Perfection

In his book, "The 7 Longings of the Human Heart," Mike Bickle writes that as members of the human race, it is natural for us to want to be great.

Let's be real here--I have never met one person who truthfully admitted that they DESIRE to be awful in every area of life. Some clever folk might try to say, "Well, Dan, I don't mind being weak in everything so that the strength of Christ shines through me." While this statement is a great way to be profound and impress your local bible study buddies, the truth is that God wants you to love yourself as well! Why do you think Jesus also stated "Love your neighbor [as] yourself." He doesn't want you to serve others, yet suffer from low self-esteem. Read Psalms 139 if you want more proof.

Wow! And here we are, sulking in an attempt to display a false form of humility so that people would not think we are proud. While we can deceive man, we cannot deceive the Lord. He knows our intentions and ambitions.

Anyhow, now that we have established that we should enjoy how we're created in the image of God, I would like to make another point: we as humans only have one life to live. To live for ourselves is simply against the commandments of the Bible (Matthew 28:19-20, Micah 6:8, James 2:15-17, the list goes on). Thus, we must live for more than our own wishes and continually to improve our character. Cool. But as we all know, writing down all those New Year's resolutions seem overwhelmingly difficult. What then shall we do? As the economist says, we simplify and isolate. We must have one simple goal and focus on that one vision. One aspiration.

No, I'm not promoting IHOP-KC's One Thing conferences.

Rather, our goal, as Christians, is to bear the resemblance and likeness of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1).

However, back to the analogy of the New Year's Resolutions, it seems far too naive to simply put "Be a better person in 20xx" to replace every resolution on the list. After all, we're asked to not just be better citizens, friends, and family members, but we're asked, as it says in Matthew 5 to be perfect because Jesus is perfect.

Perfection?! But nobody's perfect! Is God setting us up for failure?


Not quite.


In the Greek translation, perfectus is not defined to be without flaw. Alternatively, it means "a finishing" or, to be more grammatically sound, "finished." Furthermore, the word has various contextual implications, such as:
- to be complete with all requisite parts
- to be so good that nothing can be compared as better
- to attain its purpose

Great Scott!! This whole time, we have been under the impression that every move we make has God angered on his mighty throne in heaven because we're not like his perfect son, Jesus. Nonsense! Jesus was stating in Matthew that we have to become COMPLETE like Him. God wants for us to achieve our destiny (attain purpose) by obtaining all the characteristics (requisite parts). As in says in James 1, God simply seeks for us to become mature, so that we're lacking nothing.

The amazing thing is that above all else, God delights in us so much for who we are. He understands that its a process! That's why God calls upon us to wait upon Him, because the procedure of abiding takes time. Even when we accomplish the greatest feat of human history or become the scum of the earth, Jesus thinks that there's no one better than you!