jordanabina
I think the love of nature and creation is an attribute of the living God given to us. And while we are deeply connected to this planet, not all of us like to garden. But I love gardening, and because my family has been blessed to find an apartment with a small garden, I get opportunities throughout the year to tend to the beautiful plants that grow in the backyard. I’m mesmerized by the different plants that grow naturally in the small soil patches found in our little oasis in Grenoble.
This last week Jadwin and I were mowing the lawn and doing some other work in the backyard, and my mind and heart drifted back to Matthew 5 and the words of Jesus. It’s because this massive weed was growing right outside our kitchen window. This guy was huge! It had grown almost a meter high and had incredibly tiny sharp spines. It was incredible to see, and because it was so huge, I almost left it there, but it needed to go in the end. Vanessa joined in the gardening because she wanted to plant some wildflower seeds, and she removed the large weed.
As she did, I noticed how easily it came out and that not all the roots had been removed. On the surface, everything was back to normal, but underground, deep in the cold soil of the earth, an effort to return had already begun.
Matthew 5 closes out with a dynamic climax. After so much teaching, after new perspective and clarity and many different issues, Jesus finishes with these words.
48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
I want to mention that Jesus is beginning the process of revealing His divinity to the world. Jesus isn’t just communicating a new philosophical outlook and He isn’t the latest guru. Jesus is introducing Himself as the son of God. Jesus will go on to say in John 10, I and the Father are one. Jesus will also tell His followers in John 14, if you’ve seen me you’ve seen the Father.
The reason why these words matter so much is because of who is saying them. The Christian faith recognizes that Jesus is God in the flesh, God Emmanuael, God with us.
48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
How does this command from Jesus make you feel? Does this seem fair? Does it seem possible to achieve? What would this type of command from Jesus lead you and I to think and do? For some of us, it makes us start to evaluate the choices we’ve made and our currently making. And if you’re like me, then you’ll find out quickly that I just can’t. I can’t do it. This realization can come a few different ways, but one of them is trying to earn our salvation or earn Jesus through living as perfect as we can.
For those who look up the greek word for perfect (Teleios), you’ll find that it is often translated into the word mature. And it is true that Teleios means to reach an intended end or completion and is often translated mature, but in this context, which is just as important as translation, it is speaking of perfection, because the Father is the standard. The children of the Father (v.45) are to be perfect, as their Heavenly Father is perfect. That perfection (the Father) is absolute perfection. This is why it is translated “perfect” in almost every Biblical translation available, a process that goes through the strictest of processes.
We might not say it out loud, but our lives may reflect a relationship with Jesus that says, Jesus’ love depends on how well I live my life. We start to believe the lie that says, Jesus doesn’t love you anymore because you did this, this, and this.
Perhaps, when you hear Jesus say, be perfect, you start to think, I am not worthy of Jesus because the things i’ve done and things i’m still doing disqualify me from Jesus. To those of us who think this way, let’s put the word of God before us.
Romans 5:6-8
6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Did you see it? When we were still powerless…Christ died. While we were still sinners…Christ died. The love of Christ has never been dependent on you and I. His love for us is not based upon our performance. The love that Jesus shows the world comes from the overflow of who He is, and can’t be held back by who we are not.
Romans 5:17
17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!
When we are honest with ourselves, we know we can’t add up and no matter how hard we try, we can’t live righteous lives on our own forever. But God loves the world so much that He gives us a way to receive the gift of righteousness through the person of Jesus Christ. The only righteousness that satisfies the heart of God comes through faith in the person of Jesus Christ. And if that’s true, then what do we do with the statement Be perfect? If we receive our righteousness from Jesus as we put our faith in Him, why this call to perfection?
What has Jesus been doing this entire chapter? What has He been saying? What has He been trying to reveal? All of these commands, all of these words of Jesus are leading us not towards a type of life, but to Him. The aim of Jesus is to make us more like Him. Jesus came to reveal the very nature of God, to bring clarity, completion, and wholeness to who God is revealing Himself to be to the world. Be perfect as your Father is perfect is call from the very core mission of Jesus, to make us more like Him and to be with Him;
We don’t obey so that we may receive the love of Jesus, we’ve received the love of Jesus and so we obey.
As we begin to see the love Jesus has for us, as we begin to understand and drink in the work of God in our lives, our love for Him will grow. Jesus calls us to perfection not so that we can then be worthy of Him, Jesus is calling us to perfect because we are meant to be with Him. But Jordan, you don’t know me! You don’t know the doubts I struggle with! You don’t know what i’ve done! No, I don’t, but He does. And long before you thought of Him, He thought about you. He loves you and is calling you into something deep and beautiful. Living a righteous life is hard, quite frankly, it’s impossible on our own. But with Jesus, things change.
Matthew 19:26
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
With Jesus all things are possible. We need more than forgiveness, we need sanctification. Sanctification is the process of being made more like Jesus. Through the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us, we will be returned into the perfect reflection of our creator.
When Jesus is commanding that we be perfect as the Father is perfect, He is simultaneously inviting us into a relationship with Him and into a quest of sanctification.
“The goal of salvation, the goal of the gospel, and the great yearning of the heart of God is for all people to become like Him”
John MacArthur
Our job isn’t to clean ourselves up so we can be with Him, it’s to allow Jesus to clean us up, as painful as that may be so we can experience His love and be set free from sin. We need more than forgiveness, we need sanctification. Jesus came to forgive and to take you on a journey of becoming perfect. An impossible task on our own, but possible for Him.
There will be setbacks and times we lose faith. But His isn’t based on our performance, instead it overflows from a heart of grace and love. As we journey with Him, our love for Him will grow and our love for sin will fade.
We will find ourselves trying to earn God’s love less and less.
And instead, we will sense our motivations for righteousness change from trying to earn to wanting to please and honor the gift of righteousness given to us by Jesus from His death and resurrection.
Jesus is the master gardener. He knows when to pull the weeds in our life and when to plant new life. He knows where you are currently on your journey of faith. We can trust His sanctifying work because He can see us at our deepest level. In my backyard, we may have only removed the top of the weeds, but the roots remain. He loves us enough to dig down deep, to those places where it hurts and pull up the roots. He knows how deep the roots go and He isn’t willing to just cut off the top. And while we settle for temporal good in our lives, He has a plan of perfection for each one of us. A plan that will echo into eternity.
