“Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Jesus Christ, salutes you, always striving for you in his prayers, that you may stand perfect and fully assured in all the will of God.” Col. 4: 12.

In this, as in some of the other Epistles, there is set before us the life of the believer as he lives it in heaven in Christ, and then as he lives it here on earth with men. The teaching of Scripture is intensely spiritual and supernatural, but, at the same time, intensely human and practical. This comes out very beautifully in the two expressions of our Epistle. Paul had told the Colossians what he labored for; he now tells them what another minister, Epaphras, prayed on their behalf. Paul’s striving was in his labor that they might be perfect in Christ Jesus. The striving of Epaphras was in the prayer that they might be perfect in all the will of God.

First we have “Perfect in Christ Jesus.” The thought is so unearthly and Divine, that its full meaning eludes our grasp. It lifts up to life in Christ and heaven. Then we have “Perfect in all the will of God.” This word brings us down to earth and daily life, placing all under the rule of God’s will, and calling us in every action and disposition to live in the will of God.

“That you may stand perfect in all the will of God.” “The perfection of the creature consists in nothing but willing the will of the Creator.” The will of God is the expression of the Divine perfection. Nature has its beauty and glory in being the expression of the Divine will. The angels have their place and bliss in heaven in doing God’s will. The Son of God was perfected in learning obedience, in giving Himself up unto the will of God. His redemption has but one object, to bring man into that only place of rest and blessedness — the will of God. The prayer of Epaphras shows how truly he had entered into the spirit of his Master. He prays for his people, that they may stand in the will of God; and that in all the will of God — nothing in their life excepted, in which they were not in God’s will. And that again, perfect in all the will of God; at each moment, with a perfect heart walking in a perfect way. Perfect in all the will of God, is ever his one thought of what ought to be asked and could be found in prayer.

Paul prayed for the Colossians, “that they might be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.” These two servants of God were of one mind, that young converts must be reminded that their knowledge of God’s will is very defective, that they need to pray for a Divine teaching to know that Will, and that their one aim should be to stand perfect in all that will.

Let all seekers after perfection, let all who would be like-minded with Paul, note well the lesson. In the joy of a consecration sealed by the Holy Spirit, in the consciousness of a wholehearted purpose, and of serving God with a perfectheart, the believer is often tempted to forget how much there may be in which he does not yet see God’s will. There may be grave defects in his character, serious shortcomings from the law of perfect love in his conduct, which others can observe. The consciousness of acting up to the full light of what we know to be right is a most blessed thing, one of the marks of the perfect heart. But it must ever be accompanied with the remembrance of how much there may be that has not yet been revealed to us. This sense of ignorance as to much of God’s will, this conviction that there is still much in us that needs to be changed, and sanctified, and perfected, will make us very humble and tender, very watchful and hopeful in prayer. So far from interfering with our consciousness that we serve God with a perfect heart, it will give it new strength, while it cultivates that humility which is the greatest beauty of perfection. Without it, the appeal to the consciousness of our uprightness becomes superficial and dangerous, and the doctrine of perfection a stumbling-block and a snare.

Perfect in all the will of God. Let this be our unceasing aim and prayer. Striking its roots deep in the humility which comes from the conviction of how much there is yet to be revealed to us; strengthened by the consciousness that we have given ourselves to serve Him with a perfect heart; full of the glad purpose to be content with nothing less than standing perfect in all the will of God; rejoicing in the confidence of what God will do for those who are before Him perfect in Christ Jesus: let our faith claim the full blessing. God will reveal to us how perfect in Christ Jesus, and perfect in all the will of God, are one in His thought, and may be so in our experience.

Paul prayed for the Colossians “without ceasing,” that they might be filled with the knowledge of God’s will. Epaphras was “always striving in his prayers” for them, that they might stand perfect in all the will of God. It is by prayer, by unceasing striving in prayer, that this grace must be sought for the Church. It is before the throne, it is in the presence of God, that the life of perfection must be found and lived. It is by the operation of the mighty quickening power of God Himself, waited for and received in prayer, that believers can indeed stand perfect in all the will of God. God give us grace so to seek and so to find it.

“It became Him to make the Leader of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” Heb. 2: 10. “Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered; and having been perfected, He became, for all them that obey Him, the Author of eternal salvation.” Heb. 5: 8, 9. “But the word of the oath appointeth a Son, perfected forevermore.” Heb. 7: 28.

We have here three passages in which we are taught that Jesus Christ Himself, though He was the Son of God, had to be perfected. The first tells us that it was as the Leader of our salvation that He was perfected; that it was God’s work to perfect Him; that there was a need-be for it; “it became God” to do it; and that it was through suffering the work was accomplished. The second, what the power of suffering to perfect was, that in it He learned obedience to God’s will; and that, being thus perfected, He became the Author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him. The third, that it is as the Son perfected for evermore that He is appointed High Priest in the heavens.

