Day 8 — PERFECT IN HEART LEADS TO PERFECT IN THE WAY.

“Blessed are they that are perfect in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that keep His testimonies, that seek Him with the whole heart.” Ps. 119: 1, 2.

“Let my heart be perfect in Thy testimonies.” Ps. 119: 80.

“I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. Oh! when will You come to me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.” Ps. 101: 2.

We have seen what Scripture says of the perfect heart: here it speaks of the perfect walk. “Blessed are the perfect in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord.” These are the opening words of the beautiful psalm, in which there is given to us the picture, from the witness of personal experience, of the wonderful blessedness of a life in the law and the will of God. As he looks back upon the past, the Psalmist does not hesitate to claim that he has kept that law: “I have kept Your testimonies;” ” I have conformed to Your law;” “I did not desert Your standards ;” “I have not strayed from Your judgments;” “I have done judgment and justice;” “I have not swerved from Your testimonies;” “I have done Your commandments;” “My soul has conformed to Your declarations.” Of a truth may the man who can look up to God and, in simplicity of soul, speak thus, say, “How blessed are the perfect in the way!”

What is meant by this being “perfect in the way” becomes plain as we study the psalm. Perfection includes two elements. The one is the perfection of heart, the earnestness of purpose, with which a man gives himself up to seek God and His will. The other, the perfection of obedience, in which a man seeks, not only to do some, but all the commandments of his God, and rests content with nothing less than the New Testament privilege of “standing perfect in all the will of God.” Of both, the Psalmist speaks with great confidence. Hear how he testifies of the former in words such as these: “Blessed are they that seek Him with the whole heart ;” “With my whole heart I have sought You;” “With my whole heart, I will conform to Your law;” “I will keep Your standards with my whole heart;” “Your standards are my delight;” “O, how I love Your standards!” “Consider how I love Your standards;” “I love them exceedingly.” This is indeed the perfect heart of which we have already heard. The whole psalm is a prayer, and an appeal to God Himself to consider and see how His servant in wholehearted simplicity has chosen God and His standard as his only portion.

We have more than once said that in this wholeheartedness, in the perfect heart, we have the root of all perfection.

But it is only the root and beginning: there is another element that may not be lacking. God is to be found in His will; he who would truly find and fully enjoy God, must meet Him in all His will. This is not always understood. A man may have his heart intent on serving God perfectly, and yet may be unconscious how very imperfect his knowledge of God’s will is. The very earnestness of his purpose, and his consciousness of integrity towards God, may deceive him. As far as he knows, he does God’s will. But he forgets how much there is of that blessed will that he does not yet know. He can learn a very blessed lesson from the writer of our psalm.

Hear how he speaks: “I have refrained my feet from every evil way;” “I hate every false way;” “I esteem all Your standards concerning all things to be right.” It is this surrender to a life of entire and perfect obedience that explains at once the need he felt of Divine teaching, and the confidence with which he pleaded for it and expected it: “Let my heart be perfect in Your testimonies.” The soul that longs for nothing less than to be perfect in the way, and in deep consciousness of its need of a Divine teaching pleads for it, will not be disappointed.

In our next meditation we pass on to the New Testament. In the Old we have the time of preparation, the awakening of the spirit of holy expectancy, waiting God’s fulfilment of His promises. In the Old the perfect heart was the receptacle, emptied and cleansed for God’s filling. In the New we will find Christ perfected forevermore, perfecting us, and fitting us to walk perfect in Him. In the New the word that looks at the human side, perfect in heart, disappears, to give place to that which reveals the Divine filling that awaits the prepared vessel: Perfect Love; God’s love perfected in us.

