It’s okay to not be perfect

I never considered myself a perfectionist until I started back to school. Suddenly every assignment and every course had to be an “A.” The first B I got felt like a total failure. I expected to be perfect.

I find it interesting that while the Bible uses the word “perfect” just forty-two times, the word “good” appears more than six hundred times. After completing each day’s creative work, God examined what He had done and “saw that it was good.” In the original Hebrew, this means that God found His work “pleasing, favorable, and satisfactory.” Think about it – if God, at the zenith of His creative work, was content with “good” shouldn’t “good” be good enough for us?

There’s more: He promised a good land to the Israelites when they escaped Egyptian bondage (Ex 3:8). Jesus said the Father gives “good gifts” (Mat 7:11), He proclaimed the soil with the greatest harvest good (Luke 8:8) and Paul tells us to “overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:21) – not perfection. Even the Gospel that saves us is called “the Good News” (Acts 5:42). Why then are we trying so hard to be perfect?

God didn’t saddle us with this obsession for perfection – it was the enemy who planted that impossible seed. But we have watered and nurtured it until it has become a weed of gigantic proportions and, as weeds so often do, it has choked the life out of us and the “good works” we were created to do (Ephesians 2:10). It’s his way of keeping us distracted, dissatisfied, frustrated – and fruitless. Perfectionism will drive us to the point of exhaustion as we push ourselves to reach for an unreachable standard. Or, on the flip side, it will leave us in a state of paralysis, fearful of even attempting anything because we know we’ll never measure up. I’ve been both – and it’s no way to live. You and I will never pull off perfection this side of heaven. And that’s okay.

Only God is perfect and making you perfect is His work alone, through the blood of Jesus and the power of the Spirit. But you won’t see the perfectly finished product until you stand before Him in heaven. So hang all your perfectionist tendencies on Him and be free from that burden you were never meant to carry. Beloved, being good is good enough.

Perfect

“Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48

Let’s get this right out on the table. God is perfect, and we are not. You and I are from perfection with no ladder tall enough to reach it. We are flawed, we are weak, we have tempers and attitudes and prejudices; we are selfish and self-centered. We are human, with all that our humanness entails. And we are sinful. Jesus knows all this. So why, then does He tell us “Be perfect.”? Why throw out a command He knows we will never achieve?

In the Greek, the word “perfect” means “complete, mature, finished.” Jesus is speaking of our lives here on earth – and our lives in heaven. First, He is expressing what James echoes with the same Greek word, teleios when he says “Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1:4). Modern translators have Jesus saying “perfect” and James saying “mature,” but the word in the Greek is exactly the same. This “perfection” is the life-long process of growing and becoming mature believers, and it doesn’t happen overnight. It is a day-by-day, choice-by-choice walk – the walk of faith.

Jesus also uses the word to express our future state, when we are complete in Him. You see, the root word for “perfect” and “mature” is telos, which means “end result, outcome, goal. This is the work of Christ that achieves the end result of perfection.  The writer of Hebrews expresses it beautifully: “By one sacrifice He (Christ) has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Hebrews 10:14).   Christ has made us perfect before the Father through His sacrifice on the cross. Jesus is giving us both the perfect way to walk in this life as His followers and the promise of a perfect eternal home as His perfected saints.

Charles Spurgeon said, “The youthful artist as he grasps his newly sharpened pencil can hardly hope to equal Raphael or Michelangelo; but still, if he did not have a noble ideal before his mind, he would only attain to something very mean and ordinary.” Perfection is the aim, it is the picture God paints in our minds, not as an unrealistic goal, but as a promise and a vision. Beloved, strive for perfection, keeping your eye on the ideal – on Jesus. Yes, you will stumble and you will fail, and for that, He sent you a Savior who makes you perfect in every way.

For All the Imperfect People

If you know me at all you know that I have a granddaughter I love with all my heart. Joy is such a – well – a Joy! She is funny and sweet and loving and kind. She is smart – oh that child is so smart! She sings like an angel. And she is beautiful. But she’s not perfect. She is too much like her Nana to be perfect. She has a temper. She doesn’t always obey. She likes to argue. She also has a physical imperfection. Something caused some of the finger bones on her right hand to fuse together and not develop fully. She has adapted very well and can do most anything she wants to do.