The words open to us the inmost secret of Christian perfection. The Christian has no other perfection than the perfection of Christ. The deeper his insight into the character of his Lord, as having been made perfect by being brought into perfect union with God’s will through suffering and obedience, the more clearly will he apprehend wherein that redemption which Christ came to bring really consists, and what the path is to its full enjoyment.

In Christ there was nothing of sinful defect or shortcoming. He was from His birth the perfect One. And yet He needed to be perfected. There was something in His human nature which needed to grow, to be strengthened and developed, and which could only thus be perfected. He had to follow on, as, step by step, the will of God opened up to Him, and in the midst of temptation and suffering to learn and prove what it was at any cost to do that will alone. It is this Christ who is our Leader and Forerunner, our High Priest and Redeemer.

And it is as this perfection of His, this being made perfect through obedience to God’s will, is revealed to us, that we will know fully what the redemption is that He brings.

We learn to take Him as our example. Like Him we say, “I am come, not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me.” We accept the will of God as the one thing we have to live for and to live in. In every circumstance and trial we see and bow to the will of God. We meet every providential appointment, in every ordinary duty of daily life, as God’s will. We pray to be filled with the knowledge of His will, that we may enter into it in its fulness, that we may stand complete in all the will of God. Whether we suffer or obey God’s will, we seek to be perfected as the Master was.

We not only take Christ as our example and law in the path of perfection, but as the promise and pledge of what we are to be. All that Christ was and did as Substitute, Representative, Head and Savior, is for us. All He does is in the power of the endless life. This perfection of His is the perfection of His life, His way of living; this life of His, perfected in obedience, is now ours. He gives us His own Spirit to breathe, to work it in us. He is the Vine; we are the branches; the very mind and disposition that was in Him on earth is communicated to us.

Yes, more; it is not only Christ in heaven who imparts to us somewhat of His Spirit; Christ Himself comes to dwell in our heart: the Christ who was made perfect through learning obedience. It is in this character that He reigns in heaven: “He became obedient unto death; therefore God highly exalted Him.” It is in this character that He dwells and rules in the heart. The real character, the essential attribute of the life Christ lived on earth, and which He maintains in us, is this: a will perfect with God, and ready at any cost to be perfected in all His will. It is this character He imparts to His own: the perfection with which He was perfected in learning obedience. As those who are perfect in Christ, who are perfect of heart towards God, and are pressing on to be made perfect, let us live in the will of God, our one desire to be even as He was, to do God’s will, to stand perfect in all the will of God.

“But solid food is for the perfect, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern goad and evil. For this reason, let us cease to speak of the first principles of Christ, and press on unto perfection.” Heb. 5: 14; 6: 1.

The writer had criticized the Hebrews for being dull of hearing; for having made no progress in the Christian life; for still being as little children who needed milk. They could not bear solid food, the deeper and more spiritual teaching in regard to the heavenly state of life into which Christ had entered, and into which He gives admission to those who are ready for it. Such our writer calls the perfect, mature or full-grown men of the house of God. We must not connect the idea of mature or full-grown with time. In the Christian life it is not as in nature: a believer of three years old may be counted among the mature or perfect, while one of twenty years’ standing may be but a babe, unskilled in the word of righteousness. Nor must we connect it with power of intellect or maturity of judgment. These may be found without that insight into spiritual truth, and that longing after the highest attainable perfection in character and fellowship with God, of which the writer is speaking.

We are told what the distinguishing characteristic of the perfect is: “even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil”‘ It is the desire after holiness, the tender conscience that longs above everything to discern good and evil, the heart that seeks only, and always, and fully to know and do the will of God, that marks the perfect. The man who has set his heart upon being holy, and in the pursuit after the highest moral and spiritual perfection exercises his senses in everything to discern good and evil, is counted the perfect man.

The Epistle has spoken of the two stages of the Christian life. It now calls upon the Hebrews to be no longer babes, no longer to remain content with the first principles, the mere elements of the doctrine of Christ. With the exhortation, “Let us press on to perfection”; it invites them to come and learn how Jesus is a Priest in the power of an endless life, who can save completely; how He is the Mediator of a better covenant, lifting us into a better life by writing the law in our heart; how the Holiest of all has been set open for us to enter in, and there to serve the living God. “Let us go on to perfection” is the landmark pointing all to that heavenly life in God’s presence which can be lived even here on earth, to which the full knowledge of Jesus as our heavenly High Priest leads us.

