The Unchanging Christ

On May 20, 1927 at 7:52 AM Charles Lindberg took off from New York City in a small monoplane he had dubbed “The Spirit of Saint Louis.” 33.5 hours and 3,600 miles later, he landed in Paris, France – the first solo transatlantic flight in an airplane. Today, the International Space Station orbits the earth at a speed of 3800 KM at an altitude of 1,000 KM/s. The rest of the world has changed as rapidly in the same time span.
In the twentieth century, mankind went from the “horse and buggy age” to the “automobile age,” to the “age of aviation,” to the “jet age,” to the “atomic age,” to the “space age,” to the “age of cyberspace.” The “Laplace Theory” has been replaced by the “Big Bang Theory,” with several interim theories of the beginning in between. The technological revolution of or age is affecting our culture and economy as much as or more than the Renaissance or Industrial Revolution a century and a half earlier.
As is historically usual, it is assumed that human beings in 'our' age are spiritually and morally superior to our antecedents and that spiritual evolution paralleling biological evolution accounts for this progress. Ours is the only generation since Constantine’s conversion to Christianity that has allowed such changes to alter our faith and our moral values.
For the Christian first, and ultimately for the race, all this change raises some vital questions. “Is the death, in the first century, of Jesus of Nazareth for our sin and the sealing of eternal life by His resurrection still ‘Good News’ or is it to be abandoned for some ‘New Age’ gospel more relevant to life in the twenty-first century?” Are the virgin birth, sinless life, miracle-ministry, atoning death and the mind boggling resurrection of a Galilean carpenter who lived 2,000 years ago to be relegated to the ash heap of history along with the multitude of gods and goddesses of the Graeco-Roman first-century pantheon? Do we need a “more mature” god, who makes no moral demands on our enlightened value system? Shall we exchange the hope of eternal life for the shallow condolences of reincarnation? Shall we abandon prayers for chants and trust our evolved intellects instead of “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?” Or is Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever?
The answer to these and other such questions begins with a close look at the perpetual instability of human nature. The entire history of man has been a history of change. The best known characters in history are famous for the alterations within themselves and the changes they brought to the lives of others. Ancient Egyptian culture was the slowest to change. “Man fears time, time fears the pyramids.” Yet Egypt did change. Modern Egypt bears little resemblance to the Egypt of Tutankhamen, Nefertiti, Ramses VI or Moses.
Abraham Lincoln is not considered, and accurately so, the greatest American who has yet lived because he was born in a log cabin. Most people born in the early 19th century on what was then the American frontier were born in cabins. Lincoln is famous because of the way he changed himself and redefined the nation in two minutes at a cemetery in Gettysburg, Pa.
Julius Caesar said, “I am as constant as the North star!” Despite his claim, his career is the archetype of a fickle political opportunist. He was changeable and changing!
Even bold, self confident Simon Peter became a coward when Jesus needed him most and Judas changed from a disciple of Christ to history’s most infamous traitor.
It is this universal inconsistency in fallen human nature that prevents anyone from saving himself. The purpose of God’s Law, in part, was to demonstrate that man in his present state is incapable of consistent righteousness. The sacrificial rituals of pagan religions attest to the common awareness that we are seldom, if ever, what the gods demand.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is essentially God’s answer to human inconsistency. Jesus alone is “the same yesterday, today and forever” and we killed Him for what He was. It is only by placing our spirit, mind and body in the nail scarred hands of Him Who is changeless that our unreliable natures are changed into His constant, unchanging likeness. It is for this reason that Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor who was changed to Paul the apostle, insisted dogmatically on the unchanging nature of the Gospel. It was he who wrote, “…even if we or an angel from heaven, preach to any other gospel to you that what we have preached to you, let him be anathema (considered as one dedicated to a pagan idol).” (Galatians 1:8).
Paul had won the Galatians from the superstitious idolatry with which they had deluded themselves. They had experienced the grace of God in the changeless Christ. Now some Jews, who instead of trusting Christ alone were worshiping Christ plus; carrying the Gospel of Christ on one shoulder and the Law of Moses on the other. The first sentence of the letter he wrote to them constitutes his briefest definitive statement of the Gospel he preached: “Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present fickle age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever.” (Galatians 1:3-5; author’s translation).
Paul’s contention is that, unless this truth is exclusively and absolutely true, Christ died in vain and we are yet in our sins (I Corinthians 15:17). In Galatians 1:6-7).He expresses his complete amazement that anyone would actually abandon the “blessed assurance” of Christ for the uncertainty of their own religious efforts, even in an attempt to obey God’s own Law. In verse 6, the word translated “another” in the KJV and “different” in the NIV is heteron, meaning different in kind. The Judaizers were not only proclaiming another Gospel than the one Paul had preached in Galatia; they were preaching an entirely different kind of message. His message was “by grace have you been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God (Ephesians 1:8).” Their message was salvation by Christ plus keeping the Law.
Paul’s amazement is measured by the gulf between the Christian’s certain salvation in the changeless Christ and the absolute uncertainty of human competence to face and solve the real issues of life and death through religion. His insistence is that God has done something for us in Christ that no sinful human in any age, by any religion or philosophy, can possibly do for himself. He has planted his readers’ feet firmly on the unshifting rock of God’s love, grace and mercy; the only source of stability in a vacillating world.
The question you and I must answer is: “Is Paul’s Gospel changeless in our rapidly changing world?” Does insistence on a changeless Christ make the Christian faith rigid, intolerant and unbending in a culture that denies the existence of absolute truth and has enthroned tolerance as a sacred cow on the altar of oxymoronic “broad-mindedness?” Is the first century Christ capable of meeting twenty-first century needs?
The answers lie in another question: “Just how much has the world actually changed?” The Internet may replace the tom-tom, but what is happening is still communication. Nuclear powered ocean liners and super-sonic jests may replace dugout canoes and covered wagons, but what is happening is still transportation. The wife and oxen pulling the plow have been changed for a computerized tractor guided by a satellite signal, but what is happening is the raising of food. The birthing stool in the primitive, smoke filled hut, has (in developed countries) been replaced by a family oriented birthing center in a sterile, smoke free hospital, but human life is still being ushered into the world. The witch doctor’s mask has been replaced by the surgeon’s mask, but what is happening is an effort to prolong life and postpone death.
What is true of mankind’s basic physical needs is also true of our spiritual and psychological needs. Real progress is grounded on what never changes. The “scientific concept” is essentially a Christian hypothesis. Without these dependable constants, scientific discovery is impossible.
By the same token, the Christian Gospel presents Christ as the object of faith and so gives mankind the Morning Star to steer by in a world of uncertainty. The self-destructive person who finds himself without a purpose in life need only read the first three chapters of Paul’s Ephesian epistle to find a purpose so much bigger than himself as to challenge him throughout a productive lifetime. The person who is suffering from feelings of guilt need only admit that the guilt is not imagined but real and bring it to the foot of the cross to find “the peace of God that passes all (secular) understanding.” The person who at last comes face to face with his own death need only place a trusting hand in the nail scarred hand of The Galilean Carpenter to “walk through the valley of the shadow” with no fear of evil.
In any age, when sin has stained the conscience, twisted the mind, overshadowed life, weakened the will, clouded the sense of right and wrong, the unchanging Gospel says, “Christ died for the ungodly.”
As long as people betray people, deny human need and destroy relationships, there will be the desperate need for the reconciling, unchanging Good News of Calvary! As long as man’s life on earth is measured by the pages of a calendar, there will be the need of the life that was bought and paid for on Golgotha by the eternal, changeless Son of The Ancient of Days.