11 Minutes
We do not yet have the full experience of the glory that is to be revealed with Christ in heaven. God’s considerations for us go far beyond this life and breath. He has delights not yet created for us that transcend the senses of sight and sound and touch and taste and smell. We will experience the richness of these gifts in the elegance and complexity of perfection. It is said that Adam and Eve knew God so well that they recognized the sound of His feet when He walked in the garden. Our perfection will be omni-sensuous so
as to know God’s presence is with us always. And so, we must live by faith in God’s promise as we await the final consummation when Jesus returns. We must endure whatever comes by fixing our everything on Jesus. This life is very short in comparison with eternity, but God’s purpose is not momentary. His purpose of perfection for us will be beyond all comparison in spectacular results throughout eternity.
If we pause for a moment to reason with this, we might begin to understand the purpose why God asks us to come and reason with Him. Because that better thing is purposeful perfection that we are given to bring others to trust and obey the same mighty God and He will enable them to endure trials in His strength. The difference is not in the people or in their faith, but in God’s sovereign purpose in each of them. To us, faithfulness to Jesus Christ counts more than anything else, even than life itself. Today, our faith is preparation for the hard work to come, being made perfect in every good work to do his will. And our perfection is powered by the purpose of God because He has us in mind and has something better and greater in supernal view for us. This is the motivation and inspiration that renders our faith fuller than those before us, for we have the faith of Jesus himself to sustain us. Heavenly things are now the possession of ours through the union with Jesus Christ. Our conversation is in heaven. The something better for us denotes the reality we have found already in Christ. Looking for more than our own personal satisfaction, we long to see God’s purposes fulfilled on earth. What a privilege to be God’s last day people, accountable to God for the blending of the two peoples of God together in perfection – the righteous by faith awakened from their sleep and the righteous living. A glorious unity of all God's people. The "perfecting" looks forward to that salvation consummated at the coming of Christ. We will be what the scripture declares – we shall be like him. This is the mystery of God’s will.
Ephesians 1:9, 10
They are the “these all”, of a good report by faith. We are that “us”, provisioned by the Holy Spirit with that better thing, the likeness of Christ purposed unto perfection. True believers spoken to and of, as partakers of a heavenly calling, chosen of God.
The reception of the promised perfection on earth is not the end of the story! The full unfolding of the “better thing” is not yet finished. God has provided a heaven that eye has never seen nor ear has ever heard nor heart has ever imagined as the precious inheritance for His people. An inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. God’s provision will be our possession. What we cannot see or hear or feel by our natural senses we
can know for truth, for reality, and for comfort through the Spirit of Jesus in our hearts. O heavenly truth! That the riches of all the promises we possess in Christ Jesus are ours now by faith to behold, to be assured of, to be comforted by, and thus patiently to wait for their complete revelation. The purpose of perfection readies us for the banquets of His grace.
It is so important that we apply the truths and lessons learned from all the faithful lives that God has in consideration. This gives us great leverage and tremendous advantage in being made the perfection of the purpose of God. We persevere in prayer. We stand on scripture. We do according to all the law. The divine family of heaven cannot be made up lest they be made perfect. Our lot is cast in these latter days, to bring those which shall complete the purpose of God. We are to be found worthy to perfect His story. God’s purpose of perfection is to increase in depth and power as we get nearer to the final audition for glorification. Is it not wonderful that we, who bring up the rear of the army of faith, are necessary to its completeness? So, we who believe must all come to make them perfect. God help us to hasten in His purpose, for our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake! God’s purpose has no termination. It fully initiates us into the mysteries of the never-completeness of the potential and the probable and the inconceivable of all that is inherent in eternity.
There is great spiritual importance to our perfection. It brings to consummation the human experience which Christ must had passed through to be made perfect to become the author of our eternal salvation. It is in our contemplating and glimpsing the excellent worth of Christ in our hearts that we consider our worthiness as treasured by God. Our preference for his worth is our worth. To be worthy of the infinite worth of Jesus is to see and savor him as infinitely worthy. This is not our earning or meriting or deserving him. It is God’s purpose of perfection that makes us a suitable beneficiary of grace as we embrace the infinite value of the Gracious One. How are we ever grateful...our worthiness is our desperate preference for his gracious worthiness over all things as we prefer him above all things. We do not merit or deserve or earn being called to the Lord’s purpose. But in our need, God saw our determined embracing of Christ with a desperate desire and a savoring love to be like him. We prayed to be empowered by the Holy Spirit and God heard our deep groanings while in His counsel. God purposed us in counsel and what God purposes shall stand. For we are called, predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will. And this according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord who prayed for our being made perfect in him. For we are given him, to be with him. This is endurance truth.