“Let us press on to Perfection.” It is not the first time we have the word in the Epistle. We read of God’s perfecting Christ through suffering. Perfection is that perfect union with God’s will, that blessed meekness and surrender to God’s will, which the Father wrought in Christ through His suffering. We read of Christ’s learning obedience, and so being made perfect. This is the true maturity or perfection, the true wisdom among the perfect, the knowing and doing God’s will. We read of strong food for the perfect, who by reason of practice, have their senses exercised to discern good and evil. Here again perfection is, even as with Christ, the disposition, the character that is formed when a man makes conformity to God’s will, fellowship with God in His holiness, the one aim of His life, to which everything else, even life itself, is to be sacrificed.

It is to this that Jesus, our High Priest, and the further teaching of the Epistle, would lead us on. The knowledge of the mysteries of God, of the highest spiritual truth, cannot profit us, because we have no inward capacity for receiving them, unless our inmost life is given up to receive as ours the perfection with which Jesus was perfected. When this disposition is found, the Holy Spirit will reveal to us how Christ has perfected forever, in the power of an endless life, those who are sanctified. He has prepared a life, a disposition, with which He clothes them. And we will understand that, “Let us go on to perfection,” just means this, “Let us go on to know Christ perfectly, to live entirely by His heavenly life now that He is perfected, to follow wholly His earthly life, and the path in which He reached perfection.” Union with Christ in heaven will mean likeness to Christ on earth in that lamb-like meekness and humility in which He suffered, in that Son-like obedience through which He entered into glory.

Brethren, leaving the first principles, let us go on to Perfection.

“Now, if there was perfection through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people had received the law), what further need that another priest should arise after the order of Melchisedek? . . . who has been made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life . . . . For there is a disannulling of a former commandment, because of its weakness and unprofitableness, for the law made nothing perfect.” Heb. 7: 11-19. Gifts and sacrifices are offered, which cannot, as touching the conscience, make the worshiper perfect.” Heb. 9: 9. “For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, can never make perfect them that draw nigh.” Heb. 10: 1. “That apart from us they should not be made perfect.” Heb. 11: 40.

Of the Epistles of the New Testament there is none in which the word “Perfect” is used so often as that to the Hebrews. There is none that will help us more to see what Christian perfection is, and the way to its attainment. The word is used thrice of our Lord Jesus, and His being made perfect Himself. Twice of our subjective perfection. Five times of the perfection of which the law was the shadow, but which could not be until Jesus came. Thrice of Christ’s work in perfecting us. And once of the work of God in perfecting us. These five thoughts will each give us a subject of meditation. Of the first two we have spoken already.

A careful perusal of the verses placed above, will show that the writer thought it of great importance to make it clear that the law could perfect no person or thing. It was all the more of consequence to press this, both because of the close connection in which the law stood to the true perfection, as its promise and preparation, and of the natural tendency of the human heart to seek perfection by the law. It was not only the Hebrews who greatly needed this teaching: among Christians in our days the greatest hindrance in accepting the perfection the gospel asks and offers, is that they make the law its standard, and then our impotence to fulfil the law, the excuse for not attaining, for not even seeking it. They have never understood that the law is but a preparation for something better; and that when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part is done away.

The Law demands; the Law calls to effort; the Law means self. It puts self upon doing its utmost. But it makes nothing perfect, neither the conscience nor the worshiper. This is what Christ came to bring. The very perfection which the law could not give He does give. The Epistle tells us that He was made a Priest, not as Aaron, after the law and in connection with the service of a carnal commandment, which had to be disannulled because of its weakness and unprofitableness, but after the power of an endless life. What Christ, as Priest, has wrought and now works, is all in the power of an inward birth, of a new life, of the eternal life. What is born into me, what is as a spirit and life within me, has its own power of growth and action. Christ’s being made perfect Himself through suffering and obedience; His having perfected us by that sacrifice by which He was perfected Himself; and His communication of that perfection to us, is all in the power of an endless life. It works in us as a life power; in no other way could we become partakers of it.

Perfection is not through the law; let us listen to the blessed lesson. Let us take the warning. The law is so closely connected with perfection, was so long its only representative and forerunner, that we can hardly realize: the law makes nothing perfect. Let us take the encouragement: What the law could not do, God, sending His Son, has done. The Son, perfected for evermore, has perfected us for ever. It is in Jesus we have our perfection. It is in living union with Him, it is when He is within us, not only as a seed or a little child, but formed within us, dwelling within us, that we shall know how far He can make us perfect. It is faith that leads us in the path of perfection. It is the faith that sees, that receives, that lives in Jesus the Perfect One, that will bear us on to the perfection God would have.

“But Christ, through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, through His own blood, entered once for all into the holy place.” Heb. 9: 11, 12.

“By one offering He has perfected forever them that are sanctified.” Heb. 10: 14.

