Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share The Perfection of Love and Grace
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
The Perfection of Love and Grace
[vsw id="YLoEcND4FFY" source="youtube" width="425" height="344" autoplay="no"]
Perfection. It is a goal many strive toward. We strive toward it because we are uncomfortable with our faults and shortcomings. We want our minds to be perfect. We want our bodies to be perfect. We want our jobs, our churches, our families, our very lives to be perfect.
-
As a result, we find ourselves stressing instead of resting.
-
I want to talk today about the perfection of Love and Grace. And I want to start by talking about what is perhaps the most abused passage of scripture concerning perfection:
Matthew 5:48 (ESV) You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
This verse is frequently used as a yardstick for measuring holiness by behavior. After all, God is perfect and Christ is in you, therefore you should be perfect in all your thought, speech, and action. But, as is common, this abuse comes from improper context. So, let’s look at it in full context:
Matthew 5:43-48 (ESV) “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 he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
The context here is love. Love is the Nature of God; it is what saved us. John 3:16 tells us about God’s ridiculous, scandalous, over-the-top, unconditional Love that he has for us. He dispenses this to us by His Grace, which is His Character. Grace is not only the unmerited favor of God but it is also the unlimited power of God. And contrary to popular belief, Grace does not merely allow you to endure (2 Corinthians 12:9) but empowers you to overcome:
1 John 5:4-5 (ESV) 4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
How do Love and Grace empower us to overcome? By the perfecting of our spirits. When we are born of God and become Christ-conscious, our spirits become just like Jesus’! The same power that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us. In this regard, the spirit part of our being becomes perfect, just as God is perfect. By faith, we appropriate (take possession of) God’s unconditional
Love and Grace to empower our lives and to demonstrate it’s wonder to the world!
One important thing to note, here, is that Jesus isn’t telling us to be — or that we can be— perfect in our own strength. Through many examples, Jesus clearly shows us that we desperately need a savior. In fact, he puts this in no uncertain terms in John 15:5:
John 15:5 (ESV) I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
Because Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6) and we abide in Him, in Him we live move and have our being (Acts 17:28). He has seated us in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6). And we cannot be seated in the presence of a perfect, holy God unless we, ourselves are made perfect and holy!
Jesus has perfected us through His perfect sacrifice. He took His Perfect Deity and His Perfect Humanity and laid it on a human instrument of torture that came to represent the vertical relationship we are to have with our Heavenly Father and the horizontal relationship we are to have with all mankind. Hebrews 10:10 tells us that we are sanctified (cleansed,
View all episodes
By Derrick Day
5
1212 ratings
[vsw id="YLoEcND4FFY" source="youtube" width="425" height="344" autoplay="no"]
Perfection. It is a goal many strive toward. We strive toward it because we are uncomfortable with our faults and shortcomings. We want our minds to be perfect. We want our bodies to be perfect. We want our jobs, our churches, our families, our very lives to be perfect.
-
As a result, we find ourselves stressing instead of resting.
-
I want to talk today about the perfection of Love and Grace. And I want to start by talking about what is perhaps the most abused passage of scripture concerning perfection:
Matthew 5:48 (ESV) You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
This verse is frequently used as a yardstick for measuring holiness by behavior. After all, God is perfect and Christ is in you, therefore you should be perfect in all your thought, speech, and action. But, as is common, this abuse comes from improper context. So, let’s look at it in full context:
Matthew 5:43-48 (ESV) “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 he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
The context here is love. Love is the Nature of God; it is what saved us. John 3:16 tells us about God’s ridiculous, scandalous, over-the-top, unconditional Love that he has for us. He dispenses this to us by His Grace, which is His Character. Grace is not only the unmerited favor of God but it is also the unlimited power of God. And contrary to popular belief, Grace does not merely allow you to endure (2 Corinthians 12:9) but empowers you to overcome:
1 John 5:4-5 (ESV) 4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
How do Love and Grace empower us to overcome? By the perfecting of our spirits. When we are born of God and become Christ-conscious, our spirits become just like Jesus’! The same power that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us. In this regard, the spirit part of our being becomes perfect, just as God is perfect. By faith, we appropriate (take possession of) God’s unconditional
Love and Grace to empower our lives and to demonstrate it’s wonder to the world!
One important thing to note, here, is that Jesus isn’t telling us to be — or that we can be— perfect in our own strength. Through many examples, Jesus clearly shows us that we desperately need a savior. In fact, he puts this in no uncertain terms in John 15:5:
John 15:5 (ESV) I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
Because Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6) and we abide in Him, in Him we live move and have our being (Acts 17:28). He has seated us in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6). And we cannot be seated in the presence of a perfect, holy God unless we, ourselves are made perfect and holy!
Jesus has perfected us through His perfect sacrifice. He took His Perfect Deity and His Perfect Humanity and laid it on a human instrument of torture that came to represent the vertical relationship we are to have with our Heavenly Father and the horizontal relationship we are to have with all mankind. Hebrews 10:10 tells us that we are sanctified (cleansed,