“Blessed are the perfect in the way!” We have heard the testimony of an Old Testament saint, and is it not written of New Testament times, “He that is feeble shall be as David”? Surely now, in the fulness of time, when Jesus our High Priest in the power of an endless life saves completely, and the Holy Spirit has come out of God’s heaven to dwell within us and be our life, surely now there need not be one word of the psalm that is not meant to be literal truth in the mouth of every believer. Let us read it once more. Speaking it word for word before God, as its writer did, we too shall begin to sing, “Blessed are the perfect in the way, that seek Him with their whole heart.”

“I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. Oh! when will You come to me! I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.”

“For this reason you will be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matt. 5: 48.

Perfect before God, perfect with God, perfect towards God: these are the expressions we find in the Old Testament. They all indicate a relationship: the choice or purpose of the heart set upon God, the wholehearted desire to trust and obey Him. The first word of the New Testament at once lifts us to a very different level, and opens to us what Christ has brought for us. Not only perfect towards God, but perfect as God; this is the wonderful prospect it holds out to us. It reveals the infinite fulness of meaning the word perfect has in God’s mind. It gives us at once the only standard we are to aim at and to judge by. It casts down all hopes of perfection as a human attainment; but awakens hope in Him who, as God, has the power, as Father has the will, to make us like Himself.

A young child may be the perfect image of his father. There may be a great difference in age, in stature, in power, and yet the resemblance may be so striking that every one notices it. And so a child of God, though infinitely less, may yet bear the image of the Father so markedly, may have such a striking likeness to his Father, that in his creaturely life he will be perfect ,as the Father is in His Divine life. This is possible. It is what Jesus here commands. It is what each one should aim at. “Perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” must become one of the first articles of our creed, one of the guiding lights of our Christian life.

Wherein this perfection of the Father consists is evident from the context: “Love your enemies, that you may be sons of your Father which is in heaven; for He makes His sun to shine on the evil and the good: Be therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Or as it is in Luke 6: 36: “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” The perfection of God is His love; His will to communicate His own blessedness to all around Him. His compassion and mercy are the glory of His being. He created us in His image and after His likeness, to find our glory in a life of love and mercy and beneficence. It is in love we are to be perfect, even as our Father is perfect.

The thought that comes up at once, and that ever returns again, is this: But is it possible? And if so, how? Certainly not as a fruit of man’s efforts. But the words themselves contain the answer: “perfect as your Father is perfect.” It is because the little child has received his life from his father, and because the father watches over his training and development, that there can be such a striking and ever-increasing resemblance between him in his feebleness and his father in his strength. It is because the sons of God are partakers of the Divine nature, have God’s life, and spirit, and love within them, that the command is reasonable, and its obedience in ever-increasing measure possible: Be perfect, as your Father is. The perfection is our Father’s: we have its seed in us; He delights to give the increase. The words that first appear to cast us down in utter helplessness now become our hope and strength. Be perfect, as your Father is perfect. Claim your child’s heritage; give up yourself to be wholly a son of God; yield yourself to the Father to do in you all He is able.

And then, remember too, who it is gives this message from the Father. It is the Son, who Himself was, by the Father, perfected through suffering; who learned obedience and was made perfect; and who has perfected us forever. The message, “Be perfect,” comes to us from Him, our elder Brother, as a promise of infinite hope. What Jesus asks of us, the Father gives. What Jesus speaks, He does. To “present every man perfect in Christ Jesus,” is the one aim of Christ and His gospel. Let us accept the command from Him; in yielding ourselves to obey it, let us yield ourselves to Him: let our expectation be from Him in whom we have been perfected. Through faith in Him we receive the Holy Ghost, by whom the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. Through faith in Him, that love becomes in us a fountain of love springing up without ceasing. In union with Him, the love of God is perfected in us, and we are perfected in love. Let us not fear to accept and obey the command, “Be perfect, as your Father is perfect.”

“Be therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful . . . . The disciple is not above his master: but every one who is perfected will be as his master.” Lk. 6: 36, 40.