In Christ’s work, as set before us in the Epistle to the Hebrews, there are two parts. In contrast with the worldly sanctuary, He is the minister of the true tabernacle. The Holiest of all is now open to us: Christ has opened the way through a more perfect tabernacle into the presence of God. He has prepared and opened up for us a place of perfect fellowship with God, of access, in a life of faith, which means a life in full union with Christ, into God’s immediate presence.

There must be harmony between the place of worship and the worshiper. As He has prepared the perfect sanctuary, the Holiest of all, for us, He has prepared us for it too. “By one offering He has perfected forever them that are sanctified.” For the sanctuary the sanctified ones; for the Holiest of all a holy priesthood; for the perfect tabernacle the perfected worshiper.

“By one sacrifice He has perfected forever them that are sanctified.” The word perfected cannot mean here anything different from what it meant in the three passages where it has been previously used of Him (Heb. 2: 11, 5: 9, 7: 28). They all point to that which constituted the real value, the innermost nature, of His sacrifice. He was Himself perfected for our sakes, so that He might perfect us with the same perfection with which God had perfected Him. What is this perfection with which God perfected Him through suffering, in which He was perfected through obedience, in which as the Son, perfected forevermore, He was made our High Priest?

The answer is to be found in what the object was of Christ’s redeeming work. The perfection of man as created consisted in this, that he had a will with power to will as God willed, and so to enter into inner union with the Divine life and holiness and glory. His fall was a turning from the will of God to do the will of self. And so this self and self-will became the source and the curse of sin. The work of Christ was to bring man back to that will of God in which alone is life and blessedness. Therefore it became God, it was proper and needful if He was to be the Leader of our salvation, that God should make Him perfect through suffering. In His own person He was to conquer sin, to develop and bring to perfection a real human life, sacrificing everything that men hold dear, willing to give up even life itself, in surrender to God’s will; proving that it is the meat, the very life of man’s spirit, to do God’s will. This was the perfection with which Christ was perfected as our High Priest, who brings us back to God. This was the meaning and the value of His sacrifice, that “one sacrifice”‘ by which “He has perfected forever them that are sanctified.” In the same sacrifice in which He was perfected, He perfected us. As the second Adam, He made us partakers of His own perfection. Just as Adam in his death corrupted us and our nature forevermore, so Christ, in His death, in which He, Himself, was perfected, perfected us and our nature for evermore. He has created for us a new perfect nature, a new life. With Him we died to sin; in Him we live for God.

And how do we become partakers of this perfection with which Christ has perfected us? First of all the conscience is perfected so that we have no more conscience of sin, and enter boldly into the Holiest, the Presence of God. The consciousness of a perfect redemption possesses and fills the soul. And then, as we abide in this, God Himself perfects us in every good thing, to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ. Through Christ, the High Priest in the power of the endless life, there comes to us in a constant stream from on high, the power of the heavenly life. So that day by day we may present ourselves perfect in Christ Jesus.

A soul that seeks to dwell in the Divine perfection of which the Epistle speaks; that holds fellowship with Him who in such intense human reality was perfected through suffering and obedience; that in faith turns to Him who has perfected us, and now holds our perfection in Himself to be communicated as a life in us day by day, for us to practice and put it into exercise in walking in His footsteps; may count most surely that He Himself will lead it into the promised inheritance.

“Now the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the Great Shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, even our Lord Jesus, make you perfect in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.” Heb. 13: 20, 21.

These two verses contain a summary of the whole Epistle in the form of a prayer. In the former of the two we have the substance of what was taught in the first or doctrinal half — what God has done for us in the redemption in Christ Jesus. In the second of the two verses we have a revelation and a promise of what this God of redemption will do for us; we see how God’s one aim and desire is to make us perfect. We have said before, the word “perfect” here implies the removal of all that is wrong, and the supply of all that is lacking. This is what God waits to do in us. “God make you perfect in every good thing.”

We need a large faith to claim this promise. So that our faith may be full and strong, we are reminded of what God has done for us; this is the assurance of what He will yet do in us. Let us look to Him as the God of peace, who has made peace in the entire putting away of sin; who now proclaims peace; who gives perfect peace. Let us look to Jesus Christ, the Great Shepherd of the sheep, our High Priest and King, who loves to care for and keep us. Let us remember the blood of the eternal covenant, in the power of which God raised Him and He entered heaven; that blood is God’s pledge that the covenant with its promises will be fulfilled in our hearts. Let us think of God’s bringing Him again from the dead, that our faith and hope might be in God; the power that raised Jesus is the power that works in us. Yes, let us look, and worship, and adore this God of peace, who has done it all, who raised Christ through the blood of the covenant, that we might know and trust Him.

