Skip Navigation

Rockbridge Academy Blog

Back

Jesus Is Better...Forever!

April 07, 2021
By Denise Hollidge, Grammar School Principal

I have been asked to write a final word as my date of retirement nears. It was easy to decide, really. I came to Rockbridge 20 years ago with knowledge of this truth, “Jesus is the most excellent way.” I longed for a school that would help me to teach that truth to my children. I believed that Rockbridge was such a place, and I pray it remains that kind of place for generations to come. We are all longing for the best for our kids, aren’t we? But do we really know what the best is? The writer of the Book of Hebrews mentions at least 13 times that Jesus is better, superior, or more excellent. Why does he say this with such passion and repetition? Because he was keenly aware that his audience was being wooed away from that truth to embrace something less.

Is our time any different? Some may ask why I state the obvious. “Everybody at Rockbridge Academy already knows that Jesus is better, Denise, even your kindergartners. Why waste your last words on what is clear and apparent to all?” I would assert that everyone might know it, but few of us believe it, including myself. The writer of Hebrews clearly believed that any of us could fall away from that truth. He reminds us that our disordered loves, our fallen nature, our chaotic, messy souls continuously search for other gods to worship. What is so sneaky about it is that most often these rivals for our hearts are good things.

There are many points of comparison within the Book of Hebrews to demonstrate that our hearts will only be well-ordered if we truly believe Jesus to be better, and all of these things are good. Jesus is compared to all past prophets who speak to us as mediators. He is compared to Moses and Joshua, and he is better. Jesus is compared to the angels who are sent as ministering spirits to us while he is the Conquering King to whom alone we owe worship. Jesus is compared to all past priests from the line of Aaron who all die, but He lives above eternally to intercede for us. Jesus is a better hope and the guarantor of a better covenant. He is a better sacrifice. Because of his blood, Jesus prepares a better place for us, a heavenly one. He is the better temple eternal in the heavens. All these Old Testament people, places, and things are good, but incomplete. They are preparatory, all pointing to the great truth that “Jesus is better…forever!”

So we are not so different from first generation Christians it would seem. Like our brothers and sisters of the past, we are still needing to hear that our hearts are easily drawn away to idols that are good but steal from us what is best. C.S. Lewis states in The Weight of Glory, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” A similar idea to that is a child wanting to stay at South of the Border rather than traveling on to Disney World. They are too easily pleased with the pleasure of the moment to make the further leg of the trip.

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” c.s. lewis

 

In all times, our hearts have easily misled us. We are encouraged on every side today to look inside ourselves to find truth and define the world with our own internal feelings. We need this reminder from the writer of Hebrews, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,  looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:1-2. We need to run together with the church of Christ throughout all time. We need the body of Christ, his church, to preach the truth to us and our children. We need to encourage one another here at Rockbridge Academy in times of difficulty and delight that there is only One who is best. We need Jesus to save us from ourselves and transform us. We must have his help to order our lawless, tangled, topsy-turvy hearts so we never lose our first love. We all grow weary. We all lose heart. So my last words to you are, “Standfast, Scots. Jesus is better…forever!”

Denise Hollidge currently serves as our grammar school principal and will be retiring spring of 2021 after 20 years of service at Rockbridge Academy. She is married to Steve Hollidge and has 4 Rockbridge Academy graduates: John ('07), Anna ('09), Mary ('13), and Daniel ('15). 

Tags: Jesus
Posted in Worship