Kootenai Church: Hebrews

Well, we are creatures that are given to change, constantly changing, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly. Sometimes we feel the change; sometimes we don't. As people, we get tired, and then we are energetic after we rest, and then we get tired again after that. We go from being hungry to full and then back to being hungry, from thirsty to satiated and then back to being thirsty again. Our emotions change, our affections, our thoughts, our purposes, intentions, desires, our likes, our dislikes, our mental capabilities, our inclinations, our intellect, our skills, our gifts, our abilities, all of them change. And we live in a world that is constantly changing, and we live in a world surrounded by other creatures that are constantly changing.
In fact, the only thing in our world that we really associate with never changing is rocks. And Scripture uses rock as an illustration of a God who does not change, but like all illustrations of God, that one fails in that rocks still change, imperceptible to us, imperceptible to the naked eye, and imperceptible to us even in our lifetime, but rocks do change. Rocks are wet and then they are dry; they are hot and then they are cold. Rocks crack and they split open. Rocks leak out subatomic particles into the atmosphere. Rocks also absorb subatomic particles. The makeup of rocks changes over time as different chemicals are leaked out of them by weather and rain and by erosion and even by sunshine. They crack and erode and slowly degrade, and so even rocks change.
In fact, there is nothing in all of our experience, nothing in all of our world and all of our life that does not change. Everything is fraught with change. And all of the uncertainties of life that cause us anxiety and angst and stress and churning in our gut, all of those things are due to changes. It's because things change that we worry. If we knew that everything was always going to be the same, then we would never have anything to worry about. But things change. Political situations change. Economies change. Monetary supply changes. Politicians change. Policy changes. With the whims of the most feckless and cowardly people, somebody can change from being an ally to an adversary overnight. Everything around us changes. Everything in our environment changes. All of our circumstances change. The entire cosmos is changing.
And therefore, when we read something like Hebrews 13:8, that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,” how that is a solace to the sin-weary heart. How that is a comfort to people who could be in angst over all of the uncertainties of life. To know that there is something better, someone who never changes. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. For the anxious believer who is tossed about by life's storms and the afflictions, that is comfort. To the persecuted believer who is threatened to be overcome by adversaries and the hostility of the world, that is comforting. To the believer who is getting to the end of their race and looking, as it were, at the finish line as you're getting up in years and you're starting to think about the realities of what is to come and going through death, that reality, that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, that is very comforting and encouraging.
And that is our text here this morning. We're just going to meditate upon that profound truth. And as I prepared this and as I went over this throughout the course of this week and this morning, I came to the realization that there are all kinds of implications and applications that I could draw from this that would gobble up weeks of Sundays. But I'm not going to do that. We're going to just consider today the theology behind this, this statement, that Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, because there are certain things that that is not true of regarding the Person of Christ. We'll see that in a moment. There are certain things that that does not describe and certain things that it does describe. And for the sake of clarity in our theology, we have to know what those are. Then I want to show you how that truth is connected here to the context and why it fits so gloriously in between verse 7 and verse 9. And then we want to consider some of the implications and the applications of that profound truth for both the believer and the unbeliever.
So let's begin first with the theology behind that statement. This is the theology of immutability. Immutability. It's a big, kind of theological word. It simply means the unchangingness of God, and not just that God doesn't change but that God cannot change. He by His nature is immutable. He must be the same yesterday, today, and forever. So if we are to say that Christ has not changed, that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, that is a statement of divinity. This is the way that the author describes one who is in His essence and in His nature unchanging from all of eternity past to all of eternity future. And of course, that includes today.
“Yesterday” does not refer here to the time during the lives of the leaders that are mentioned in verse 8. Some have suggested it, that the author here is referring back to the leaders in verse 8 and saying, “In their days (the leaders), Christ was the same, and He is the same today.” In fact, the author here is using a proverbial expression to describe the unchangingness of Christ from all of eternity past to all of eternity future, which of course includes today. He must therefore be divine, for only God can be said to be not only eternal but also eternally unchanging. Whatever does not change must be uncreated and therefore divine. Even angels change in the sense that angels learn things and know things, and their knowledge therefore changes. And angels at a point did not exist and now they do exist, so that is a change in the nature of angels, from being not to being something. That's a change. Anything and everything that is created changes. And so to call Christ unchanging and the same yesterday, today, and forever is to affirm His deity.
