Lesson 11: Provides for Perfection
Matthew 5:48 – “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

In considering the threefold demand dealt with in the last chapter, we come first in order to the demand for perfection. The answer of the Will of God to that demand may be briefly stated.

God's Will is perfect, because by Him man was created, and He alone, therefore, is able to make such laws as shall ensure man's perfection.

This is coming in a statement of the simplest kind. We as Christians all profess to believe God has given us our being, and in a deep conviction of that truth lies the reason why we should yield ourselves wholly to His government in order that we may attain perfection of being.

Perhaps it is necessary to emphasize this initial fact, for often the teacher's greatest difficulty is to get people to accept the truth of the truth they accept. When Daniel, as the interpreter of the Divine message to Belshazzar, named the sin of that monarch which was about to be punished, he did not mention the sins of impurity, drunkenness, or sacrilege, though he had been guilty of all these. He declared the sin which lies at the root of all sins, because it has to do with man's relation to God — "The God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways, you have not honored" (Daniel 5:23). In that charge we are reminded of the fact that our very being, in all its powers and possibilities, is of Divine origin.


Paul, preaching to the Athenians on Mars' Hill, makes the same statement, in terms, if possible, more explicit — "In Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). We are the creation of God. Spirit, soul, and body, each in its own possibility; and the one being, resulting from the union, is the result of Divine conception and creation. Every human being is an individual thought of God. God therefore knows the potentiality of each of us, and the line of our development, and it is only as we are able to discover His Will and obey it that we shall move along the one to the full realization of the other.

The complete foolishness of conditioning conduct by the thoughts or wishes of other human beings is clearly seen in the light of this fact. To the declaration of John that “No one has ever seen God at any time" (John 1:18), we all agree. Not so readily do we agree with the statement that no man has seen MAN at any time, yet it is equally true. The outward form and tone of voice are familiar, but my friend who lives in the body I touch, and gives his thought through the speech I hear, I have never yet seen. No man knows perfectly and completely his fellow man. The mother that bore me, the wife of my heart, the children of my love, do not know me. They are all familiar with the sound of my voice, the touch of my hand, and my step on the stair; but all the depths that lie behind, held for ever sacred from the possibility of intrusion, of these they have no complete knowledge.

Let’s pray: Lord, without Your help, we have no chance of being perfect. You have asked us to be perfect and have given us the ability to be perfect. That ability only comes through You! Help us, Lord; we need Your help! In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.