…be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. —Matthew 5:48
Our Lord’s exhortation to us in Matthew 5:38-48 is to be generous in our behavior toward everyone. Beware of living according to your natural affections in your spiritual life. Everyone has natural affections— some people we like and others we don’t like. Yet we must never let those likes and dislikes rule our Christian life. “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another” (1 John 1:7), even those toward whom we have no affection.
The example our Lord gave us here is not that of a good person, or even of a good Christian, but of God Himself. “…be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” In other words, simply show to the other person what God has shown to you. And God will give you plenty of real life opportunities to prove whether or not you are “perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Being a disciple means deliberately identifying yourself with God’s interests in other people. Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).
The true expression of Christian character is not in good-doing, but in God-likeness. If the Spirit of God has transformed you within, you will exhibit divine characteristics in your life, not just good human characteristics. God’s life in us expresses itself as God’s life, not as human life trying to be godly. The secret of a Christian’s life is that the supernatural becomes natural in him as a result of the grace of God, and the experience of this becomes evident in the practical, everyday details of life, not in times of intimate fellowship with God. And when we come in contact with things that create confusion and a flurry of activity, we find to our own amazement that we have the power to stay wonderfully poised even in the center of it all.
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Journal DJR
Good Morning Lord,
I’m seeing that the benefits of prayer come both at the time of sweet fellowship with you AND also in our more Godlike reactions that come later in the day to day events of life. In fact, how we act in these everyday interactions is a pretty good indicator of how good our connection was in the prayer time. I’ve been considering lately how you do your work to make me God-like. You’ve given us your cross and your example of surrendering life and receiving new life. We can bring general things like the “Big Four”…our desire to look good, feel good, be right and be in control as well as specifics…that guy cut me off in traffic, etc. It’s been helpful to visualize packing those things up in a box and setting them at the foot of the cross. But I’m curious, Do you then infuse your life into me? Or does getting rid of my sin and ego and “false self” get down to the basic me that you created in your image and said was Good… before the fall? Or does it matter? Maybe it’s both? I’ll be waiting to hear your thoughts on that. Since I’m not hearing anything right now, perhaps I need to clear out some tensions and preconceptions so that I can hear better?
Good idea. Sometimes I don’t answer you immediately because I want to give you time to better formulate your question. It may be in that struggle that I will answer.
That makes sense. I was struggling with the question(s). And I do have a lot of time for the next 9 weeks as I am out of my familiar surroundings and responsibilities for this Proton Cancer Therapy. I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time with you. And I’ll struggle as much as I need to to get my questions clear…. I’m looking forward to this opportunity and seeing it as a gift.
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