In his report of part of the Sermon on the Mount, Luke records that Jesus says, not: “Be perfect,” but, “Be merciful,” as your Father is. He then introduces the word perfect immediately after; not, however, in connection with the Father, but the Son, as the Master of His disciples. The change is most instructive; it leads us to look to Jesus, as He dwelt in the flesh, as our model. It might be said that our circumstances and powers are so different from those of God that it is impossible to apply the standard of His infinite perfection in our little world. But here comes the Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, tempted in all things like as we are, and offers Himself as our Master and Leader. He lives with us that we may live with Him; He lives like us that we may live like Him.

The Divine standard is embodied and made visible, is brought within our reach, in the human model. Growing into His likeness, who is the image of the Father, we shall bear the likeness of the Father too: becoming like Him, the firstborn among many brethren, we shall become perfect as the Father is. “The disciple is not above his Master: but every one who is perfected shall be as his Master.”

“The disciple is not above his Master.” The thought of the disciple being as the Master sometimes has reference to outward humiliation: like the Master he will be despised and persecuted (Matt. 10: 24, 25; John 15: 20). And sometimes to inward humility, the willingness to be a servant (Luke 22: 27; John 13: 16). Both in his external life and his inner disposition the perfected disciple knows nothing higher than to be as his Master.

To take Jesus as Master, with the distinct desire and aim to be and live and act like Him — this is true Christianity. This is something far more than accepting Him as a Savior and Helper. Far more even than acknowledging Him as Lord and Master.

A servant may obey the commands of his master most faithfully, while he has little thought of through them rising up into the master’s likeness and spirit. This alone is full discipleship, to long in everything to be as like the Master as possible, to count His life as the true expression of all that is perfect, and to aim at nothing less than the perfection of being perfect as He was. “Everyone who is perfected shall be as his Master.”

The words suggest to us very distinctly that in discipleship there is more than one stage. Just as in the Old Testament it is said only of some that they served the Lord with a perfect heart, while of others we read that their heart was not perfect with the Lord (1 Kings 11: 4, 15: 3; 2 Chron. 25: 2), so even now there are great differences between disciples. Some there are to whom the thought of aiming at the perfect likeness of the Master has never come: they only look to Christ as a Savior. And some there are whose heart indeed longs for full conformity to their Lord, “to be as the Master,” but who have never understood, though they have read the words, that there is such a thing as “a perfect heart” and a life “perfected in love.”

But there are those, too, to whom it has been given to accept these words in their Divine meaning and truth, and who do know in blessed experience what it is to say with Hezekiah, “I have walked before Thee with a perfect heart,” and with John, “as He is, even so are we in this world.”

As we go on in our study of what Scripture says of perfection, let us hold fast the principle we have learnt here. Likeness to Jesus in His humiliation and humility: the choice, like Him, of the form of a servant, the spirit that does not exercise lordship and would not be ministered unto, but girds itself to minister and to give its life for others, this is the secret of true perfection. “The disciple is not above his Master, but every one who is perfected shall be as his Master.” With the perfect love of God as our standard, with that love revealed in Christ’s humanity and humility as our model and guide, with the Holy Spirit to strengthen us with might, that this Christ may live in us, we shall learn to know what it is that every one who is perfected shall be as his Master.

“Jesus said unto him, ‘If you desire to be perfect, go sell everything, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.'” Matt. 19: 21.

To the rich young ruler poverty was to be the path to perfection. “The disciple is not above his Master, but every one who is perfected shall be as his Master.” Poverty was part of the Master’s perfection, part of that mysterious discipline of self-denial and suffering through which it became God to perfect Him: while He was on earth, poverty was to be the mark of all those who would be always with, and wholly as, the Master.

What does this mean? Jesus was Lord of all. He might have lived here on earth in circumstances of comfort and with moderate possessions. He might have taught us how to own, and to use, and to sanctify property. He might in this have become like us, walking in the path in which most men have to walk. But He chose poverty. Its life of self-sacrifice and direct dependence on God, its humiliation, its trials and temptations, were to be elements of that highest perfection He was to exhibit.