And let us believe the message that tells us: This God of peace, He will perfect you in every good thing. The God who perfected Christ will perfect you too. The God who has worked out such a perfect salvation for us, will perfect it in us. The more we gaze upon Him who has done such wondrous things for us, will we trust Him for this wondrous thing He promises to do in us, to perfect us in every good thing. What God did in Christ is the measure of what He will do in us to make us perfect. The same Omnipotence that worked in Christ to perfect Him, waits for our faith to trust its working in us day by day to perfect us in the doing of God’s will. And on our part, the surrender to be made perfect will be the measure of our capacity to experience what God has done in Christ.

And now hear what this perfection is which this God promises to work in us. It is truly Divine, as Divine as the work of redemption: the God of peace, who brought again Christ from the dead, perfect you. It is intensely practical: in every good thing, to do His will. It is universal, with nothing excluded from its operation: in every good thing. It is truly human and personal: God perfects us, so that we do His will. It is inward: God working in us that which is pleasing in His sight. And it is most blessed, giving us the consciousness that our life pleases Him, because it is His own work: He works in us that which is pleasing in His sight.

“God perfect you to do His will:” this is the conclusion of the whole Epistle. “To do His will:” this is the blessedness of the angels in heaven. For this the Son became man: by this He was perfected: in this, — “in the which will,” as done by Him, “we are sanctified.” It is “TO DO His WILL” that God perfects us; that God works in us that which is pleasing in His sight.

Believer, let God’s aim be your aim also. Say to God that you do desire this above everything. Give yourself, at once, entirely, absolutely, to this, and say with the Son, “I come to do Your will, O my God.” This will give you an insight into the meaning, and the need, and the preciousness of the promise, “God perfect you to do His will.” This will fix your heart upon God in the wondrous light of the truth: He who perfected Christ is perfecting me too. This will give you confidence, in the fulness of faith, to claim this God as your God, the God who perfects in every good thing.

The perfecting of the believer by God, restoring him to his right condition to fit him for doing His will, may be instantaneous. A valuable piece of machinery may be out of order. The owner has spent time and trouble in vain to put it right. The maker comes: it costs him but a moment to see and remove the hindrance. And so the soul that has for years wearied itself in the effort to do God’s will, may often in one moment be delivered from some misapprehension as to what God demands or promises, and find itself restored, perfected for every good thing. And what was done in a moment becomes the secret of the continuous life, as faith each day claims the God that perfects, to do that which is well pleasing in His sight.

Yes, the soul that dares say to God that it yields itself in everything to do His will, and through all the humiliation which comes from the sense of emptiness and impotence, abides by its vow in simple trust, will be made strong to rise and to appropriate and experience in full measure what God has offered in this precious word: “The God of peace perfect you, in every good thing, to do His will, working in you that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ.”

And it will sing with new meaning, and in fulness of joy, the song of adoring love: “To Him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

“And let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing.” Jas. 1: 4.

Perfection is a seed. The life, given in regeneration, is a perfect life. Through ignorance and unbelief the soul may never get beyond knowing that it has life, and remain unconscious of what a wonderful, perfect life it has.

Perfection is a seed. It is a blessed hour when the soul wakens up to know this, and with a perfect heart yields itself to appropriate all that God has given. The perfection of the perfect heart, a heart wholly yielded to seek God with all its strength, is again a seed, with infinite power of growth and increase.

Perfection is a growth. As the Christian awakens to the consciousness of what God asks and gives, and maintains the vow of a wholehearted surrender, he grows in his sense of need and his trust in the promise of a Divine life and strength, until all the promises of grace come to a focus in the one assurance, “The God of all grace will Himself perfect you”; that faith which was the fruit of previous growth, becomes the new seed of further growth. Perfection now develops into something riper and mellower. The overshadowing Presence of Him who perfects, rests continually on the spirit, and the whole character bears the impression of heavenliness and fellowship with the Unseen. The soul makes way for God, and gives Him time to do His work; the God of Peace, perfecting in every good thing, gets entire possession. The soul rests in the rest of God.

This is not the work of a day. Perfection is a growth. “You have need of patience, that having done the will of God, you may inherit the promise.” “Be imitators of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” Man is the creature of time, and is under the law of development. In the kingdom of heaven it is as in nature, from the seed first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. There is nothing at times that appears more mysterious to the believer than the slowness of God. It is as if our prayers are not heard, as if His promises are not fulfilled, as if our faith is vain. And all the time God is hastening on His work with all speed. He will avenge His own elect speedily, though He bear long with them.

