God is perfect

But you are to be PERFECT, even as your Father in heaven is PERFECT. Matthew 5:48

God is perfect. Jesus is perfect. Unlike you and me, Jesus lived his life on this planet as a perfect human. Honestly, I think this has always tripped me up a bit. Not that he was perfect, I have no trouble with that, just what exactly 'perfect' looks like.

Perfect, in my mind, tends to be the woman at the PTA meeting whose hair, make-up and wardrobe are put together in such a manner that at any moment a picture could be taken of her and that photo would show her to be flawless in her appearance. Perfect, to me, was the homemaker whose home was beautifully kept, clean, organized, well decorated. The rooms of her home appeared like pages from the latest catalog or magazine. Perfect was the mom whose children were neat, without smears and smudges on their faces, with tidy rooms and organized playrooms. Her schedule was well-kept, with stimulating activities always planned to promote the proper development of her children. Having life put together in such a way that from the outside, from the onlookers perspective, all appeared flawless, easy, controlled. And somehow the stories of Jesus from Scripture do not paint a picture of him as this image of perfection. But nonetheless, that image to me, was perfection.

That, to God, has absolutely nothing to do with perfection.

Jesus' perfection had nothing to do with appearances. Jesus' perfection had everything to do with will. Jesus chose God's will perfectly over his own, over and over and over again. Jesus determined, through the lens of his human eyes, each decision he faced and each time he perfectly chose the Father's will. Not once, not a single time, did he select his own desires above God's. He may have wanted to, he may have had an incredibly difficult time deciding to follow the will of God. He may have imagined the pain, the fear, the embarrassment, the anguish that lie ahead, but in the end he always set his own will, his own fears, his own desire to receive the approval of others, aside and lived out the will of God. This is perfection. Jesus was perfect.

And he has instructed us to be perfect as well. Not to have a perfect appearance, not have a perfectly organized life with every detail in our control. The cross, my friends, did not look like a controlled life to those looking on. It was not neat, it was not clean, but it was PERFECT. The challenge we face is to live God's will perfectly. And we cannot do it by ourselves. Self-righteousness is just that 'self'. We can only be made righteous through the perfectly spilled blood of Jesus. We need God! We can tidy our lives, appear to have everything under control, live life only reflecting the stuff that looks perfect, but true perfection only comes from letting go and letting God's desire for our life take over. Sometimes it will look beautiful to the onlooker and sometimes it will look like uncontrolled chaos.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that we should live in complete and udder chaos. With dirty homes and dirty children and messy everything. But there is a balance. We must be authentic with one another. We must show the areas that are really hard to follow the will of God. We must be willing to let the curtain fall on our "perfect show". We have to be willing to share with one another where we find it hard to follow the will of God, where we struggle to let God take control. We must be willing to build each other up and to do that, we must let our imaginary world of perfection die.

Listen closely to the words of the song today. There's no such thing as perfect people.