In the disciples whom He chose to be with Him, poverty was to be the mark of their fellowship with Him, the training school for perfect conformity to His image, the secret of power for victory over the world, for the full possession of the heavenly treasure, and the full exhibition of the heavenly spirit. And even in him, who, when the humiliation was past, had his calling from the throne, in Paul, poverty was still the chosen and much-prized vehicle of perfect fellowship with his Lord.

What does this mean? The command, “Be perfect,” comes to the rich as well as the poor. Scripture has nowhere spoken of the possession of property as a sin. While it warns against the danger riches bring, and denounces their abuse, it has nowhere promulgated a law forbidding riches. And yet it speaks of poverty as having a very high place in the life of perfection.

To understand this we must remember that perfection is a relative term. We are not under a law, with its external commands as to duty and conduct, that takes no account of diversity of character or circumstance. In the perfect law of liberty in which we are called to live, there is room for infinite variety in the manifestation of our devotion to God and Christ. According to the diversity of gifts, and circumstances, and calling, the same spirit may be seen in apparently conflicting paths of life. There is a perfection which is sought in the right possession and use of earthly goods as the Master’s steward; there is also a perfection which seeks even in external things to be as the Master Himself was, and in poverty to bear its witness to the reality and sufficiency of heavenly things.

In the early ages of the Church this truth, that poverty is for some the path of perfection, exercised a mighty and a blessed influence. Men felt that poverty, as one of the traits of the holy life of Jesus and His apostles, was sacred and blessed. As the inner life of the Church grew feeble, the spiritual truth was lost in external observances, and the fellowship of the poverty of Jesus was scarce to be seen. In its protest against the self-righteousness and the superficiality of the Romish system, the Protestant Church has not yet been able to give to poverty the place it ought to have either in the portraiture of the Master’s image or the disciple’s study of perfect conformity to Him.

And yet it is a truth many are seeking after. If our Lord found poverty the best school for His own strengthening in the art of perfection, and the surest way to rise above the world and win men’s hearts for the Unseen, it surely need not surprise us if those who feel drawn to seek the closest possible conformity to their Lord even in external things, and who long for the highest possible power in witnessing for the Invisible, should be irresistibly drawn to count this word as spoken to them too: “If you desire to be perfect, sell everything, and follow Me.”

When this call is not felt, there is a larger lesson of universal application: No perfection without the sacrifice of all. To be perfected here on earth Christ gave up all: to become like Him, to be perfected as the Master, means giving up all. The world and self must be renounced. “If you desire to be perfect, sell all, and give to the poor; and come, follow Me.”

“Howbeit we speak wisdom among the perfect.” 1 Cor: 2: 6.

“And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual, but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. For whereas there is among you jealousy and strife, are you not yet carnal?” 1 Cor. 3: 1, 3.

Among the Corinthians there were mighty and abundant operations of the Holy Spirit. Paul could say to them (1: 5), “In everything you were enriched in Christ, so that you come behind in no gift.” And yet in the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit there was much that was wanting. He had to say, “There are contentions among you; I beseech you that there be no divisions among you, but that you may be perfected together in the same mind.” The spirit of humility, and gentleness, and unity was wanting; without these they could not be perfected, either individually or as a body. They needed the injunction, “Above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness.”

The Corinthians were as yet carnal; the gifts of the Spirit were among them in power; but His grace, renewing, sweetening, sanctifying every temper into the likeness of Jesus, in this they were lacking much. The wisdom Paul preached was a heavenly, spiritual wisdom, God’s wisdom in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which needed a spiritual, heavenly mind to apprehend it. “We speak wisdom among the perfect ;” he could not speak to them “as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal.” Spiritual things must be spiritually discerned; the wisdom among the perfect could only be received by those who were not carnal, but spiritual. The perfect of whom Paul speaks are the spiritual.

