April
27, 2003
YOU
SHALL BE PERFECT
"You
shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect"
(Matthew 5:48, NKJV).
"Jesus
has been describing to His hearers the unfailing mercy and
love of God, and He bids them therefore to be perfect. Because
your heavenly Father 'is kind to the unthankful and evil'
(Luke 6:35), because He has stooped to lift you up, therefore,
said Jesus, you may become like Him in character, and stand
without fault in the presence of men and angels.
"...
The standard of character presented in the Old Testament is
the same that is presented in the New Testament. This standard
is not one to which we cannot attain. In every command or
injunction that God gives there is a promise, the most positive,
underlying the command. God has made provision that we may
become like unto Him, and He will accomplish this for all
who do not interpose a perverse will and thus frustrate His
grace.
"With
untold love our God has loved us, and our love awakens toward
Him as we comprehend something of the length and breadth and
depth and height of this love that passeth knowledge. By the
revelation of the attractive loveliness of Christ, by the
knowledge of His love expressed to us while we were yet sinners,
the stubborn heart is melted and subdued, and the sinner is
transformed and becomes a child of heaven. God does not employ
compulsory measures; love is the agent
which He uses to expel sin from the heart. By it He
changes pride into humility, and enmity and unbelief into
love and faith...
"God
is love. Like rays of light from the sun, love and light and
joy flow out from Him to all His creatures. It is His nature
to give. His very life is the outflow of unselfish love...
He tells us to be perfect as He is, in the same manner. We
are to be centers of light and blessing to our little circle,
even as He is to the universe. We have nothing of ourselves,
but the light of His love shines upon us, and we are to reflect
its brightness. 'In His borrowed goodness good,' we may be
perfect in our sphere, even as God is perfect in His.
"Jesus
said, Be perfect as your Father is perfect. If you are the
children of God you are partakers of His nature, and you cannot
but be like Him.. In Christ dwells 'all the fullness of the
Godhead bodily' (Colossians 2:9); and the life of Jesus is
made manifest 'in our mortal flesh' (2 Corinthians 4:11).
That life in you will produce the same character and manifest
the same works as it did in Him... Through love 'the righteousness
of the law' will be 'fulfilled in us, who walk not after the
flesh, but after the Spirit.' "--Thoughts From The
Mount Of Blessing, pp., 76-78.
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