Posts

A Perfect Promise

/0 Comments/in /by

“You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48

I realize I may have already lost you with our opening scripture. Perfect is a far too potent word. We’re comfortable using it to describe our Savior and what awaits us in heaven, but we certainly don’t want to apply it to us in the here and now.

And yet, the words before us emerged from Jesus’ lips during His Sermon on the Mount.

“You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48, emphasis mine

Yep. Jesus said it. Right after He instructed us to love our enemies.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. … For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” Matthew 5:43-46, emphasis mine

According to Jesus, anyone can love those who love in return. Sons and daughters of God, however, will also love their enemies. And not just love them, but advocate for them through prayer. Then He sums up His teaching with a charge to be perfect, in the same way that our heavenly Father is perfect.

That’s a pretty tall order, don’t you think? Jesus couldn’t possibly have meant perfect. After all, perfection is impossible, an unattainable goal.

Perhaps this is a good time to ponder another of Jesus’ statements.

“All things are possible for one who believes.” Mark 9:23

Beloved, what we find impossible, Jesus makes possible.

What we find impossible, Jesus makes possible. Mark 9:23 Click To Tweet

And He commands us to love perfectly—not just our friends, but our enemies—just like the Father does. Impossible?

I can’t help wondering, dear one. Have you and I limited the power of the cross in our lives through unbelief? Have we set boundaries on what we’ll believe Jesus can accomplish here?

What if a church perfected in love is the very thing He’s waiting for to herald His return?

I know. It sounds crazy. But let’s at least entertain the thought a moment. The word translated “perfect” in Matthew 5:48 is teleios in Greek, and it means perfect, mature, finished (#5046, Strong’s). Paul used the same word in Colossians 1:28.

Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. 29 For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

Paul wrote that his goal—his reason for toiling in ministry—was to present everyone mature in Christ. According to the Greek, we could also say it this way. To present everyone finished. Perfect.

 “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48

This I know for certain, dear one. Jesus would not command something of us that He did not provide the power to accomplish. What if He’s simply waiting for a generation who will believe He’s able to do it?

Our word teleios also appears in Ephesians 4:13.

 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood (unto a perfect man, KJV), to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Ephesians 4:11-13

You may need to read it again to let it sink in.

All that Jesus provided through His grace for the work of ministry centers on one purpose: building up the body until we attain the unity of faith that flows from intimate knowledge of Him. That unity will take place as individuals mature—or become perfected—attaining the full measure of Christ’s stature.

Beloved, Jesus desires to reveal the full measure of who He is through you and me. He gave us His nature. Now He wants His church to mature, stop fighting one another, and reveal it.

And He will accomplish it before the end.

You see, Jesus always prays according to His Father’s will, so He always gets what He asks for (1 John 5:14-15). And before He allowed an angry mob to nail Him to that cross, He prayed these words.

“The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” John 17:22-23

There’s that word perfect again. This word comes from the same root but carries the verb form, teleioō (#5048, Strong’s). It means, “to perfect, complete, finish, to reach a goal, be fulfilled, completed, made perfect.”

Jesus prayed for His body—you and me— to be made perfect, to mature to such a level that we would all be one with each other in the same way that He and the Father are. Perfectly one. Can you imagine it, dear one?

When it happens—and it will happen—the world will recognize that Jesus really did come from the Father. And they will know that God loves.

“You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48

One question remains, beloved. Will ours be the generation that sees it accomplished? Will we grow up in Him to maturity, attaining the full measure of His stature so that we can reveal His love?

I choose to believe, dear one, not in my own will or ability, but in the power of my God. He is able to do far beyond all we could ask or think, according to His power at work within us (Ephesians 3:20).

Let’s tear down the boundaries we have set up, lose ourselves in His perfect love, and let Jesus loose a little glory.

I pray,beloved,

—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:17-19

Did God Really Say . . . ?

/0 Comments/in /by

Following Jesus isn’t getting any easier, is it? While God’s plumb line for distinguishing right and wrong has remained eternally the same, the world’s keeps changing. Things that our grandparents would have considered appalling have become commonplace. Acceptable. The lines have blurred, and so have our convictions.

Dear one, allowing anything other than God’s truth to shape our thinking leads to trouble. Sadly, tasting the sweet enticements of this world eventually results in death.