John Owen says that “this is a kind of proverbial speech wherein respect is had unto all seasons to denote the eternity and immutability of Christ in them all.” Big, fancy way of saying this is simply a proverbial phrase. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. It's a proverbial phrase that simply describes Christ in all seasons and in all circumstances as unchanging in His essence and in His nature. It's like Revelation 1:4, where we read ”Grace to you and peace, from Him who is and who was and who is to come.” Kind of a proverbial way, a poetic way of saying, “Concerning One who has always existed and who exists now and who will always exist—that is, Christ—yesterday and an eternity of yesterdays and an eternity of todays and an eternity of tomorrows, He is always the same. And wherever you in the timeline of those eternal todays find yourself, wherever you are at, with whatever circumstances you are going through, Christ is unchanging. He is absolutely the same in His essence.
This is not a new concept in the book of Hebrews. Back at chapter 1, which we read earlier in the service, the author says essentially the same thing, and I won't have you turn there and read all of it, but we observe there the difference between the angels, the angelic hosts, to whom Yahweh says certain things, and then the divine Son, whom He brings into the world, to whom Yahweh says other things. Chapter 1, verse 8: “But of the Son He says, ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.’” That's a magnificent statement because there the author of Hebrews is saying that Yahweh, the Father, said to the Son, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever” (Heb. 1:8). You have the Father calling the Son God and affirming His deity there.
8 “And the righteous scepter is the scepter of His kingdom.
9 You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness above Your companions.”
10 And, “You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of Your hands [that is describing the eternal and unchanging Christ];
11 [And then the author says this:] they, [that is, the heavens] will perish, but You remain; and they all will become old like a garment,
12 and like a mantle You will roll them up; like a garment they will also be changed. But You are the same, and Your years will not come to an end.” (Heb. 1:8–12 NASB)
Yahweh the Father says to a different Person, Yahweh the Son, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever” (v. 8). The scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom, and though all of creation, which You have made and laid the foundations of, though all of it will eventually be rolled up like a scroll, You never change and You endure forever. That's the Father speaking to the Son. So it shouldn't surprise us now that we get to the end of the book of Hebrews and we have the author returning to the theme that he started the book of Hebrews with, namely the deity of Jesus Christ and His unchanging nature.
Psalm 90:2 says, “Before the mountains were born or You gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.” This is almost an inconceivable thought. If you allow your mind to go back as far as your mind can go back, prior to the creation of the world, and then think back eons and eons beyond that, and then multiply that times a million, as if time could exist back then as it does now, then you go back to that point and say, “OK, I've gone past creation to the point of a million times where my mind can go,” and then realize you haven't even touched the edge of eternity past yet. And then you realize at that point God was, and He always was, and He has never changed, and He is never changing. And then just zip forward in your mind to the future and ten thousand millennia into the new heavens and the new earth, that same God will exist, and He will never change, and His days will not come to an end. That is almost an unfathomable reality, but it is true.
Malachi 3:6: “For I, the Lord, do not change; [here's the application of that] therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.” See, God's unchanging nature is the very reason why Israel existed in the covenant, why God did not destroy that nation in the way that would have meant their complete end and their complete destruction. “You are not consumed because I do not change; My purposes do not change.” And because that is true, God can be trusted to keep His Word. The same quality of eternal immutability is here, in this passage, applied to Christ. He doesn't change and He can't change.
Think of it this way. It is impossible for God to change because if God is God, then He must be absolutely perfect. Perfect in all of His attributes, perfect in all of His characteristics, perfect in everything that could be said about Him. He is perfect and infinitely perfect in every way that we could conceive of God. From all of His various attributes. Perfect in all of them. Perfect in knowledge, wisdom, power, understanding, kindness, benevolence, grace, mercy, holiness, justice, righteousness, all of God's perfections. All of His attributes are really His perfections. And He is infinitely perfect in all of them. If God changes, He can only change in one of two ways. He either would become better than who He is, which means that He was not God before He changed because by nature, by definition, God is that perfect being. Or He would have to change and become less than who He was, which means He would cease to be God, and He can't cease to be God. God can only change for the better or for the worse. If He changes for the better, He wasn't God before. If He changes for the worse, He's not God afterward. Therefore He must be by His very nature unchanging and unchangeable.
