God In Us

Matthew 5:43–48 NRSV

“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 children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

If you’ve been reading along in our Read Scripture plan, then you read this section of Matthew’s Gospel this week.

I don’t know about you, but my reaction always to this is… what? Like the earlier parts I get the idea of loving our enemies. That’s an art form that is often lacking in our modern world. But this last part… these final words. Be perfect? How? Is that really the standard that we are being held accountable to achieving?

Well. Yes. And no. Yes, because thats a pretty clear command from Jesus. No, because we all know that its not humanly possible to achieve perfection on this side of eternity. At least not perfection as we often understand the concept.

So how do we reconcile what Jesus says with our experience of being human? Well, we do it by taking a moment to reflect on what Jesus is really talking about, and how with God’s help we might be able to actually achieve it.

This is the final sermon in our series “Good Grace” where we have been looking at how God’s activity intersects with humanity in order to help us achieve his plans for our lives and our world.

Today we are looking at how we get to the end goal, the goal of being perfected in love. Being Perfected in Love is a state of living out the original righteousness that humanity was created for, that humanity lost through sin, but that humanity gained again through the love and sacrifice of Jesus.

And I know that you probably wish it was as easy as Jesus dying on the cross and coming out of the grave for you an I to live out this command of Jesus to “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.”

But it’s just not that easy. We’ve gotta put our feet on the ground and start walking, so to say.

So let’s take a look here at Jesus’s impossible command. It’s important to understand the context here, so I’ll just do a quick recap.

Jesus is in the middle of what is known as the Sermon on the Mount. And in this particular section of teaching he has already said some pretty mind blowing things.

Like you heard that you shouldn’t murder, but I tell you if you’re even angry with someone you have murdered them in your heart.

You heard that you shouldn’t commit adultery? Well I tell you that if you even look at another with lust then you’ve committed adultery in you heart.

and so on and so forth. The point is this. Jesus is connecting our heads, our hearts, and our hands. He’s saying “your insides and your outsides should match, because that is the point of the laws I’ve been quoting. They aren’t there simply to make you act better. They are there to make you BE better.”

So, when he gets to his grand crescendo and says: Be perfect, he’s not saying “be unfailingly blameless 100% of the time.”

What he’s saying is “don’t be a walking contradiction.”

The word “perfect” is the Greek word “telios” which simply means “to be complete or to be whole.”

Being perfect here simply means for the activity of our hands, the thoughts in our heads, and the inclinations of our hearts to be of one accord and for them to align in a way that shows love for God and our neighbors.

Much later on, the Apostle Paul wrote a letter to a church in Galatia that was all kinds of twisted up in personal and communal conflicts. In that letter he addressed what it was going to take for them to overcome the broken relationships and forge a more gospel-centered and Christ honoring community.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. It’s in line with what I’ve been saying for this whole series:

For mortals it is impossible: but not for God. For God all things are possible. So here’s what Paul says to them.

Galatians 5:16–26 NRSV

Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.

Paul’s point reinforces that this all relies on the Spirit of God. For humans it is impossible. For humans, we are naturally drawn to live a life that is guided by passion and selfish desires:

fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing (which I had to look up — it means drunken wild behavior), and things like these.

So basically, stuff that gets us what we want or helps us feel good in a cheap way.

Paul says that’s not what we are after. That’s no way to live. Instead, let the Spirit of God help you live in a new way:

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.

The final eight of these — joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control are all a part of the first: Love. These are what love lived out looks like.

You’ve probably all seen some kind of scene from a movie or maybe even had a conversation that went something like this.

Someone says “but I love you!”

and that is received with something like “well you have a strange way of showing it!” or “then act like it!”

Love is an action that is lived out through these activities and attributes: joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

These are not individual attributes that we pick and choose from. The scripture doesn’t say “fruits” of the Spirit in the plural. It says fruit. One Fruit: love — expressed by these attributes.

