh-and-blood reality.
Think about it: How can God feel our sadness and share in our gladness unless He steps down into time—unless He takes upon Himself, in the form of the second person of the Trinity, all that is in humanity, sin aside? God in Christ has confronted our frailty head-on. That God became a man authenticates our human experience. Just as we weep, wonder, hope, and yearn, so does the Lord Jesus. He’s the same today.
Jesus Forever
What Jesus was “yesterday” He is “today.” And the writer of Hebrews adds that He will be like that “forever.”
So often we look for contentment in things that change. In fact, a few verses earlier in Hebrews 13, the author instructs believers to keep their lives “free from love of money” (v. 5). Why that exhortation there? Perhaps it’s because the writer understands our tendency to love things that have no enduring quality to them. Either we long to hold on to the possessions we have, or we set out to accumulate what we don’t have. But he reminds us to look not to what is fleeting and instead to the one who is the same forever.
Because God has said, “I will never leave you,” we can confidently say, “I will not fear” (Heb. 13:5–6). That’s a declaration. It’s volitional before it’s emotional, such that we can confess—even when we don’t sense the full weight of its truthfulness—“Everything will change. Heaven and earth will pass away. Yet God remains always.”
The one who bore the wrath we deserve and who leads the company of the redeemed in praise is the unchanging God.
The fact of Hebrews 13:8 turns the lyrics we rehearsed above on their head, doesn’t it? “Everyone is going through changes,” and “no one knows what’s going on.” First line: true. Second line: false. Everyone is facing changes—but there is one who knows what’s going on: He who laid the foundations of the earth, who took on flesh to suffer in the sinner’s place. The one who bore the wrath that we deserve and who leads the company of the redeemed in praise is the unchanging God.
Who can fulfill that “forever” category other than the eternal Christ? And so we declare in the face of an ever-changing world:
Yesterday, today, forever,
Jesus is the same.
All may change, but Jesus never!
Glory to His name!
Glory to His name! Glory to His name!
All may change, but Jesus never!
Glory to His name!4
This article was adapted from the sermon “Jesus—Always, Only” by Alistair Begg.
Alan Price, “Changes” (1973). ↩︎
Charitie Lees Bancroft, “Before the Throne” (1863). ↩︎
The Westminster Confession of Faith, Modern English Study Version, 8.2. ↩︎
Albert Benjamin Simpson, “O How Sweet the Glorious Message” (1890). ↩︎
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