Now let me offer you two necessary qualifiers as we consider this in connection with the Lord Jesus Christ. This means that God, and thus Christ by His divine nature, is unchanging and unchangeable in regard to His nature, not His works. His nature, not His works. I'll give you a simple illustration to illustrate what I mean by that. Often Hebrews 13:8 is quoted by Charismatics as a proof text to suggest that if God did something in the past, He must be doing the same thing today. God gave the gift of tongues in the first century and Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, therefore the same gift of tongues must be available today. God did miracles in the past through miracle workers and since Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, the gift of miracles must still be going on in the church. God spoke to people in all kinds of ways in the past outside of Scripture through personal revelation, private revelation, voices, prophets, dreams, visions, etc., and since Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, that same thing must be going on inside the church today. You get it? That's how the verse is used by Charismatics. But this verse is describing the nature and the essence of Christ, not how He works or how He works in various dispensations. This verse has nothing to do with how God works or the nature of His activities. It has to do with the nature of our God, the eternal and divine Son, the Savior of His people.
And how do I know that? Because Hebrews is a book about things that have changed and the way God has worked in the past that He no longer works presently. It begins this way: “In times past, God spoke this way, this way, and this way. Now He has spoken to us in His Son.” Same God, different way of working. In fact, in our very context here, verses 9 and following, you have reference to the tabernacle and foods which were outlawed and prohibited, and those who serve at the tabernacle—that is, the priesthood—and the bodies of animals and animal sacrifices being brought into the holy place, and then outside the camp. Do we do any of those things today? No, there is a time when God worked through those means and in that manner, correct? But He does not anymore. Does that mean His nature has changed? No. Therefore, it is irrelevant to the discussion of spiritual gifts or miracles or how God speaks as to the nature of our God. He simply spoke in one way at one time and He no longer speaks that way now. He gave this gift then, He no longer gives it now. That is not a violation of Hebrews 13:8. Therefore, the fact that God or Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever has no bearing at all upon how God works at different periods of time in history.
Second qualification: this describes not Christ's humanity but His deity. This describes His deity, not His human nature, the human nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. The nature of Christ is the same though His condition may have changed. For instance, this does not describe the condition in which Christ was at all times. There was a time when He was in Heaven, adored by angels, and then there was a time in which He was on earth being spit upon by men. His condition changed. His location changed. He was enthroned in Heaven and then He slept under the stars. He was without a human body at one point. Then He was incarnated and took upon Himself a human nature. The divine essence, the nature, did not change, though the appearance of it and the manifestation of it and the location of where that nature was to be seen did change at some point.
And even the man Christ Jesus, we cannot say of His human nature that His human nature did not change or that nothing about the man Christ Jesus changed because there were things about Him that did change. Luke 1:80: “And the child [that is, Jesus] continued to grow and to become strong in spirit.” Here you have the man Christ Jesus, who was God in human flesh, who in His humanity grew in His spirit and became strong in His spirit. “The Child continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom,” Luke 2:40 says. The man Christ Jesus increased in wisdom and He increased in stature, Luke 2:52 says. And Hebrews 5:8 says that “He [that is, the man Christ Jesus] learned obedience from the things which He suffered.” So He learned things, He picked things up, He increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and men. The man Christ Jesus developed, though the nature, His essential nature as God, the second Person, never did change. But His human nature did change.
There was a time when Jesus Christ, the man Christ Jesus who was the God-man, did not exist. He was incarnated in human flesh. That was a change, but it was a change not of His essential nature, but it was a change in the circumstances or His situation. So when we say that He does not change, we're not talking about the man, the humanity of Christ Jesus. Jesus got hungry and He thirsted and He drank and was filled. He got tired and was rejuvenated by resting and sleeping. Those things about Him did change and did develop. But Christ, the divine nature, never changes. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Now, if you say to yourself, “I'm not sure I can get my mind around that,” I agree with you. That's hard to get your mind around. But we have to be able to express both of those realities concerning the man Christ Jesus, that there are certain things that we say about Him by virtue of His humanity, there are certain things that we say and affirm about Him by virtue of His deity, and we can affirm both of those of the man Christ Jesus, who was both God and man.
