[Great Verses] Love the Lord Fullyনমুনা

“… My words will not pass away”

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

This is quite a statement, isn’t it? Some people say Jesus was a great religious teacher, immensely wise but merely human. But is this the sort of thing that a mere human would say? Can you imagine Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle making this statement: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away?”

It wouldn’t fit, would it? If a great philosopher or teacher talked this way, we would immediately conclude that this person is a raving lunatic or a deluded megalomaniac. The person would immediately lose all credibility. We would no longer take him seriously. Yet this is the way Jesus continually talked. He talked about forgiving people’s sins, about judging the living and the dead, about being the Light of the world, about giving people eternal life, and much more.

Jesus spoke this way, and he did it in the most natural, assured, even humble way. He wasn’t bragging. He wasn’t exalting himself. He was just stating the facts. This is the way it is, and you need to know it. Jesus said the sort of things that only a lunatic or a megalomaniac would say. Except, of course, He was God in the flesh. These statements on the lips of Jesus are the most natural things in the world.

And two thousand years later, can anyone doubt that the words in Matthew 24:35 are true? The words of Jesus are published in endless Bibles around the world, in thousands of languages. The words of Jesus are read, studied, memorized, copied, taught, and published continually. The words of Jesus are ubiquitous, despite the fact that Jesus lived in an agrarian, preindustrial, pretechnological, and precomputer society. And He never wrote a word. Yet Jesus could say without a trace of pride or self-centeredness, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”