“Let patience have its perfect work.” We are so often impatient with ourselves, not content to trust God to do His work, and so hindering just when we want to hurry on His work. We are impatient with God; instead of the adoring trust of Him, the God of peace, who is perfecting us, we fret ourselves because we do not see what we had thought out for ourselves. “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him,” is the law of faith, not only in times of well-being, but especially in the path of perfection. Faith is the law of the Christian life to an extent that very few realize. The assurance that rests in the unseen power that is working out its Holy Purpose will never be disappointed. As it has been said of an elderly saint, “She was sure that, however long any soul might have to continue in the path of humiliation, with self-emptying, the end, with all who were faithful, would one day be a filling to overflowing of all their inward being with the presence of the Holy One.”

“Let patience have its perfect work.” This is the command. To those who obey it, the potential offered is certain, “that you may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing.” How words are heaped up to make us appreciate what the aim and expectation of the believer ought to be! Perfect, something finished, that satisfies its purpose; entire, that in which every part is in its place; and lacking in nothing, just all that the Father expects: such is the Christian character as God’s Spirit sets it before us. There is a perfection which the Christian is to regard as his duty and his life. Where patience has its perfect work it will bring forth what the husbandman longs for, fruit unto perfection. “God’s work in man is the man. If God’s teaching by patience have a perfect work in you, you are perfect.”

But where there is to be this perfect fruit, there must first be the perfect seed. And that seed is the perfect heart. Without this, whence could patience have its perfect work? With this, every trial, every difficulty, every failure even, is accepted as God’s training school, and God is trusted as the Faithful One, who is perfecting His own work. Let there be first the perfect heart — that will lead to perfect patience, and that again to the fully perfected man.

Jesus Christ was Himself not perfected in one day: it took time; in Him patience had its perfect work. True faith recognizes the need of time, and rests in God. And time to us means days and years. Let us learn each day to renew the vow: “This day I intend to live for God as perfectly as His grace will enable me. This day I intend, in the patience of hope, to trust the God of all grace, who Himself is perfecting me. This day I intend to be perfect and entire, lacking nothing.” With such a vow renewed day by day, with faith in Christ who has perfected us, and God who is perfecting us, patience will do its perfect work. And we will be perfect and entire, lacking nothing.

“In many things we all stumble. If anyone does not stumble in word, the same is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also.” Jas. 3: 2.

There can be no perfection in art or science without attention to little things. One of the truest marks of genius is the power, in presence of the highest ideal, to attend to even the least details. No chain is stronger than its feeblest link. The weakest point in the character of a Christian is the measure of his nearness to perfection. It is in the little things of daily life that perfection is attained and proved.

The tongue is a little member. A word of the tongue is, oh! such a little thing in the eyes of many. And yet we are told by none less than our blessed Lord: “By your words you will be justified.” When the Son of man comes in the glory of His Father to repay to every man according to his deeds, every word will be taken into account. In the light of the great day of God, if any man stumble not in word, the same is a perfect man. This is the full-grown man, who has attained maturity, who has reached unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.

But is it possible for any man to be thus perfect, and not to stumble in a single word? Has not James just said, “In many things we all stumble?” Just think of all the foolish words one hears among Christians, the sharp words, the hasty, thoughtless, unloving words, the words that are only half honest and not spoken from the heart. Think of all the sins of the tongue against the law of perfect love and perfect truth, and we must admit the terrible force of James’ statement: “In many things we all stumble.” When he adds, “If any stumble not in word, the same is a perfect man,” can he really mean that God expects that we should live so, and that we must seek and expect it too?

Let us think. With what objective does he use these words? In the beginning of his Epistle he had spoken of patience having its perfect work, that we may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing. There, entire perfection, with nothing lacking, is set before us as a definite promise to those who let patience have its perfect work. His Epistle is written, as all the Epistles are, under the painful impression of how far ordinary Christian experience is from such perfection, but in the faith that it is not a hopeless task to teach God’s people that they ought to be, that they can be, perfect and entire, lacking in nothing. Where he begins to speak of the tongue, the two sides of the truth again rise up before him. The ordinary experience he expresses in the general statement: “In many things we all stumble.” The will of God and the power of grace he sets forth in the blessed and not impossible ideal of all who seek to be perfect and entire: “If any man stumble not in word, the same is a perfect man.” James speaks of it in all simplicity as a condition as actual as the other condition of everyone stumbling.

The question is again asked: But is it really a possible ideal? Does God expect it of us? Is grace promised for it? Let us call in Peter as a witness, and listen to what God’s Spirit says through him, as to that terrible necessity of always stumbling which some hold fast, as to the blessed possibility of being kept from stumbling. “Give the more diligence,” he writes, “to make your calling and election sure; for if you do these things, you will never stumble.” “Never” — that includes, not even in word. Let us hear what Jude says, “Now unto Him, who is able to guard you from stumbling through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and power, before all time, and now, and forevermore. Amen.” It is the soul that knows and without ceasing trusts God as a God who guards from stumbling, as a God who watches and keeps us every moment through Jesus Christ, that will without ceasing sing this song of praise.

