Mark 13:31, “The heavens and the earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”
Jesus words are more enduring, and in that sense we may say “more real,” than the heavens and the earth. And when the heavens and the earth pass away, when the mountains are overthrown and turned to dust, when the sun is darkened and no longer gives his light, when the stars—the unmoving stars—are dashed from the sky and the heavens themselves are rolled up like a scroll…..when all of these things come to pass, then still unchanging, still unmoving, still standing like a radiant obelisk in the wrack and tumult of the disintegrated world, will be the words of Jesus Christ….the promises, the assurances, the warnings, the teachings, the witness that He is who He claims to be, and that we are in relation to Him precisely and only who He declares us to be.
All the studies and insights and deconstructing criticism of the biblical scholars, all the self-assured confidence of the philosophers of the age, all the enlightened reason of those who would lift themselves up as petty gods and pretend to rule over Christ’s words and will and world, will—in their unified and combined force—be as an ant rushing against a tsunami. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the words of Jesus Christ—the words of the One who is the Word upon whom all things are built and in whom all things subsist, the words of the One whose word sustains reality in being just as the drawing of a bow across the strings sustains a note in being—His words will never pass away.
So, when we trust the words of Jesus—and, as we see in John’s Gospel, supremely His words are the witness to who He is as the Son sent from and revelatory of the Father, climactically in His death and resurrection….such that the crucified and risen Jesus as Lord and God IS the summation of Jesus’ words—when we trust His words and entrust ourselves to His words, we are laying hold of a reality higher than the heavens, deeper than the earth, more sure than gravity itself, more enduring than the mountains and the stars. May we hold fast to Him by His words until He comes.
