do just like us: “For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him”.
When we begin to talk about perfection we must at once talk about love. God is love. That is the sum total of His nature. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:7-8). Love is the perfect thing. In the verses immediately preceding Christ’s admonition that we be perfect, He references how we are to love in order to be perfect: “You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.’ “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? “If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” (Matthew 5:43-47)
In 1 Corinthians 12 Paul explains the path we follow to perfect love. He explains all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in detail including the gifts of wisdom, faith, knowledge, healing, miracles, prophecy, distinguishing of spirits, tongues and interpretation of tongues. These are all gifts that can be exercised by the body of Christ as it grows into perfection. However being able to exercise these great gifts is not love. He goes on to explain that the gifts are only partial perfection and are not the perfect thing God wants. “…but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:8-11).
So what remains when the partial is taken away? “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing” (1 Corinthians13:1-4).
“But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8). Therefore through all the stages we go through in our walk to perfection (gifts, faith and then hope) we finally arrive at perfection-love. When we love as God loves we are perfect. We become love, as God is love.
“Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:15-19).
Now that we know where we are headed, that is to “be perfect as the Heavenly Father is perfect” how do we get there from here? A great obstacle in our attaining to this perfect love is a spirit we struggle against what is called condemnation. Condemnation is the sense of failure we feel when we think we can never measure up to what God wants in our lives. Condemnation results from knowing about the sin we can never ever get rid of-once for all and finally. Condemnation is our feelings about ourselves that we are never really accepted; that we are never really loved or appreciated by God or those around us. It manifests as a continual deep sense of failure that we carry with us that, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. It affects every aspect of our lives and our ability to fully accept the love and joy God is continually beaming at us. As men of the flesh we look at what God requires of us, realize how far we fall short, and condemn ourselves for not being able to attain it. Believe it or not condemnation is perhaps the greatest obstacle we face as we strive for perfect love.
One example of the spirit of condemnation is: “One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He [Jesus] had answered them well, asked Him, “What commandment is the foremost of all?” Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD; AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.’ “The second is this, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:28-31). The obvious dilemma is how can you love your brother if you don’t love yourself? Condemnation, which in modern terms may be called insecurity, keeps us from fully loving ourselves and thus fully loving God and our brother, which is perfection.
We have been saddled with this condemnation from the beginning. From the moment Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, mankind was cursed or condemned by God. The Lord cursed man, woman, the ground and the serpent with the same ferocity (Genesis 3:14-19). “A curse is evil or misfortune that comes as if in response to imprecation or as retribution; a cause of great harm or misfortune” (Merriam-Webster 11th Ed.). As Paul said: “For the creation was subjected [cursed] to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21).
But this curse was not inflicted without hope, or permanently. God provided a manner by which the curse could be removed. In Genesis 3 God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field… And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise [crush] you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel” (Genesis 3:14-15). This meant that the seed of the woman (Jesus Christ) would crush the head of the serpent (Satan) although, in his battle for survival, Satan would bruise the man-child’s heel. Since the serpent (Satan, the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, Revelation 20:2) is the original and continuing cause of all condemnation, Christ defeating him on the cross (crushing his head) took care of the problem once and for all.
The definition of condemnation is the same as you would expect in a court of law. The Hebrew word "rasha" means to be wicked, act wickedly and as a result to be found guilty and to have final judgment and punishment inflicted (New American Standard Hebrew-Aramaic and Greek Dictionary). In the Garden, God turned His back on humanity, cursing and condemning him at the same time. However in His mercy He left man an open door (Christ) to be perfect.
The Apostle Paul struggled with condemnation as he walked with God and tried to do the right thing. In Romans chapter 7 he recounts his battle: “For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to