And who are the spiritual? Those in whom not only the gifts, but the graces of the Spirit have obtained supremacy and are made manifest. God’s love is His perfection (Matt. 5: 40-46); Christ’s humility is His perfection. The self-sacrificing love of Christ, His humility, and meekness, and gentleness, manifested in daily life, are the most perfect fruit of the Spirit, the true proof that a man is spiritual. A man may have great zeal in God’s service, he may be used to influence many for good, and yet, when weighed in the balance of love, be found sadly wanting. In the heat of controversy, or under unjust criticism, haste of temper, slowness to forgive and forget, quick words and sharp judgments, often reveal an easily wounded sensitiveness, which proves how little the Spirit of Christ has full possession or real mastery. The spiritual man is the man who is clothed with the spirit of the suffering, crucified Jesus.

And it is only the spiritual man who can understand “the wisdom among the perfect,” “even the mystery which now has been manifested to the holy ones, to whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you.” A Christian teacher may be a man of wonderful sagacity and insight, may have the power of opening the truth, of mightily stimulating and helping others, and may yet have so much of the carnal that the deeper mystery of Christ in us remains hidden. It is only as we yield ourselves wholly to the power of God’s Holy Spirit, as the question of being made free from all that is carnal, of attaining the utmost possible likeness to Jesus in His humiliation, of being filled with the Spirit, rules heart and life, that the Christian, be he scholar or teacher, can fully enter into the wisdom among the perfect.

To know the mind of God we must have the mind of Christ. And the mind of Christ is this, that He emptied and humbled Himself, and became obedient to death. This His humility was His capacity, His fitness for rising to the throne of God. This mind must be in us if the hidden wisdom of God is to be revealed to us in its power. It is this that is the mark of the spiritual, the perfect man.

May God increase the number of the perfect. And to that end the number of those who know to speak wisdom among the perfect, even God’s wisdom in a mystery. As the distinction between the carnal and the spiritual, the babes and the perfect, comes to recognition in the Church, the connection between a spiritual life and spiritual insight will become clearer, and the call to perfection will gain new force and meaning. And it will once again be counted just cause of reproof and of shame not to be among the perfect.

“Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” 2 Cor. 7: 1.

These words give us an insight into one of the chief aspects of perfection, and an answer to the question: Wherein is it we are to be perfect? We must be perfect in holiness. We must be perfectly holy. Such is the exposition of the Father’s message, Be perfect.

We know what holiness is. God alone is holy, and holiness is that which God communicates of Himself. Separation and cleansing and consecration are not holiness, but only the preliminary steps on the way to it. The temple was holy because God dwelt in it. Not that which is given to God is holy, but that which God accepts and appropriates, that which He takes possession of, takes up into His own fellowship and use — that is holy. “I am the Lord who makes you holy,” was God’s promise to His people of old, on which the command was based, “Be holy.” God’s taking them for His own made them a holy people; their entering into this holiness of God, yielding themselves to His will, and fellowship, and service, was what the command, “Be holy,” called them to.

Even so it is with us Christians. We are made holy in Christ; we are saints or holy ones. The call comes to us to follow after holiness, to perfect holiness, to yield ourselves to the God who is ready to sanctify us wholly. It is the knowledge of what God has done in making us His holy ones, and has promised to do in sanctifying us wholly, that will give us courage to perfect holiness.

“Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us perfect holiness.” Which promises? They had just been mentioned: “I will dwell in them; I will be their God; I will receive you; I will be to you a Father.” It was God’s accepting the temple, and dwelling there Himself, that made it holy. It is God’s dwelling in us that makes us holy; that gives us not only the motive, but the courage and the power to perfect holiness, to yield ourselves for Him to possess perfectly and entirely. It is God’s being a Father to us, begetting His own life, His own Son within us, forming Christ in us, until the Son and the Father make their abode in us, that will give us confidence to believe that it is possible to perfect holiness, and will reveal to us the secret of its attainment. “Having therefore these promises, beloved,” that is, knowing them, living on them, claiming and obtaining them, let us “perfect holiness.”

