PERFECTION

PERFECTION

If you are born again by the Spirit of God, YOU ARE PERFECT!!!
Many think that we have to wait until we get to heaven to be perfect… we say things like well, I’m not perfect or nobody’s perfect! or even worse I’ll NEVER be perfect.  The thing is, this is contrary to what is taught in the Word of God!  In Matthew 5:48, Jesus commands us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.  The Apostle Paul says in Philippians 3:15 – Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you.  James 1:4 says – And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.  Hebrews 10:14 says – For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.  I think the problem lies in our modern definitions of words like perfect and sin.  After reading all the verses in the Bible with the word perfect in them, it seems that a common theme or context that this word is used in has to do with love and unity, and of course Scripture also tells us that love is the perfect bond of unity.  Jesus is called the Perfect, yet He fashioned a whip to take into the temple, which was not intended to be used as a threat… Did Jesus ever make threats?  No – He said let your yes be yes and your no be no – He never made threats!  He listened to His Father and acted on what He heard.  He flipped the tables of the money changers and used His whip to drive them out of the temple.  He constantly insulted and called the Pharisees names, yet He is perfect love and was without sin.

I believe that being perfect simply means to walk in love.  It’s to walk in our original design.  We were created in the image and likeness of God, who is love.  Before there was original sin there was original innocence and original glory with the Father.  Jesus redeemed us and reconciled us back to the Father – He restored all things by buying back our identity and nature that we gave away to the thief in the Garden of Eden.  Sin is simply anything unloving.  The Ten Commandments are all about loving God and loving people, and that is exactly how Jesus summarized them.  So to sin is to put yourself before God and others, and Jesus said that we aren’t able to do that if we want to follow Him. “If anyone wishes to follow Me, they must first deny themselves and take up their cross”.  This is the death of our flesh and selfishness, which hinders us from living a life of love.  In Ezekiel 36 it is prophesied that God would give us a new heart – a soft heart.  It is this heart that God has written His laws on, and by the grace of His Spirit inhabiting this heart we can walk holy, righteous and worthy of our calling before the Lord.  This is why Jesus came – to reconcile us to our holy Father by making it possible for His Holy Spirit to live in us so that we can maintain relationship with a holy God.  Jesus gave us His Holy Spirit to sanctify us and make us holy.  Hebrews 10 tells us that if we continue in sin(a pattern of sin) there no longer remains a sacrifice for it and we are trampling on Jesus and His sacrifice and outraging the Holy Spirit.  What if we are weak and mess up, rather than letting His strength be made perfect in our weakness? Jesus is our advocate before the Father and intercedes for us day and night, as does the Holy Spirit.  We will be forgiven, but we mustn’t take this for granted and we need to make every effort to submit to God and resist the devil, because He has made us free from the law of sin and death, and Jesus came to free us from our sins.  So now we can walk in true freedom from the bondage to sin and we can be perfect in love, even as our Father is perfect.  Of course we don’t have the strength in our flesh to live this way.  We must depend upon the Holy Spirit as Jesus did by spending time with Him in prayer and fasting.  This is the only way to follow Jesus to the Father. We can’t follow Him if we don’t spend time with Him.  So I pray that we all realize exactly what Jesus has done for us so that we can believe the truth that sets us free from ourselves and provides the grace to be perfect!