Daily Good News - Volume 1

Chapter 5

"Be perfect" is a promise more than a command

"Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. ... You shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:44,48).

The Lord wants us to be perfect; and so it is written: "You shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect." He has given us, everyone, all the grace that He has, bringing the fullness of His salvation, that every one may be presented perfect in Christ Jesus.

The very purpose of this gift of His boundless grace is that we may be made like Jesus, who is the image of God. It is written: "To each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift ... till we all come ... to a perfect man." (Ephesians 4:7,13)

Do you want to be like Jesus? Then

It will make you like Jesus.

It will accomplish the purpose and the wish of Him who has given it. "Yield yourselves unto God.'" [1]

Let no professed Christian take counsel of his own imperfections and say that it is impossible for a Christian to live a sinless life. It is impossible for a true Christian, one who has full faith, to live any other kind of life. "How can we who died to sin still live in it?" (Romans 6:2, RSV). [2]

Notes:
  1. Jones, Review and Herald, April 17, 1894.
  2. Waggoner, The Glad Tidings, p. 42.