So what about Him then is the same? His nature is the same. His power, His knowledge, His righteousness, His wisdom, kindness, majesty, goodness, mercy, glory, justice, wrath, dominion, grace, holiness, and deity—none of those change. None of them get better, by the way. None of them deteriorate. None of them are exhausted. None of them are altered. None of them improve. It's always the same, and His purposes are the same. His eternal plan and His redemptive purposes, they never change. His desire to save His people from their sins, His intention to judge the impenitent in their sins, and His desire and intention and purpose to make known the riches of His grace toward us in Christ Jesus, none of those things change. And His offices never change. He is forever the Son, beloved by the Father. He is forever the Savior of God's people, forever our intercessor, a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. He is forever the revealer of the Father, the Lamb of God who bore the sins of His people. He is unchanging as our substitute, our surety, our kinsman-redeemer, our Savior, as the firstfruits of our resurrection. He is unchanging as the one who is the King and rules all things, as the bridegroom of the church, the head of the church, the firstborn from the dead. And He is forever unchanging as the judge who will come in to judge the living and the dead.
So what we say about Christ is that He is Yahweh, the unchanging One who stepped into time and history and took upon Himself a human nature and united Himself forever in that humanity so that He could live a perfect life and then die on a cross as the substitute for His people, having lived under the law and then borne the curse of the law on behalf of His people. He bore our burden, took away our sin through the sacrifice of Himself on the cross, and then He raised Himself from the grave in a glorified human body as the victor over sin and death, and then has taken all of those whom the Father has given to Him, and He is bringing them to eternal life, having secured our justification by His death and His resurrection. And then He presented Himself alive with many infallible proofs and then has ascended to the Father's right hand where He intercedes for us, applying the merits of His sacrifice to those whom the Father gave to Him in eternity past. He intercedes for us now, and He waits without change and without shifting shadow until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet, and then He will return again to judge the living and the dead and to establish His kingdom and His promise to Him, and He will rule the nations with a rod of iron and He will destroy the wicked and He will destroy the impenitent and cast them into everlasting damnation, and then He will re-create this creation—a new heavens and a new earth—and He will bring us, those who have trusted in Christ, with Him into that new creation, and we will rule and reign with Him for all of eternity in a creation that does not change, does not wear out, and never perishes. That is what He has promised to us.
How do I know for certain that that will happen? Because He does not change. He can't improve upon that plan. He can't decide that that plan is not the best plan and then come up with some other plan. He can never ditch that plan because it is a perfect plan, and it will bring Him a perfect amount of glory, and therefore His purposes cannot change and His nature cannot change. The same unchanging Jesus who offered Himself as a sacrifice for the sins of His people promises you forgiveness for your sins even now, because the day of His wrath is coming and He is unchanging in His determination to judge the impenitent and to cast them into everlasting shame and damnation. But the day of mercy is now, the day of clemency is now, the day of forgiveness is now. Embrace that One or you will stand before an unchangingly righteous and holy and just God who will fulfill His unchanging promise to cast you into everlasting damnation. The unchanging Christ is as angry toward sin and toward sinners now as He was when He sat as King over the flood and drowned the entire world except for eight people. And He is as unchangingly righteous and holy today as He was when He, the second Person, rained down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah. He is the unchanging God.
Repent and trust Him, come to this unchanging Savior, and He will save you. That is His promise, and that promise does not change. Neither does, by the way, the ending of the day of grace. There is a day fixed in which He will judge the world in righteousness, and God has given proof to all men by raising that judge from the dead (Acts 17:30–31). There is a day fixed, and it is unchanging. It is on God's calendar, and He is not moving it around for our sake. So seek forgiveness while it may be found.
So that's what this passage means. Now let's look at how it is connected to the context. I mentioned last week, verse 8 kind of feels like it's sort of dropped into the middle of a paragraph that deals with leaders and teachers and teachings, etc. Verse 8, you can see how easily it can be incorporated into verse 7, and it actually serves as sort of a perfect transition from 7, 8, and 9. Verse 7, you have the encouragement to remember those who led us and spoke the Word of God to us, considering the result of their conduct to imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. There's that theological statement sort of buried right there in the middle of that paragraph. And then verse 9 encourages us not to be carried away by varied and strange teachings. How is it connected to verse 7 with the mention of leaders? It's connected to that because the author is trying to remind us that the same leaders that we are to follow who spoke the Word of God to us and were an encouragement and brought us the gospel, those leaders trusted in a Christ who never changes. And therefore, we can never get to a point where we say to ourselves, “That may have been good for those who are of a different age, but it's not good enough for us. We need something more.” No, that Christ who sustained and encouraged and saved and sanctified and brought those of a previous generation through all of that to Himself and has secured their everlasting glory, that same Christ is unchanging for you and I. We never need anything more. The same Jesus that was good enough for them is good enough for us. And therefore, look to that one who does not change.