This faith is the secret power of the growth of the inner life of perfect holiness. But there are hindrances that check and prevent this growth. These must be watched against and removed. “Having these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.” Every defilement, outward or inward, in conduct or inclination, in the physical or the spiritual life, must be cleansed and cast away. Cleansing in the blood, cleansing by the word, cleansing by the pruning knife or the fire — in any way or by any means — but we must be cleansed. In the fear of the Lord every sin must be cut off and cast out; everything doubtful or defiling must be put away; soul and body and spirit must be preserved entire and blameless. Thus cleansing ourselves from all defilement we will perfect holiness: the spirit of holiness will fill God’s temple with His holy presence and power.

Beloved, having these promises, let us perfect holiness. Perfectly holy! perfect in holiness let us yield ourselves to these thoughts, to these wishes, to these promises, of our God. Beginning with the perfect childlike heart, pressing on in the perfect way, clinging to a perfect Savior, living in fellowship with a God whose way and work is perfect, let us not be afraid to come to God with His own command as our prayer: Perfect holiness, O my Lord! He knows what He means by it, and we will know if we follow on to know. Lord, I am called to perfect holiness: I come to You for it; make me as perfectly holy as a redeemed sinner can be on earth.

Let this be the spirit of our daily prayer. I would walk before God with a perfect heart: perfect in Christ Jesus; in the path of perfect holiness. I would this day come as near perfection as grace can make it possible for me. “Perfecting holiness” shall, in the power of His Spirit, be my aim.

“This we also pray for, even your perfecting. . . . Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfected, be comforted, be of the same mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.” 2 Cor. 13: 9, 11.

The word here translated “perfect” means to bring a thing into its right condition, so that it is as it should be. It is used of mending nets, restoring them to their right state, or of equipping a ship: fitting it out with all it should have. It implies thus two things: the removal of all that is still wrong; the supply of all that is still lacking.

Within two verses Paul uses the word twice. First, as the expression of the one thing which he asks of God for them, the summary of all grace and blessing: “This we pray for, even your perfecting.” That you be perfectly free from all that is wrong and carnal, and that you should perfectly possess and exhibit all that God would have you be: we pray for your perfecting. Next as the summing up in a farewell word of what He would have them aim at. “Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfected.” And then follow three other verbs, which show how this one, which takes the lead, has reference to the Christian’s daily life, and is meant to point to what is to be his daily aim and experience. “Be perfected, be comforted, be of the same mind, live in peace.” Just as the comfort of the Spirit, and the unity of love, and the life of peace are, if the God of love and peace is to be with us, our duty and our privilege every hour, so, too, the being perfected. The close of the two Epistles gathers up all its teaching in this one injunction — Farewell — Be Perfected.

The two texts together show us what the prayer and the preaching of every minister of the gospel ought to be; what his heart, above everything, ought to be set on. We justly look upon Paul as a model whom every minister ought to copy — let every Gospel minister copy him in this, so that his people may know as he goes in and out among them that his heart breathes heavenward for them this one wish: Your perfecting! and may feel that all his teaching has this one aim: Be perfected!

If ministers are to seek this above everything in their charge of the Church of God, they need themselves to feel deeply and to expose faithfully the low standard that prevails in the Church. Some have said that they have seen Perfectionism slay its thousands. All must admit that Imperfectionism has slain its tens of thousands. Multitudes are soothing themselves in a life of worldliness and sin with the thought that as no one is perfect, imperfection cannot be so dangerous. Numbers of true Christians are making no progress because they have never known that we can serve God with a perfect heart, that the perfect heart is the secret of a perfect way, of a work going on unto perfection. God’s call to us to be perfect, to perfect holiness in His fear, to live perfect in Christ Jesus, to stand perfect in all the will of God, must be preached, until the faith begins to live again in the Church that all teaching is to be summed up in the words, and each day of our life to be spent under their inspiration: Be Perfected!