The three texts on “stumbling” are the only ones in the New Testament in which the word occurs in reference to the Christian life. The text in James is heard quoted a hundred times for every time the texts in Peter and Jude are cited. And Christ has said, “According to your faith be it unto you.” If our faith feeds only and always on, “In many things we all stumble,” no wonder that we do stumble. If with that “stumble” we take the “stumble not” that follows, “If any man stumble not in word, the same is a perfect man,” and the “not stumble” of Peter and Jude, the faith that embraces the promise will obtain it: God’s power will translate it into our experience, and our life will be a living Epistle into which God’s words have been transcribed. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks: out of a heart that is perfect towards God, in which the love of God is shed abroad, in which Christ dwells, the tongue will bring forth words of truth and uprightness, of love and gentleness, full of beauty and of blessing. God wills it: God works it: let us claim it.

“The God of all grace, who called you unto His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered awhile, will Himself perfect, establish, and strengthen you. To Him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.” 1 Pet. 5: 10, 11.

Through suffering to glory: this is the keynote of the First Epistle of Peter. The word “suffer” occurs sixteen times, the word “glory” fourteen times. In its closing words the readers are reminded of all its teaching, as he writes to them: “The God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory, after you have suffered a little while.” In no Epistle of the New Testament are the two aspects of Christ’s death: that He suffered for us, and that we are to suffer with Him and like Him, so clearly and closely linked together. Fellowship with Christ, likeness to Christ, manifested in suffering, is the point of view from which Peter would have us look on life as the path to glory. To be a partaker of the sufferings and the glory of Christ is the Christian’s privilege. He was perfected through suffering by God: the same God perfects us for suffering and glorifying Him in it.

“God will Himself perfect you!” In God alone is perfection. In Him is all perfection. And all perfection comes from Him. When we consider the wondrous perfection there is in the sun, in the laws it obeys, and in the blessings it dispenses, and remember that it owes all to the will of the Creator, we acknowledge that its perfection is from God. And so, through the whole of nature, to the tiniest insect that floats in the sunbeam, and the humblest little flower that basks in its light, everything owes its beauty to God alone. All His works praise Him. His work is perfect.

And have we not here in nature the open secret of Christian perfection? It is God who must perfect us! “God will Himself perfect you.” What is revealed in nature, is the pledge of what is secured to us in grace. “It suited Him, for whom are all things, and of whom are all things, in leading many sons unto glory, to make the Leader of their salvation perfect through suffering.” It was befitting that God should show that He is the God who works out perfection amid the weakness and suffering of a human life. This is what constitutes the very essence of salvation, to be perfected by God; to yield oneself to the God, for whom, and of whom are all things, Himself to perfect us.

God has planted deep in the heart of man the desire for perfection. Is it not this that stirs the spirit of the artist and the poet, of the discoverer and the artificer? Is it not the nearest possible approach to this that wakens admiration and enthusiasm? And is it only in grace that all thought and all joy of present perfection is to be banished? Certainly not, if God’s word be true. The promise is sure and bright for this our earthly life: “God will Himself perfect you.” Joined with the words, “establish, and strengthen you,” the “Himself perfect you,” can refer to nothing but the present daily life. God shall Himself put you into the right position, and in that position then establish and strengthen you, so as to fit you perfectly for the life you have to live, and the work you have to do.

We find it so hard to believe this, because we do not know what it means. “You are not under the law, but under grace.” The law demands what we cannot give or do. Grace never asks what it does not give; and so the Father never asks what we cannot do. He Himself, who raised Jesus from the dead, is always ready, in that same resurrection power, to perfect us to do His will. Let us believe, and be still, until our soul is filled with the blessed truth, and we know that it will be done to us.

O my soul, learn to know this God, and claim Him, in this His character, as yours: “God will Himself perfect you!” Worship and adore Him here, until your faith is filled with the assurance: My God Himself is perfecting me. Regard yourself as the clay in the hands of the Great Artist, spending all His thought and time and love to make you perfect. Yield yourself in voluntary, loving obedience to His will and His Spirit. Yield yourself in full confidence into His very hands, and let the word ring through your whole being: GOD SHALL HIMSELF PERFECT YOU; perfectly fit you for all He intends you to be or do. Let every perfect bud or flower you see whisper its message: Only let God work; only wait upon God; GOD SHALL HIMSELF PERFECT YOU.

