You Shall Be Perfect

"You shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect" (1)

"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' (2), 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' 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' (3); and the life of Jesus is made manifest 'in our mortal flesh' (4). 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.' " (5)

1. Matthew 5:48.
2. Luke 6:35.
3. Colossians 2:9.
4. 2 Corinthians 4:11.
5. Thoughts From The Mount Of Blessing, pp., 76-78.