Perfection: The starting message

The Word of Truth Ministries

Growing:
A brief word on Perfection
[Be you perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect.--Mat. 5:48]
[Part One]

When a child is born, his/her identity is not yet established--such things as gender, appearance, name are not really who one is. We don't know who that person will be or become. Who a person is cannot be determined in infancy or adolescence. That is true in all societies.

All cultures and societies allow a person/being the space of youth and experiences in life before that person and we establish who he/she is. Being born a Jones does not identify who my son is in substance, in values, in civility, in spirituality, in his perspective on the world and his responses to this world's stimuli.

Dr. C. L. Franklin, the noted Black preacher and father of Aretha Franklin, the singer, once said that no one would allow a 21-year old man, regardless of his degrees and academic standing, to be president of this nation. He has not lived long enough, he has not suffered long enough, he has not seen enough, experienced enough, hurt enough, been destitute enough to make the great decisions for a nation. All of life's experiences help to shape, fashion, and mold who a person is.

When one is born, he is a human person, but that is all. He is not a rational, reasoning, and thinking individual. He/she must grow and learn through life's experiences so that he/she can become who he/she will become. Birth is merely the beginning of his/her becoming whatever he/she will become as a person.

One must experience the endeavors common to all men before it becomes clear who one really is. It was Virginia Woolf who said that no one can know who a person is until that person has been allowed to engage in all the endeavors open to all. A person born into the world is a person with potential, but if that potential is never developed, it is the same as if it were not there. Notice that when a child dies in his/her infancy or youth, we wonder about what he/she would have become. For we know that a person born into this world is born to grow into maturity, and then we can see who that person really is.

This is a universal truth practiced by all. Jesus was born into the world, and he was Very God of Very God, yet he spent 30 years before he started his ministry. God was setting a pattern for all mankind. He had to be born into this world before he could do the work he had determined to do in eternality, but once he was born into this world, he had to grow to maturity according to the law.

The new birth brings us into the Kingdom of God; once in the Kingdom of God, we are just beginning our spiritual route--there is a spiritual route we MUST take. That is why we were born again. That route in the Kingdom of God takes us into the likeness of Jesus Christ.

To be born again is to be born a Son of God. But just as Jesus was born the only begotten son of God and he had to grow to maturity before he was ready to be used of God in the perfect way God wanted and did use him, so must we grow into the express image of Christ, who is the express image of God, after we are born into God's Kingdom. The new birth places us in the Kingdom, it does not give us maturity in Christ. Maturity in Christ is fashioning ourselves into his very image. That cannot be done as a child.

It is noteworthy to observe that we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Hence, we must be as our elder brother is to be joint heirs with him. In Luke 15, Jesus offers this parable of the two sons. The younger son went off disgracing himself, his father, and his house; the older, mature son stayed home and honored his father. When the younger son came back into the family, that was a good day, but the father did not forget his older son. That son came to his father disturbed about the showering of celebration on the once-wayward son, saying, "...You never gave me a kid to make marry with my friends." But the father stopped his son quickly by simply saying, "Son, all I have is yours...."

The older son had done all his father could have wanted of a son, and all that the father had was now his because that son had taken on the identity of his father and merged his lot with the lot of his father's and all that the father had the son also had.

Once we take on the mature identity of Christ, we possess joint heir-ship with him; our lot is merged with his lot, and his inheritance becomes our inheritance. The new birth makes this so.

We are, through the new birth, placed in a milieu, an environment--the Kingdom of God--that we can develop into Christ Jesus. The new birth allows us to do that which we could never do outside the Kingdom of God. It allows us to grow into perfection. I am aware that the world stoutly declares that no one is perfect and cannot be perfect. I am also aware of that particular notion having taken root in the church through songs and through sermons, but such a belief, a notion, a teaching that one cannot be perfect is against God's word. Furthermore, the world, even some naive church members, say such things as, "I have not seen anyone perfect."

O' the great ignorance Satan heaps upon God's people who follow lock-step the world's biddings. They define perfection according to some superficial man-made definition and not God's definition. The very ones who claim they have never seem anyone perfect may well have seen God's perfect person and not known he/she was perfect because of their own misshapen definition of God's command. To limit others by our own limitations is dangerous, to say the least. Job's friends called him a sinner and a liar, even while God was telling Satan that Job was perfect. What appears perfect to a person may not at all be perfect to God. And the reverse is true.

Paul told us to be aware how we entertain strangers for some have entertained angels unwittingly. What does an angel look like? He may take on any shape. Like Job's friends, the evil and vile men of Sodom and Gomorrah did not see the men who came to visit Lot as anything more than fresh flesh for their vile desires. But Lot saw that they were angels of the living God. It is a foolish man who utters such words as, "No one is perfect. I haven't seen anyone perfect, have you?"

If perfection is not attainable, why would God tell us, indeed, command us, to be perfect? Why would he place in the church ministries he explains are for that express purpose--to make us perfect; to bring us to the fullness of the measurement of Christ? What type of cruel hoax would he be playing on us?

The fact is, he is not playing a hoax on us at all; Satan is the one playing a hoax in telling saints that God did not intend for us to be perfect. It sounds like the old Edenic trick again: "God did not say; God did not mean..." God said it and He meant it: "Be ye perfect, even as your father is heaven is perfect." [Mat. 5:48] Paul meant is, when he said, "He has given some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints..." [Eph. 4:11] And he meant it when he said, "Leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on to perfection." [Heb. 6:1-3]

The reason ungodly men say no one is perfect is for two reasons: they are comparing themselves by themselves and measuring themselves among themselves and placing their limitations on others. Second, because they are not born again, they cannot see or understand the potential of the Kingdom of God and birth into that Kingdom. [John 3:3-6; 2 Cor.10:11-3] Only twice-born men can understand that God begot Jesus, and Jesus begot us to be as he is--perfect--so we can beget others to be like him. That begetting is that greater work Jesus promised we would do. [John 14:12] He spoke things that were not as through they were in Genesis 1:26, saying to us, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...," We are workers together with him to beget others Sons of God. No one can be perfect and grow to the fullness of Christ unless he is born into the Kingdom of God. Only this Kingdom can provide the fertile ground and nutrients necessary for the new born babe to grow from a babe to a saint to a Son of God, and that is perfection. [1 Pet. 2:2]

Christ is coming back for a church without spot, blemish, wrinkle, or any such imperfections. [Eph. 5:27] He is coming back for a bride that has made herself ready [Rev. 19: 7-8] and a bride and a people who look like him and are fashioned into his express image. Where will you stand? Have you just been saved and have not gone on to perfection?

God has said to walk in the way once it is found. But many have indeed found that way--they have been baptized in Jesus name and received the Holy Spirit--but have NOT walked in that way. They have stood in that way, sat in the way, played in the way, gone to sleep in the way, backslidden in the way, mocked others in the way, and they have done everything but walked in the way. That behavior is a spot; that behavior is rebellion, and that behavior is disobedience to the word of God. It says to God that they will not walk in His way of holiness.

To walk in that way Jeremiah the prophet spoke of will take you to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ--perfection. [Eph. 4: 13] That is where the route of God leads. But to get there, you must follow God's word even as you followed it to get into the Kingdom. [Jer. 6:16--17]

I preach perfection to those who are within the Kingdom of God in order to stay and progress in it; I preach repentance and the new birth to those who are outside the Kingdom of God in order to get them in so that they, too, can take the next step--perfection. []

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