I thought about her as I was writing through Leviticus where the Lord expressly forbade any of the priests who had any type of physical imperfection from serving in the temple. “No man who has any defect may come near . . . no many who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand . . . may go near the curtain or approach the altar.” (Lev. 21:18-23). He also said that no animal with any type of defect may be used as a sacrifice. They would not be accepted. Why? Because the Lord God is holy and His people must treat him as holy. He is worthy of perfect servants and perfect sacrifices. In verse 24 the Lord specifically rejects any animal who is “bruised, crushed, torn, or cut.”

All this makes me think of people – like Joy – who have imperfections, blindness, physical deformities, or mental limitations. Or people like me who have been bruised, crushed, torn, and cut by life. Does this mean that God will reject Joy – or me? Or you? Not a chance. The Father sent His one and only Son to the blind and lame and broken (see Luke 4:18-21). He sent Him to heal and restore and release and reclaim everyone who is imperfect – that means all of us. Jesus takes unholy people and makes us holy.

Someone reading this has been told they are unworthy of God’s love. The truth is – all of us are. That’s why Jesus came.  He makes us acceptable through His blood. Without Him, none of us could come before the Lord. With Him, all of us are welcomed in the presence of God. That includes Joy and me. And that includes you, Beloved. Come meet your Father.

Perfection!

I never thought of myself as a perfectionist. I knew “perfect” was so far out of my league, I didn’t expect it. That is until I started back to school, and I became discouraged when I didn’t get an A on an assignment or missed even one question on a test. I wanted to be perfect – after all, isn’t that what God expects of me? Isn’t that what Jesus said? “Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Mat 5:48).

We know that God is perfect, and we also know that we are not. We are flawed, we are weak, we have tempers and attitudes and prejudices; we are selfish and self-centered. We are human, with all that our humanness entails. And we are sinful. Jesus knows all this. So why, then does He tell us “Be perfect.”? Why throw out a command He knows we will never achieve?

The word “perfect” means “perfect,” but it also means “complete, mature, finished.” James used the same word when he said “Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (Jas 1:4). Modern translators have Jesus saying “perfect” and James saying “mature,” but the word in the Greek is exactly the same. This “perfection” is the life-long process of growing and becoming mature believers, and it doesn’t happen overnight. It is also the perfecting work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, as He leads and guides us on to this maturity. Knowing that I am “a work in progress” frees me from the burden of perfectionism.

The root word for both “perfect” and “mature” means “end result, outcome, goal”. This is the work of Christ that achieves the end result of perfection. The writer of Hebrews said, “By one sacrifice He (Christ) has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Heb 10:14). Christ has made us perfect now before the Father through His sacrifice on the cross, even while His Spirit works in us to make us holy. The final perfection comes when we get to heaven, the perfect place for perfect people!

Perfection is the aim, not as an unrealistic goal but as a present truth and a future promise. Beloved, always strive for perfection, keeping your eye on the ideal – on Jesus. Yes, you will stumble and you will fail. That’s why He sent you a Savior – a Savior who makes you perfect in every way.

Good Enough

“I want my wedding day to be perfect.”

“Get this mess cleaned up! Our guests will be here in an hour and this place has to be perfect.”

“I stayed up all night to work on my paper – it has to be perfect if I’m going to get an “A” in this class.” (That would be me.)

Or maybe this one sounds most familiar to you: “Why did I do that/say that/think that?  I’m a Christian – I’m supposed to be perfect!” After all, Jesus said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). But while the Bible uses the word “perfect” just forty-two times,  the word “good” appears more than six hundred times.  Like in the creation account when, after completing each day’s creative work, God examined what He had done and “saw that it was good.”  In the original Hebrew, this means that God found His work “pleasing, favorable, and satisfactory.”  Think about it – if God, at the zenith of His creative work, was content with “good” shouldn’t “good” be good enough for us?

There’s more:  He promised a good land to the Israelites when they escaped Egyptian bondage (Exodus 3:8), Jeremiah told the people to “ask where the good way is and walk in it” (6:16).  Jesus said the Father gives “good gifts” (Matthew 7:11), He proclaimed the soil with the greatest harvest good (Luke 8:8) and Paul tells us to “overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21) – not perfection.  Even the Gospel that saves us is called “the Good News” (Acts 5:42).  Why then, are we trying so hard to be perfect?

God didn’t saddle us with this obsession for perfection – it was the enemy who planted that impossible seed.  But we have watered and nurtured it until it has become a weed of gigantic proportions and, as weeds so often do, it has choked the life out of us and the “good works” we were created to do (Ephesians 2:10).  It’s the devil’s way of keeping you distracted, dissatisfied, frustrated – and fruitless. 

