Have you ever met someone who says they never make mistakes? One conclusion you can make is, they’re a liar! Those are strong words but SO true. No one is perfect except one, the Almighty God. That’s the whole reason why people are lost. God is perfect therefore imperfect, flawed, broken people cannot stand in front of the Almighty. This is particularly concerning if you consider at death, you will leave your body and go before God and proceed to either Heaven or hell. God wants you in Heaven! That’s why Jesus Christ, 100% God and 100% man died on your behalf on that cross. He was guiltless therefore He could stand in as our proxy in His human body. So who says we have to be perfect?
Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.-Matthew 5:48
The chosen one, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, the ultimate authority tell us to be perfect. How can that be?
In 2 Corinthians 5:21, we are told that WE (Jesus people, believers, Christians) are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Meaning that because of Jesus, we can take on the righteousness of Jesus and enter Heaven when we depart our earthly bodies. But yet, Jesus teaches us to be PERFECT as Father God in Heaven is perfect. How can we do this?
Every honest person knows we all can make mistakes and miss it. It’s always important to take things in context. Earlier in Matthew 5, the Lord Jesus teaches us to pray, that he fulfilled the Law of Moses (the Bible’s Old Testament), and then goes into teaching on personal relations. He teaches that divorce is no good, not to take oaths, and to love your enemies. That’s where it hits. The loving people part.
As a Jesus person, when you show the world you forgive their actions and just love people with God’s love despite what they say or do, you are showing God’s perfection. Those people don’t really deserve you kind greeting when you see them. They don’t deserve you talking to them despite their theft from you. They really don’t deserve your prayers each day for their salvation after they have wronged you. However, when you start to see people from God’s eyes, from God’s perspective, you begin to have compassion on them. You see they are bound for enteral damnation. Eternal separation from everyone they love and anything they care about. That’s when you know you are heading in the right direction.
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 He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. -Matthew 5:44-45
We are just here for a short time. The lost are lost. But when you are connected to the Kingdom. When you know God, you can give hope and God’s salvation to those lost and vulgar people. If you don’t, who else will. 2 Corithians 5:20 says we are AMBASSADORS for Christ, not soldiers of fortune. You’ve got to take things to a higher level. It can be no better said than this,
But you are A CHOSEN RACE, A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God’s OWN POSSESSION, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were NOT A PEOPLE, but now you are THE PEOPLE OF GOD; you had NOT RECEIVED MERCY, but now you have RECEIVED MERCY. -1 Peter 2:9-10