Believer! have you desired this? O claim it, claim it now. Or rather, claim now in very deed this God as your God. Just as the writer to the Hebrews, and Peter in this Epistle, gather up all their varied teaching into this one central promise, “God shall Himself perfect you,” so there may come in the life of the believer a moment when he gathers up all his desires and efforts, all his knowledge of God’s truth, and all his faith in God’s promises, concentrates them in one simple act of surrender and trust, and, yielding himself wholly to do His will, dares to claim God as the God that perfects him. And his life becomes one doxology of adoring love: To Him be the dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

“Whosoever keeps His words, in him truly has the love of God been perfected.” John 2: 5.

Tauler says of the Apostle John:

“In three ways, dear children, did the beloved Lord attract to Himself the heart of John. First, did the Lord Jesus call him out of the world to make him an apostle. Next, did He grant to him to rest upon His loving breast. Thirdly, and this was the greatest and most perfect nearness, when on the holy day of Pentecost He gave to him the Holy Ghost, and opened to him the door through which he should pass into the heavenly places. Thus, children, does the Lord first call you from the world and make you to be the messengers of God. And next, He draws you close to Himself, that you may learn to know His holy gentleness and lowliness, and His deep and burning love, and His perfect unshrinking obedience. And yet this is not all. Many have been drawn thus far, and are satisfied to go no further. And yet they are far from the perfect nearness which the heart of Jesus desires. St. John lay at one moment on the breast of the Lord Jesus, and then he forsook Him and fled. If you have been brought so far as to rest on the breast of Christ, it is well. But yet there was to John a nearness still to come, one moment of which would be worth a hundred years of all that had gone before. The Holy Ghost was given to him — the door was opened. There is a nearness in which we lose ourselves, and God is all in all. This may come to us in one swift moment, or we may wait for it with longing hearts, and learn to know it at last. It was of this that St. Paul spoke when he said that the thing which the heart has not conceived, God has now revealed to us by His Holy Spirit. The soul is drawn within the inner chamber, and there are the wonders and the riches revealed.” (Three Friends of God, by Mrs. Bevan.)

To understand a writer it is often needful to know his character and history. When John wrote the Epistle he had for fifty years been living in that inmost nearness of which Tauler speaks, in the inner chamber within the veil. While on earth Jesus had found in him a congenial spirit, receptive of His highest spiritual teaching, one to whom He felt drawn in special love. Fifty years of communing with the Son in the glory of the Father, and experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit to make the eternal life, the heavenly life of Jesus in fellowship with the Father, an everyday reality, — no wonder that when John testifies of it as a life of perfect love, the Church that is not living on this level can only speak of it as an ideal, in this life unattainable. To one who thinks of what John was and knew of his Lord, and what a Church under his teaching would be, the words are simply descriptive of characters he saw around him; men to whom he could write: “Beloved, if our hearts condemn us not, we have boldness toward God . . . because we keep His commandments, and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.” “Whosoever keeps His word, in him truly has the love of God been perfected.”

John is the disciple whom Jesus loved! The words Jesus spoke about the love of God had a special attraction for him; the love with which Jesus loved him exercised its mighty influence; the Holy Spirit that came from the heart of the glorified Jesus intensified and spiritualized it all; and John became the Apostle of Love, who, gazing into the very depths of the Divine Glory and Being, found there that GOD IS LOVE. With this word, “Love,” as the sum of his theology, he links to the word he found in the Old Testament and in the writings of his brother apostles, the word “Perfect,” and tells us that this is perfection, this the highest type of Christian character, the highest attainment of the Christian life — for a man to have God’s love perfected in him.

The condition and the mark of this being perfected in love Jesus had taught him: “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him; and we will come to him, and make our abode with him.” Keeping His word: this is the link between the love of the disciple and the love of the Father, leading to that wondrous union in which the Father’s love draws Him to come and dwell in the loving heart. “If you keep my commandments,” Jesus said, “you shall abide in my love: even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in His love.” And John confirms from his own experience what the Master spoke: “Whosoever keeps His word, in him has the love of God been perfected.”

Thank God! this is a life to be found on earth: God’s love can be perfected in us. Let not what we see in the Church around us make us doubt God’s word. When John spoke of Perfect Love, and Paul of the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, they testified from personal experience of what they had received in direct communication from the throne of glory. The words were to them the expression of a life of which we have little conception; to us they convey no more truth than our low experience can put into them. Oh! that our hearts might be roused to believe in their heavenly, supernatural, fulness of meaning, and not to rest until we know that the love that passes knowledge, the love that God is, the love of Christ, dwells within us as a fountain springing up unto everlasting life: “THE LOVE OF GOD PERFECTED IN US” — the prospect is sure to everyone who will allow the love of God in Christ to have the mastery, and to prove what God can do for them that love Him.