Only God is perfect and making you perfect is His work alone, through the blood of Jesus and the power of the Spirit.  But you won’t see the perfectly finished product until you stand before Him in heaven.  So hang all your perfectionist tendencies on Him and be free from that burden you were never meant to carry.  Beloved, being good is good enough.

Broken Pieces

For several years my son and I served as the Collection Center Coordinators for Operation Christmas Child. We received thousands of gift-filled shoeboxes from churches in the North Florida region and packaged them in shipping cartons for transport. We quickly learned the most efficient ways to arrange the boxes to get as many as possible in the cartons. We turned them this way and that and searched for small boxes to fit in small spaces. It was like a real-life game of Tetris.

We like it when things fit together well – when there is order and balance. But things in our lives don’t always fit neatly in place, do they? Like that scary diagnosis or the spouse who walked away. Losing your job didn’t fit in with your well-planned life and that hard-headed, rebellious child of yours has turned your home into chaos. Maybe depression has wrecked your tidy world. If only life cooperated with our well-thought-out plans.

When God delivered the Israelites from Egyptian bondage, He commanded them to build an altar for burnt offerings and sacrifices but “do not build it out of cut stones. If you use your chisel on it, you will defile it” (Exodus 20:25). Doesn’t that seem odd? Wouldn’t a perfect God want a perfect alter made of perfectly shaped stones? But God did not want man’s “perfection.” I believe this is because true worship – the kind that honors God – comes from imperfect lives. And isn’t that all of us?

Try as we might, we’re not going to make all the pieces fit neatly together. But when God takes the fragments of our lives, the odd shapes and sizes, and even the rubble, He makes something beautiful. Something that speaks of Him – not us – to a world full of imperfect, broken people. Real life is not neat and tidy. It’s messy and misshapen and shattered. But God can take your imperfect life and turn it into a beautiful testimony of His grace. Put all the pieces of your life – and your heart – in God’s hands Beloved, and worship at the altar of His love.

In Christ

“I am so disappointed in you.” She could have hit me, grounded me, and taken away my car, and it wouldn’t have cut me as deeply as knowing I had disappointed my Mom. Her words stuck with me for many years and colored my life and my relationships. I have always feared disappointing others – teachers, bosses, friends, family, even strangers. And most especially God. Oh, I know I am saved and have eternal life – that is rock-solid. But I have carried this sense of being a disappointment to God for as long as I can remember. Until this morning, and something the Lord impressed on my heart.

Paul wrote often about being “in Christ,” meaning to trust in Him for salvation and eternal life. And I have. That also means that Christ is “in me” (John 17:23). I in Christ and Christ in me. By that, God considers me as one with His Son and all that the Son has is mine (Corinthians 3:21), including His righteousness before God (Romans 3:22). Now come stand with me at the water’s edge and hear the Father’s words as Jesus emerges from the Jordan River: “This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). This, too, is mine in Christ. This rocked my world this morning: God is never disappointed in His Son. And because I am in Christ and Christ is in me, God is never disappointed in me. Friend, the same is true for you – if you are in Christ, He is never disappointed in you.

“But,” you argue, “Jesus was perfect and sinless, and I am not.” It doesn’t matter. You and Christ are one in God’s eyes. “But I am disappointed in myself.” That doesn’t change the truth. You are in Christ and Christ is in you. God is not – will never be – disappointed in you.

When you grab hold of that, it will change everything. It will become your mantra when the enemy tries to dump shame on you. “There is no condemnation for me because I am in Christ Jesus!” (Romans 8:1). You will “approach the throne of grace with confidence,” (Hebrews 4:16) because you know He gladly welcomes you into His presence.

Beloved, when God looks at you, He doesn’t see the foolish, sinful person you think you are. He sees His Son in you. And He says – “This one is mine, the one I love, with whom I am well pleased.” Not disappointed. Ever. Christ in you and you in Christ. It’s a beautiful combination.

God of Mercy

For many years I carried a picture in my mind of God. He sat on His throne with a fly swatter in His hand and a scowl on His face. Every time I sinned – which was often – He would slap me down and tell me I was a disappointment to Him. I would ask for forgiveness and He would give it begrudgingly – and always with a warning to straighten up because He was losing patience with me.