Kelly Minter witnessed this lesson experienced the hard way.

Lessons From a Lizard

Last week I was out for one of my neighborhood runs on an exceptionally hot and humid day in Nashville. Stifling is the word that comes to mind. I was about 20 minutes into my route when I noticed the oddest thing on the sidewalk . . . a lizard of some sort . . .about 9 inches long . . .

The really bizarre thing . . . is that its head was stuck in a Dr. Pepper can. I am not making this up. I have several theories, but my best one is that the glistening drops of sugary water lured this reptile in on a hot summer’s day. The poor little thing had worked so hard to wedge its head in there that it couldn’t get it out. It suffocated in the smothering heat.

. . . I couldn’t help but catch the symbolism. As I stood there staring at this peculiar sight, I though of the many times I had discovered a few drops I thought were sure to offer life. They were sugary sweet and went down smoothly, offering a respite from the blaze of summer’s heat. . . In the end they left me more thirsty and desperate than before . . . [Kelly Minter, No Other Gods, Lifeway Press, 2007, p.54-56]

Funny how some things are so easy to walk into and so impossible to back out of.

Have you ever found that to be true? At first something seemed so appealing, so right, so perfect. So you went after it. But once you got yourself in, you discovered a whole other side you hadn’t bargained for: the death side. The part that, had you known about it up front, would have stopped you from ever going in.

Beloved, God sees all of it, including the death that follows. That’s precisely why he has established boundaries for us, not to keep us from experiencing the sweet, sugary taste of momentary refreshment, but to protect us from the suffocating death that accompanies it.

The enemy has been deceiving and tempting us out of God’s protection since the Garden of Eden. Perhaps it’s time we got wise to his schemes.

Look at God’s instructions to Adam in Genesis 2:16-17.

“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Pretty straight forward, right? Eat anything you want, except this one thing that will bring you death. Simple enough.

Enter the serpent.

“Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” Genesis 3:1

God tells us one thing. The prince of this world tells us something else.

That’s where our enemy always begins, dear one, getting us to question God. He raises doubts about His motives, His goodness, His trustworthiness. Did God really say . . .

  •       Sex is only for marriage
  •       Wives should submit to their husbands
  •       Drunkenness is sin

Then he makes us believe we’re forfeiting something by obeying God.

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman.  “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:4-5

And here’s the really tricky part. The world’s prince always offers some truth in his deceptions. Their eyes were opened (verse 7), and they did become like God in the sense that they would know both good and evil (verse 22). But what really hurt them—what devastated them— was what the enemy failed to reveal: the consequences of experiencing those things.

Had the serpent given full disclosure, I’m quite certain Adam and Eve would’ve made a different choice.  But that’s not his way.  No, our enemy reveals only what we’d perceive as benefit to entice us.  The rest of the dark horror that follows he keeps hidden, relishing the moment we will discover it for ourselves. 

Imagine his glee as he led Adam and Eve to experience a rush of emotions they had never known before. Shame. Fear. Guilt. Isolation. Blame. 

Imagine their terror as each chilling feeling gripped them and they began to face the reality of what they’d done.  Feel the awareness creeping over them that the relationship they’d known with their Creator was lost.  Sadly, that wasn’t the end of their pain.

Seeds of sin that we allow the enemy to cultivate in us don’t just sprout immediate fruit. 

They continue to birth consequences long after they’ve been sown, even transcending generations. 

As a mother of two boys, I’m especially stricken by the unimaginable grief that must have consumed Adam and Eve as they suffered the loss of a beloved son.  I wonder if they held his lifeless body in their arms, staring in disbelief into the vacant face of the first dead man, their precious Abel.   Far worse must have been the knowledge that he was taken from them at the hand of their firstborn.  In one terrible moment, jealousy and rage—two devastating results of their choice—stole their two oldest boys from them forever. 

Beloved, when you disregard God’s instruction, you may experience a momentary thrill. But what follows will devastate you and those you hold most dear.  The consequences are not always immediate, but they will always come. 

This is precisely why salvation comes through faith, dear one. We must decide whose voice we will trust to guide our steps. Will we follow the voice of Truth who always gives us full disclosure? Or will we follow the world’s prince and allow him to deceive us into death?

I don’t know about you, dear one, but I choose Jesus.