Consider being made the righteousness of God in Christ and the distinction of being made perfect in Christ. The righteousness of God relates to the legal aspects of the atonement. Christ died for our sins, satisfying the divine law. Made perfect relates to the priestly aspects of the atonement. Christ approaches the presence of God to ask forgiveness for the sins of the whole house of Israel. The atonement of Christ was comprehensive as sacrifice, substitution, and redemption. We are God’s purpose of perfection based on the superior priesthood and sacrifice of Christ. This draws us nearer to God. While we are experientially imperfect, we are positioned perfect because of our union with our representative, our Great High Priest, who himself was “made perfect through suffering”. We are purposed to complete a work. We must embrace a right understanding of the working words of Jesus saying, “it is finished”, that we might come to the conclusion of the whole matter to hear God say, “it is done”. The Father’s and the Son’s most excellent three words in all of language.
Perfect purpose pertains to the faithful that lived before the advent, and those that are alive at the advent, since all are one in their faith in the living God, making the unseen visible, the distant near, and seeing the eternal through the transient and ephemeral experience in this life. There is a pause, a halt, an expectancy, an incompleteness, in life till we all come to see Jesus.
God has a perfect purpose. He purposed His Son’s destiny from the very beginning and gave to humanity the very desire to seek eternal life through him. Jesus is the only satisfying need we have that will render us perfect. God’s purposed reason for our calling, our existence, is to proclaim Jesus Christ as His Son. We, making known this truth, is to pursue actual perfection before men as a powerful witness of faith to those without Christ and as an offering of thanks and honor to God. The pursuit itself is of great value because we are working in harmony with what God desires for us. God is perfect. Jesus is perfect. We become perfected as we keep our eyes on Him and seek to imitate Him in every choice we make. This, filling our hearts with joy brings us to God’s purpose of perfection... our knowing that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
God expects us to be perfect, yes. But not just because we can be, but because Jesus has been, is, and always will be perfect. He imputes his holiness to us as a beloved child of God. He gives us his Spirit, who works obedience within us to bring Christ glory. And He will see to it that we make it to heaven, where His spectacular promise of perfect holiness will be completed within us.
Jesus is the Light of God’s love. A love so bright that the illusions of death will vanish with time. So it is because of our darkness, our sin, that God cannot directly look upon us without making part of us Godlike. This is His purpose of perfection. He creates a special part of Himself that is truth, the way, the life that is His Son...the process for bringing the imperfect beings into Perfection. This special being can interact with imperfection. This special being works in space-time. This special being is, by definition, a redemptive being who is also God and is God's will for imperfection, but who works through time and thus does not immediately destroy imperfection into nothingness and also allows us to learn of him. And this Son is always anchored in the eternity of Perfection. Because Jesus is God and Jesus is us, we are now of the way and the truth, and the life. And because of Jesus this part of us is already part of God. Somehow just our freewill agreement allows God to dwell within us.
This is that better thing that had never existed. A glorious company of beings who belong in the expansive, infinite joy of the Perfection that is God. Jesus is in and of Himself an empowering and unifying being whose will is for completion, wholeness, and perfection in bringing us with him to be with God. He brings everyone and everything that chooses God into perfection. He truly is the beginning and the ending. And in making us perfect he is the everlasting, that causes our perfection to ever increase into more joy, more wonder, more awe, more love. What could be better than goodness, except for ever-increasing goodness. God is the Divine Light. And the Word of God is the realm of the Divine Light. For us to know the purpose of God we must come to the word of God. And without Christ we are not purposed by God. And we get only doctrines and teachings with no life. The function of the word of God is to impart God into us; the word of God operates in us as we turn our heart to the Lord and have an exercised spirit of purpose that is perfected in Christ. Jesus is God’s expression. From him we can receive the divine truth to become God’s purpose of perfection in reality. God’s light is unique. In Him is our purpose.
Isaiah 50:10, 11
Without God’s purpose we are in spiritual darkness, no light, darker than black. When we are in God’s light, we see what God sees. And God’s light is Jesus.
Psalms 36:9
The mystery of God is our purpose perfected in Christ and our perfection purposed in Christ. The heart of the mystery and the fulfilment of God's purpose is the person and role of Christ fulfilled in and by us.
Isaiah 49:1-6
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