When once ministers know themselves and are known as the messengers of this God-willed perfection, they will feel the need of nothing less than the teaching of the Holy Spirit to guide men in this path. They will see and preach that religion must indeed be a surrender of all to God. Becoming as conformed to His will, living as entirely to His glory, being as perfectly devoted to His service, as grace can enable us to be, and no less, will be the only rule of duty and measure of expectation. The message, Be Perfected! will demand the whole heart, the whole life, the whole strength. As the soul learns each day to say, “Father! I desire to be perfect in heart with You today, I desire to walk before You and be perfect,” the need and the meaning of abiding in Christ will be better understood, Christ Himself with His power and love will have new preciousness, and God will prove what He can do for souls, for a Church wholly given up to Him.

O you ministers of Christ, you messengers of His salvation, say to the Churches over which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers: This also we pray for — even your perfecting! Finally, brethren, Be perfected!

“Not that I have already obtained, or am already perfected; but I press on. . . . One thing I do, I press on towards the goal. Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded.” Phil.3: 12-15.

In perfection there are degrees. We have perfect, more perfect, most perfect. We have perfect, waiting to be perfected. So it was with our Lord Jesus. In Hebrews we read thrice of Him that He was perfected or made perfect. Of sinful imperfection there was not the faintest shadow in Him. At each moment of His life He was perfect — just what He should be. And yet He needed, and it became God to perfect Him through suffering and the obedience He learned in it. As He conquered temptation, and maintained His allegiance to God, and amid strong crying and tears gave up His will to God’s will, His human nature was perfected, and He became High Priest, “the Son perfected forevermore.” Jesus during His life on earth was perfect, but not yet perfected.

The perfected disciple shall be as his Master. What is true of Him is true, in our measure, of us too. Paul wrote to the Corinthians of speaking wisdom among the perfect, a wisdom carnal Christians could not understand. Here in our text he classes himself with the perfect, and expects and enjoins them to be of the same mind with himself. He sees no difficulty either in speaking of himself and others as perfect, or in regarding the perfect as needing to be yet further and fully perfected.

And what is now this perfection which has yet to be perfected? And who are these perfect ones? The man who has made the highest perfection his choice, and who has given his whole heart and life to attain to it, is counted by God a perfect man. “The kingdom of heaven is like a seed.” Where God sees in the heart the single purpose to be all that God wills, He sees the divine seed of all perfection. And as He counts faith for righteousness, so He counts this wholehearted purpose to be perfect as incipient perfection. The man with a perfect heart is accepted by God, amid all imperfection of attainment, as a perfect man. Paul could look upon the Church and unhesitatingly say, “As many of us as be perfect, let us be thus minded.”

We know how among the Corinthians he describes two classes. The one, the large majority, carnal and content to live in strife; the other, the spiritual, the perfect. In the Church of our day it is to be feared that the great majority of believers have no conception of their calling to be perfect. They have not the slightest idea that it is their duty not only to be religious, but to be as eminently religious, as full of grace and holiness, as it is possible for God to make them. Even where there is some measure of earnest purpose in the pursuit of holiness, there is such a want of faith in the earnestness of God’s purpose when He speaks: “Be perfect,” and in the sufficiency of His grace to meet the demand, that the appeal meets with no response. In no real sense do they understand or accept Paul’s invitation: “Let us, as many as be perfect, be thus minded.”

But, thank God! it is not so with all. There is an ever-increasing number who cannot forget that God means what He says when He speaks: “Be perfect,” and who regard themselves as under the most solemn obligation to obey the command. The words of Christ: “Be perfect,” are to them a revelation of what Christ is come to give and to work, a promise of the blessing to which His teaching and leading will bring them. They have joined the band of like-minded ones whom Paul would associate with himself; they seek God with their whole heart; they serve Him with a perfect heart; their one aim in life is to be made perfect, even as the Master.