So love is a gift to us through God’s grace — the activity of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, believed that a person achieved “Christian Perfection” when that love became pure and devoid of self-interest.

Christian perfection occurs when we reach those moments where we give and live out a life of love without weighing the benefits for ourselves first. When we say yes without counting the cost. When we, through the manifestation of God’s grace dwelling inside of us, truly become the embodiment of God’s heart for God’s world.

It is in those moments, which can be few and far between at first, that we are given a glimpse at who we were truly made to be. And it is in those moments that the people of this world get a glimpse at who God truly is and who they truly might become if they chose to follow after this love they have experienced.

Have you had those moments? Where for one second, one minute, one conversation or interaction — you weren’t the person who mattered the most in your world? Where the person in front of you had needs that far outweighed your own personal biases or desires?

They are powerful right? It’s like it wasn’t even you speaking and doing. Maybe, because it wasn’t. For mortals it is impossible, but not for God. For God all things are possible.

Once a week I go over to the St. Lucie county jail and I meet with inmates one on one who have requested to talk to a pastor. And the guys that I meet with are considered violent offenders. Everyone that I’ve spent time with so far is awaiting trial for crimes that would be considered “especially heinous.”

That first day, when I sat across the table from these men who told me about what they had done, somehow I didn’t see their crimes. I saw them. I saw men who were scared. Men who were remorseful. Men who’s souls yearned to hear one thing.

God still loves you.

And let me tell you something. That is not a natural thing to say to someone who tells you the things that I heard. That’s not normal. Even less normal is the fact that I meant it, in that moment and even now.

But I believe it. And more importantly they believed me. And I could see color return to their faces and light come back into their eyes. Hope began to be kindled.

I’m pretty far from “perfected in love” a lot of the time. I blame it on the sleep deprivation whenever I can. But the reality is that “being perfect” is something that is only achieved by cooperating with the Spirit of God.

So if we are looking at how we are called to live out a life that is “perfect” or better yet “complete and whole” I think that it’s important for us to look at the points of tension in our lives.

A friend and mentor of mine says that the Christian life is one in which we are continually trying to “integrate the thoughts in our heads with the passions in our hearts through the actions of our hands.”

Where is the breakdown for you?

For Jesus’s Jewish audience it was between their hearts and their hands. They were so stuck on the letter of the Jewish law and “doing” what it said that they felt it didn’t matter what happened in their heart and coincidentally in their head.

For us the same can be true too i suppose. We can often show up and do the things that we do out of obligation rather than out of love. Because we know it’s the right thing to do, regardless of how we feel about it.

Sometimes the breakdown is between our heart and our hands. We want to do what is right but we can’t seem to take action.

Or it’s between our heads and our hearts. We know what is right, but we don’t feel it deep down. Something is blocking us from really internalizing what we know into real change.

I think the starting place here is to be aware of this. And to take notice of where we just aren’t living in “wholeness.” Where is the breakdown? Where can the Holy Spirit be at work in me?

And then the next step is to actually turn that mess over to God and say “God I need you to change my heart or motivate my hands, help me to be who I say I am or to live out my identity as your child.”

The goal of this Christian life is about reclaiming and living up to who God created us and still calls us to be. His righteous instruments who bring about his will in the world. And we only get to that point and stay at that point by the power of the Holy Spirit working in our lives. It is with this power that the impossible becomes reality.

Humans, people as broken, stubborn, and misguided as you and I become beacons of God’s perfect love in the world. We transform lives because we have been transformed. And in those sweet moments where our will perfectly submits to God and we are able to perfectly love our neighbors — in those moments — who we really are in Christ becomes evident to us, and more importantly it becomes evident to the world.

The old song goes “they will know we are Christians by our love,” and when they know that love defines a Christian, they will be open to receive the greatest love of all — a relationship with Jesus Christ. They will believe that the power of God in Us, could be the power of God in them as well.

And that, my friends, is the good news of God’s good grace.