I Am Transformed预览

God Is Perfect, So I Am Growing

God is perfect, and we are far from perfect. Yet, He doesn’t roll His eyes at us while dropping passive-aggressive, semi-snarky comments about the dishes we left in the sink, metaphorically speaking.

You see, we tend to think of perfection as just being free from sin, error, or weakness.

In the Bible, though, the term perfect refers to the idea of becoming complete. Perfection alludes to maturity, wholeness, or fullness. We often see this term used to encourage growth in a variety of areas.

For example, on one occasion, Jesus was teaching about loving everyone, even our enemies. He instructed His listeners to share His wide, expansive, unconditional love with all people, including their enemies. Then He pointed to how God “causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). A few verses later He concluded with this summary: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (v. 48).

Do you see the connection in this passage between becoming better at love and becoming more perfect? When Jesus said, “be perfect,” He wasn’t commanding us to meet an impossible moral standard of some obsessive, perfectionistic deity. Rather, He was challenging us to become as complete in our love as God is in His. If we want to be like Him, we need to have a diverse, wide, inclusive, open-armed love, even for those who don’t like us or who go out of their way to oppose us.

In a spiritual sense, we are already complete. That’s an important truth to keep in mind, particularly when the process of personal growth is slower than we’d like. In Christ, we are children of God: loved, approved, and accepted by Him. Jesus is our advocate, so we have nothing to fear and nothing to prove.

Perfection is a process to embrace, not a goal to reach. The good news is God is committed to that growth process. In fact, it was His idea. That’s why Paul wrote, “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6).

What areas are you lacking in today? Where would you like to grow? What part of your inner or outer world needs to be made whole? Today, as you pray, express those things to God, and let His perfection encourage you toward growth.