My reader! as in the presence of God, who has said to you: “Be perfect!” and of Christ Jesus, who gave Himself that you might obey this command of your God, I charge you that you do not refuse the call of God’s servant, but enrol yourself among those who accept it: “Let us, as many as be perfect, be thus minded.” Fear not to take your place before God with Paul among the perfect in heart. So far will it be from causing self-complacency, that you will learn from him how the perfect has yet to be perfected, and how the one mark of the perfect is that he counts all things loss as he presses on unto the prize of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ.

“Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we proclaim, admonishing every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ: whereunto I labor also, striving according to His working which works in me mightily.” Col. 1: 27-29.

Perfect in Christ: in our inquiry into the teaching of the Word as to perfection, we have here a new word opening up to us the hope, giving us the assurance, of what we have seen to be our duty. It links all that we have seen of God’s call and claim, with all that we know of Christ in His grace and power. Perfect in Christ: here is the open gateway into the perfect life. He to whom it is given to see fully what it means, finds through it an abundant entrance into the life of Christian perfectness.

There are three aspects in which we need to look at the truth of our being perfect in Christ. There is, first, our perfectness in Christ, as it is prepared for us in Him, our Head. As the second Adam, Christ came and wrought out a new nature for all the members of His body. This nature is His own life, perfected through suffering and obedience. In thus being perfected Himself, He perfected forever them that are sanctified. His perfection, His perfect life, is ours. And that not only judicially, or by imputation, but as an actual spiritual reality, in virtue of our real and living union with Him. Paul says in the same Epistle, “You are complete, made full in Him”; all that you are to be is already fulfilled, and so you are fulfilled in Him: circumcised in Him, buried with Him, raised with Him, quickened together with Him. All Christ’s members are in Him, fulfilled in Him.

Then there is our perfection in Christ, as imparted to us by the Holy Spirit in uniting us to Him. The life which is implanted in us at the new birth, planted into the midst of a mass of sin and flesh, is a perfect life. As the seed contains in itself the whole life of the tree, so the seed of God within us is the perfect life of Christ, with its power to grow, and fill our life, and bring forth fruit to perfection.

And then there is also our perfection in Christ, as wrought in us by the Holy Spirit, appropriated by us in the obedience of faith, and made manifest in our life and conduct. As our faith grasps and feeds upon the truth in the two former aspects, and yields itself to God to have that perfect life master and pervade the whole of our daily life in its ordinary actions; perfect in Christ will become each moment a present practical reality and experience. All that the Word has taught of the perfect heart, and the perfect way, of being perfect as the Father, and perfect as the Master, shines with new meaning and with the light of a new life. Christ, the living Christ, is our Perfection; He, Himself, lives each day and hour to impart it. The measureless love of Jesus, and the power of the endless life in which His life works, become the measure of our expectation. In the life in which we now live in the flesh, with its daily duties in relationship with men and money, with care and temptation, we are to give the proof that Perfect in Christ is no mere ideal, but in the power of Almighty God, simple and literal truth.

It is in the last of these three aspects that Paul has used the expression in our text. He speaks of admonishing every man, and teaching every man, in all wisdom, that he may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. It is to the perfectness in daily life and walk that the admonishing and teaching have reference. In principle, Christians were perfect in Christ: in practice they were to become perfect. The aim of the Gospel Ministry among believers was to present every man perfect in Christ Jesus, to teach men how they might put on the Lord Jesus, have His life cover them and have His life in them.

What a task! What a hopeless task to the minister, as he looks upon the state of the Church! What a task of infinite hopefulness, if he does his work as Paul did, “Whereunto,” nothing less than presenting every man perfect in Christ: “Whereunto I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me mightily.” The aim is high, but the power is Divine. Let the minister, in full purpose of heart, make Paul’s aim his own: to present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. He may count upon Paul’s strength: “His working which works in me mightily.”