Grow Up! part 5
The thing I like about Matthew 5:48 is that when it says, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect," is that--as always--the emphasis is on GOD and not on us. Jesus wasn't saying, "God is perfect so you better be perfect too, or else." He was saying, "God is perfect. God lives in you. You can stop trying to be someone you're not and you can simply embrace who you really are." God's perfection IS our perfection. That's what I'm trying to say today. It doesn't come from anywhere or anything else. It can't. Because perfection is maturity. Being made perfect... in love. We can't grow up until we understand that it is all about love. Loving someone--in the self-sacrificial agape God love way--is the most mature thing you can do. Loving someone is what it means to be holy. Loving someone is what it means to be alive. So when we see the old junkyard dog, Paul, writing to all these churches telling them to grow up, to put away childish things, we have to understand that he was exhorting them to love one another. Under the law it was a Mr. Perfect, don't mess up or you'll get into trouble, kind of operation. But we are not under the law. We are under grace. And the only way to fall from grace is to put ourselves back up under the law and try to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow. Jesus sweat great drops of blood in order to bring us out of that performance based religion. And because it was the blood that redeemed it... it is no longer about what we do, but who we are. The blood tells. There is life in the blood. The abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of God! We are His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. His DNA--the Divine Nature of the Almighty--runs through our veins. Growing up isn't about changing into someone we're not. It's about embracing who we are. Who we really are. Which is who we are in Christ. Which is who Christ is in us. Christ in you, the hope of glory. The hope of revealed glory. And when we embrace His correction--you learn and grow, make mistakes and learn from them, know better and then do better--that's when the glory of the Lord is REVEALED in US! That's when what is inside comes out. Naturally. Without us having to try to do works and labor--in the Spiritual sense. That's when we, quite naturally, will do all the things Jesus did and greater works than He did. Because that's when the love inside of us will fill us up to overflowing and come out. We receive and release the love of God. We let what's inside--the love, the forgiveness, the grace, the mercy... the maturity--come out, by knowing and believing that it's in there. By filling ourselves to overflowing with what we've already been filled with. You can't grow up without going through things. That's the maturity process. And you can't grow up without knowing what it looks like to BE grown up. Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. Look into the mirror and see who you really are. Let God define you by HIS perfect love. That's when you can EXPERIENCE His perfect love. That's when you can truly live... by letting God love you and then loving Him back by loving people!