And if He does not change, then the truth about Him does not change either. That's verse 9. Don't be carried away by varied and strange teachings, these things that are new. Some Johnny-come-lately who pops onto the scene and says, “I have a new way of doing this, a new way of thinking about this, a new explanation for that”—don't be carried away by that nonsense.
All of this stuff mentioned in verses 9–14, that's filled with things that have changed. The tabernacle, the sacrifices, the priesthood, the offerings, the feasts and the festivals, all of those things have changed, but there is one who stands above all of that who never changes. And though His way of dealing with people and dealing with things may change over time, His nature and His essence do not, and therefore He is always sufficient.
Now third, let's consider the implications of this teaching. Oh, by the way, I had a quote here that I almost skipped over, but it's good enough that I want to back up and give it to you. It's A. W. Tozer. Tozer says this: “One of the most popular current errors, and the one out of which springs most of the noisy, blustering religious activity in evangelical circles, is the notion that as times change the church must change with them.” One of the most grievous errors to plague evangelicalism is the idea that just because times change, the church must adapt to it. That is wrong. We will never do that. We can never do that. That does not mean that we don't use different means of communication—online streaming, social media, overheads, things like that, technology. It doesn't mean that. But it means that the nature and essence of the church does not change. Why? Because our bridegroom does not change, and therefore the institution that He has created and what He has established and laid out, that never needs to change.
Now third, let's consider the implications of this teaching. If Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, then it means that He is forever the unchanging object of our faith. The leaders who point to Him will come and go, but Christ never does. The undershepherds may die. They may be raised up by God and shepherd the church for a period of time and then they pass from the scene and they are forgotten. But the great Shepherd of the sheep never dies and never changes. He remains the same. Culture may change and the political institutions may change. Technology and the spirit of the age or the zeitgeist may change. Circumstances, situations, conditions, and all of the cosmos may change, but Christ never does. He is forever and always the sure object of our faith. And so we look to Him with confidence and we repose ourselves in Him and we rest in Him and we trust in Him and we preach Him, knowing all the time that in doing so He never changes. He is the same for an eternity of yesterdays, an eternity of todays, and an eternity of tomorrows. And because He never changes, He is the sure object of faith for His people in all ages. He is the one to whom we look and trust. He is the one that we obey and worship. He is reliable and always true because He never changes. And therefore, we can never find Him to fail. So we command men and women to come to Him and to believe upon Him and trust in Him and find rest for their sin-weary souls, find forgiveness and cleansing for their stained consciences, and find atonement and payment for their mountains of iniquity. He never changes. He is always the same, and for that reason, He is the sure object of our trust.
Second, because Christ never changes, He will remain the same as the judge of the impenitent forever and ever. The judge of the impenitent. He is the Son of Psalm 2 whom we must kiss and do homage to or we will perish in the way. He is the King who is given to rule over Mount Zion and reign over His people. He is the rock of Daniel who will come in to crush all of the inferior kingdoms of this world. He is the King who is making ready His enemies as a footstool for His feet. He sat as King over the world during the flood and judged all of humanity, and He is coming to judge the world with fire, and that is not going to change. He is the unchanging Christ who it says in 2 Thessalonians 1:7,
7 Will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire,
8 dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
9 These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power,
10 when He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed—for our testimony to you was believed. (2 Thess. 1:7–10 NASB)
He has not changed. The same Christ who took upon Himself human flesh and came in Bethlehem and was in that manger in the incarnation, that same Christ is also the one who will come as the judge of the living and the dead. He has been appointed as the judge of all men, and He has promised—and He has promised—to damn those who will not turn from their sin and find forgiveness in Him, who will not trust His promise of reconciliation and forgiveness. He will pour out His wrath on the head of sinners, and the worm will not die and the fire will not stop because He will always be the one who judges the impenitent for their sin, and that will never change. He cannot forget a single sin that has ever been committed by rebels.
And because He does not change, He cannot forget you out of all of the mass of humanity on the final day. What are the chances that when He raises all His men and His people from the dead to present them glorious before His Father on that final day—what are the chances that you might be forgotten and left out? It cannot happen. Because that King never changes.
