Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven
     is perfect.

     — Matthew 5:48

Our Lord’s exhortation in these verses is to be generous in our
behaviour to all men. In the spiritual life beware of walking
according to natural affinities. Everyone has natural affinities;
some people we like and others we do not like. We must never let
those likes and dislikes rule in our Christian life. “If we walk in
the light as God is in the light,” God will give us communion with
people for whom we have no natural affinity.

The Example Our Lord gives us is not that of a good man, or even of a
good Christian, but of God Himself. “Be ye therefore perfect even as
your Father in heaven is perfect,” show to the other man what God has
shown to you; and God will give us ample opportunities in actual life
to prove whether we are perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.
To be a disciple means that we deliberately identify ourselves with
God’s interests in other people. “That ye love one another; as I have
loved you . . .”

The expression of Christian character is not good doing, but
God-likeness. If the Spirit of God has transformed you within, you
will exhibit Divine characteristics in your life, not good human
characteristics. God’s life in us expresses itself as God’s life, not
as human life trying to be godly. The secret of a Christian is that
the supernatural is made natural in him by the grace of God, and the
experience of this works out in the practical details of life, not in
times of communion with God. When we come in contact with things that
create a buzz, we find to our amazement that we have power to keep
wonderfully poised in the centre of it all.

On this day...

• Deuteronomy 4 - 2023
• Deuteronomy 3 - 2023
• John Henry Jowett - 2011
• The Disciple's Theme - Jowett - 2011
• The Abominations of Modern Society - 2011
• PREVAILING PRAYER - 2011
• 2 Timothy 1:12 - 2011
• The Hammer and the Work - 2009
• 1 Corinthians 15:45 - 2008
• Isaiah 58:11 - 2008