Perfect Love

Jesus said in Matthew 5:48 to "be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." It appears at first glance that Jesus is asking us to do the impossible. After all, human perfection is an oxymoron. The problem is that we tend to interpret every verse in the Bible as if it requires immediate gratification, but much of scripture is written to show direction in life, and what we are called to become is often more gradual in nature than instantaneous in act. This truth is most evident when we speak of our salvation in God's way.

In John Wesley's "A Plain Account of Christian Perfection" he writes, "Neither dare we affirm, as some have done,that all this salvation is given at once. There is indeed an instantaneous as well as gradual work of God in his children; and there wants not,we know,a cloud of witnesses who have received in one moment, either a clear sense of the forgiveness of their sins, or the abiding witness of the Holy Spirit. But we do not know a single instance, in any place, of a person's receiving, in one and the same moment,remissions of sin, the abiding witness of the Spirit, and a new, a clean heart."

Wesley's point is that it takes a new and clean heart to grow in perfect love, and this perfection is a gradual work and takes a lifetime to achieve, but the joy is in the journey. As you further your walk with a risen Savior, ask God to make your love for him perfect. It won't happen overnight, but if we commit ourselves to the task of loving God and loving our neighbor as we are called to love ourselves, then we will once again rediscover the joy of falling in love - falling in love with God and with his call to love ourselves and one another in grace. We can not be perfect like God, but we can grow in his perfected love.

Dennis