God’s Gift of Perfection Series
Chapter 9 – Part 1
“Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” Matthew 5:48
Perfect before God, perfect with God, perfect toward God – these are the expressions we find in the Old Testament. They all indicate a relationship: the choice or purpose of the heart set upon God, the wholehearted desire to trust and obey Him.
The first word of the New Testament at once lifts us to a very different level, and opens to us what Christ has brought for us. Not only perfect toward God, but – perfect as God. This is the wonderful prospect it holds out to us. It reveals the infinite fullness of meaning the word perfect has in God’s mind. At once, it gives us the only standard we are to aim at and to judge by. It casts down all hopes of perfection as a human attainment. Instead, it awakens hope in Him who, as God, has the power as Father, has the will, to make us like Himself.
A young child may be the perfect image of his father. There may be a great difference in age, in stature, in power, and yet the resemblance may be so striking that everyone notices it. And so a child of God (though infinitely less) may yet bear the image of the Father so markedly, may have such a striking likeness to his Father, that in his human life he will be as perfect as the Father is in His divine life. This is possible. It is what Jesus here commands. It is what each one should aim at.
“Perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect” must become one of the first articles of our creed, one of the guiding lights of our Christian life.
Previously Perfect In Heart – Part 2