Then I began to really study His Word and a different picture of God emerged when I read the Old Testament prophet Micah: “Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives transgressions . . . You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy” (Micah 7:18).

I saw a God who was patient, gentle, and forgave without limit. I saw a God – the God that Micah saw – who “delights to show mercy.” I realized two things: God doesn’t expect me to be perfect – that is flawless – on my own. If that were possible – and it’s not – He wouldn’t have sent his Son to die for my sins. It is only by His Son that I can be made perfect – that is complete in Christ. I don’t know about you, but that is a huge relief to me.

The second thing I realized is it gives God great pleasure to forgive me. And there is much to forgive. He delights in being merciful. Let me be clear, He doesn’t take please in my sinfulness. He takes pleasure in my dependence on Him for salvation. Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit . . .” (Matt 5:3) meaning those who realize their wretched state and come to the only One who redeems wretches. Like me.

I don’t know what you’ve done Beloved, but I know that it would delight God to take all your sin away and show you mercy. There is no scowl on His face when He looks at you – only love. He does not have a fly swatter in His hands – but He does have scars.

Hebrews: Perfection

I’ve known many pastors in my life and my  25+ year career as a church administrator – some of whom I had more confidence in than others. But none of them were perfect. Yet, the Law of God demands perfection, so how can these imperfect men help me to reach perfection? They can’t – and they will tell you that themselves.

The author of Hebrews said, “If perfection could have been obtained through the Levitical priesthood (for on the basis of it the law was given to the people), why was there still need for another priest to come—one in the order of Melchizedek, not in the order of Aaron?” (Hebrews 7:11). The perfect law was given to imperfect people and they were instructed in it by imperfect priests. How then, could they ever meet the law’s demands? Enter Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the other person worthy of both a crown and a mitre.

The author pointed to Jesus’ lineage as a descendant of Judah, the royal line, but what of his priestly role? He said, like Melchizedek, Jesus is “one who has become a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to His ancestry, but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life” (7:16). What does that mean? Indestructible at its root means unable to be dissolved, disunited, overthrown. It means Jesus’s life, ministry, and mission would never be diminished or rendered vain because of His personal moral power. And because His position as priest was not something He inherited, but something He always was – the perfect mediator of the perfect law and the only one who had the power to make imperfect people perfect before God.

Many priests served and retired or died, and the law was never satisfied through any of them. But hear this: “Because Jesus lives forever, He has a permanent priesthood. Therefore He is able to save completely [forever, to the uttermost] those who come to God through Him, because He always lives to intercede for them” (7:24-25). He alone can guarantee our salvation because He alone is “holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, [and] exalted above the heavens” (v. 27).

Beloved, you will never pull off perfect obedience, but you can put your faith in one who has. You can trust in the indestructible life of the Lord Jesus Christ, your priest and king to make you perfect.

Hebrews: Perfection

Many profess Romans 8:28 as their favorite verse: “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” But what is God’s purpose? That we would be “conformed to the likeness of His Son” (v. 29). Our purpose is to be like Jesus.

In our ongoing study of Hebrews, we’re looking at several reasons why the Father sent His one and only Son to earth to die for humanity.  One of those reasons also answers the question – “How does God accomplish His purpose?” Hebrews 2:10 says “. . . it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.” Jesus was made perfect through suffering.

Now wait just a minute, you’re thinking, Jesus was always perfect! What does this mean? The word used here is teleioo and it means “to accomplish, bring to a planned end.” Its root word is telos. Another word that shares that root is in Jesus’ last words on the cross: “It is finished!” (John 19:30)  Jesus was “made perfect” in that His purpose for coming to earth was accomplished – it was perfected.

But back to our question: How does God accomplish His purpose? Through suffering. Through the cross. Through beatings and a crown of thorns and nails through His hands and feet. Will be any less for you and me? Suffering is the hammer and chisel He uses to shape us into the very image of His Son. This was important to the Hebrew recipients of this letter who were undergoing intense persecution for the name of Jesus. They were contemplating giving up. The author was encouraging them to stay firm in their faith because their suffering had a purpose to make them perfect. Just like Jesus.

The same is true for you and me Beloved. The “all things” from Romans 8:28 includes suffering. But the teleioo – the perfection is worth it. We will be like Jesus! Beloved, suffering means that God is perfecting you, just as He did His Son. Oh, but when He’s finished you won’t believe how good you’re gonna look!