This verse is notably studied to serve as a true guidepost to the
viewpoint of Hebrews. In particular, the word ‘yesterday’, properly understood,
summarizes and points to the distinctive viewpoint and message of the author.
It points to the view that lies behind and finds frequent expression in chapters 1-12.
This view has at times been missed, particular by interpreters who have
been misled by a wrong use of the words ‘the same’. Under the influence of this
phrase, it has sometimes been thought that 13.8 is emphasizing the unchanging
nature of Jesus Christ. . . . But 13.8 does not embody a basically Platonic
point of view. The key word that points away from an essentially Platonic,
basically timeless manner of thought is ‘yesterday’. To be sure, if as has been
suggested we were to take this word to refer to all previous time and so to
mean ‘from all eternity’, the ideas of time and change would not be dominant.
But ‘yesterday’ does not mean ‘from all eternity’ or ‘throughout all the vast
vistas of preceding time’. It points to Jesus Christ as one who just recently
became what he now is and what he always will be in all the endless succession
of future ages.
This does not imply that quite recently Jesus Christ became completely other
than what he had been before. He was and is and will remain the divine Son. But
he was not until recently the qualified high priest who could make the once-for-all
and fully effective sacrifice.
This may seem to be a shocking statement, but it is basic to a true
understanding of Hebrews, whose author asserts it with unmistakable clarity:
Christ ‘learned obedience through what he suffered; and being made
perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him’
(5.8-9). To offer the perfect sacrifice he had to be the perfect high priest.
To be the qualified perfect high priest he had to learn obedience through
suffering in his earthly life. To achieve this he necessarily ‘for a little
while was made lower than the angels’ (2.9) and ‘had to be made like his
brethren in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high
priest in the service of God, to make expiation for the sins of his people’ (2.17-18).
Amazin as this idea may seem to men, God had to ‘make the pioneer of
their salvation perfect through suffering’ (2.10). To enter the true and
heavenly sanctuary, to offer there the one perfect sacrifice on our behalf (9.11-14),
and to intercede there for his people (7.25), Jesus had to become qualified,
to be perfected, to learn obedience through what he suffered, to present his
own blood as the perfect sacrifice, and then to reign with God (1.3) and
continue his high priestly ministry by his intercession for his people (7.25).
All this, the author attests, has taken place. It has taken place ‘in
these last days’ (1.2), and while the author is conscious of belonging to at
least the second generation of Christians (2.3; 13.7), this does not prevent
him, as he sees the coming and work of Christ in the long sweep of God’s
dealings with Israel, from speaking of these decisive events as having occurred
‘yesterday’.
In this drama of redemption time is real; it is the setting for the
saving work of Christ. And specific unique events are decisive. It was in
crucial divine acts of God that salvation was won and made available. This
gospel has to be stated in terms of time, in terms of one decisive network of historical
events.
Nothing like it—except by way of a type or foreshadowing of that unique
and fully effective climatic working of God in Christ—had been seen or done
before. Nothing to rival it can ever be expected again, for the work of Christ
is complete and fully adequate and will never need to be done again. No new
change in Jesus Christ will be expected or needed, for he has been ‘made perfect’
(5.9). So Jesus Christ is ‘the same’ ‘today’ as he became ‘yesterday’, and will
remain ‘the same’ on into the endless ages to come, ‘for ever’.
This sense of the decisive and permanent effect of a unique recent historical
event the author expresses by the use of two synonymous adverbs, ‘once’ (απαξ) and ‘once for all’ (εφαπαξ). Jesus offered a
fully effective sacrifice for the sins of his people ‘once for all when he
offered up himself’ (7.27). ‘He has appeared once for all at the end of the age
to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself’ (9.26). ‘He entered once for all
into the Holy Place, . . . thus securing an eternal redemption’ (9.12). ‘We
have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for
all’ (10.10).
It is essentially to this radical once-only action to deal with human
sin that the author refers when he speaks of ‘yesterday’ with its continuing
effects. It was an action which deeply affected Christ, in a way that had
lasting results, so that he can now be described as ‘the same yesterday and
today and for ever’. Thus a time sense, the sense of a unique recent decisive
event, runs through the discussion of Hebrews and what 13.8 says is a compact
reference to what chapters 1-12 presents in much greater detail.
To many Christians this entire discussion may seem theologically
disturbing. It may seem to question the solid everlasting faithfulness and
dependability of God. And it can be pointed out that Hebrews itself clearly indicates
that the work of Jesus Christ continued, climaxed, and perfected what God had
already spoken and done in Israel. A providential line connects the Old
Testament history with the work of God in Christ (even though the author’s
concern for interpreting the Old Testament Scriptures, mainly the Levitical
law, looms larger than his interest in the sequence of historical events in the
Old Testament story). But to the author of Hebrews that history was a real
history and God was at work in it. When this fact is faced and frankly
considered, we must say that time is real to the author of Hebrews, and indeed
we must go a step further and say that in his view time was real to God. He knew
God by what God had done and said in successive events. He saw God in the
ongoing time sequence, and supremely in what God had done in Jesus Christ ‘yesterday’.
(Floyd V. Filson, ‘Yesterday’: A Study of Hebrews in the Light of Chapter 13
[Studies in Biblical Theology Second Series 4; Naperville, Illin.: Alec R.
Allenson, Inc., 1967], 31, 32-35)
If it should be suggested that the above argument puts too much of a
load on one word, it must be replied that it is precisely the word that sums up
the message of Hebrews that ‘in these last days’ God has acted decisively with
everlasting effect, and that he has so acted in Christ, who only in this quite
recently time, these recent ‘days of his flesh’ (5.7), ‘learned obedience, was ‘made
perfect’ (5.8-9), and ‘offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins’
(10.12). After those decisive recent developments he was, is now, and always
will be ‘the same’. (Ibid., 35 n. 11)