Third, because Christ never changes, His love for you is unchanging. Which means that from eternity past to eternity future, He has never loved you less. He will never love you less. He has never loved you more, and He will never love you more than He does right now. His love for you cannot change. Spurgeon said this:
Before the first star was kindled, before the first living creature began to sing the praise of its Creator, He loved His church with an everlasting love. He spied her in the glass of predestination, pictured her by His divine foreknowledge, and loved her with all His heart, and it was for this cause that He left His Father to become one with her that He might redeem her.
This is the love that motivated the incarnation. It is an unchanging love. It motivated His sacrifice. He loves His sheep. He gave His life for His sheep. He was raised again for His sheep. He brings His sheep to Himself and He secures His sheep everlastingly because the love of our Savior never changes. It's the same love that is demonstrated on the cross as the love that was manifested in the triune God from eternity past when He chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world. It's the same love that will be poured out on you for all of eternity. In fact, if you can fast-forward in your mind to that day when He presents you faultless before His throne with exceeding joy, and if you can go forward to that day when He seats you at the wedding feast of the Lamb and serves you that lavish supper, and when He rejoices over you with love and lavishes you with grace and love in His eternal kingdom and He gives you all of the rewards and the promised inheritance all prepared beforehand for you, when He re-creates all of creation and gives it to you to rule and to reign and to enjoy everlastingly without sin or a curse or death or any of the things that defile this creation, go forward in your mind to that day and imagine in that day, when you are faultless before Him without any sin, the love that you will feel and the love that you will experience in that moment, to its fullness, infinite love—that's the same love with which our Savior loves us today.
That love is not going to improve. It's not going to get better when we are without sin, as if He begrudgingly loves us a little bit now and thinks, “Man, I just, I've got to swallow hard when I love those people, but I can't wait for the day when they are out of their sin and removed from that and the curse is gone and then they are in Heaven, then I'm going to really love them.” No, the same love that chose you in Christ from eternity past is going to lavish His grace on you in eternity future, and it is the same love that caused Him to sacrifice Himself on a cross, and it is the same love with which He loves you today. It will never grow old; it will never diminish; it can never diminish. It will never increase; it cannot increase. Infinite and perfect love can never get better than infinitely perfect. And that's the perfect love that He has for you.
Fourth, since Christ does not change, His intention to sanctify His church never changes. He is as committed to expunging sin from your life and making you holy and conforming you to the image of Christ today as He was when He first saved you and as He will be on that final day when He raises you to everlasting life. His intention to chasten you, to discipline you, to afflict you, to love you through that affliction, and to get sin out of your life and to make you holy—His intention to do that is as strong today as it was when He chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world. And He will not let you go and He will not let up on you until He has accomplished His purpose because that purpose will not change.
Fifth, if Christ never changes, then His intention and His purpose to glorify you will not change either. He will keep what has been entrusted to Him. He will not abandon your soul. He will not leave you on the last day. He will not forget you on the day of resurrection. He will not forget that He chose you, that He loved you, that He sacrificed Himself for you, that He paid the price for your sin, that He granted you the gift of faith and repentance, that He brought you to Himself, and that He spent your lifetime sanctifying you when you die, only to forget you on that day. He cannot do that. He will not do that. And so His intention to glorify you and to present you without fault, blameless in the presence of His Father with exceeding joy, that is an unchanging intention. And He will not fail to bring to glory every last soul that has committed itself to Him. Spurgeon said this: “He will never be content until all whom He has bought with His blood shall become glorified by His power.” That is glorious. He will not be content until all who have been bought by His blood have been glorified by His power. He will not turn from this purpose. He will not abandon His plan. He will not change His decree concerning you. He will not, for He cannot. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Age after age, always the same. The same love, the same Savior, the same holiness, the same intention.
The immutability of our Savior is the guarantee of His love for you even now. So if you ever question His love or His wisdom, His kindness, His purposes for you, you just remember that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And while everything around you may change, including, listen carefully, including the degree to which you feel loved in any moment—that can change constantly. That can change from day to day. “Yesterday I didn't feel as loved by the Lord. Then I come to church on Sunday and I sing of His love and I'm with His people and I really feel loved. And then Monday comes and I'm back at the grind and I don't feel loved anymore.” Our affections and our feelings and how we react to the love of God is constantly changing because we are creatures of change, but His love never does. And the immutability of our Savior is the guarantee of His love, it is the guarantee of His sanctifying intention, and it is the guarantee that He will raise you up on the last day and give to you that unshakable kingdom that He has promised to you, along with all of the rewards and the inheritance that He has promised.