Being Perfect and Being Perfected

UV 3573/10000 Being Perfect and Being Perfected “Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” Isaiah 1 v 18 This uni-verse is beyond human reasoning. We can understand it only through the prism of God’s love expressed in Christ. Even though our sin is so blatant, so brazen, so unforgivable, the Lord blots out our transgressions and makes us spotless, sinless, perfect in His sight by grace. He has erased our past so that we can have a claim on eternity. This is transformation. Our destiny is transformed but our character is not. This is where our participation, faithfulness and working out our salvation in fear and trembling comes in. We need to constantly be aware of God’s vision of us being recast in His perfect image by grace. This awareness should make us work hard and do our best to match that image over time. Only with the help of the Holy Spirit can we even begin to understand the extent of God’s love, mercy and grace towards us. We need to perceive the Lord and His image not with blinkers or veils covering our eyes but with unveiled vision. The veils of human reasoning, tradition, fear of public opinion, desire to be popular and acceptable, of doubt, of prejudice, of pride, of deceit should all be identified and removed with the help of the Holy Spirit. We need to work on our lifestyle, attitudes, habits and ask the Holy Spirit to work on these to remove anything that hampers our growth, our witness, our faith, our fruit. The Holy Spirit can enlighten the eye of our understanding so that we begin to avoid the willful and even unconscious errors of our past. We are already blemishless in the eyes of God since we are covered by the promise of salvation by the blood of the Lamb of God. Yet, at the same time, in reality we are travelling towards being acceptable, holy, blameless and perfect. On account of the fact that God already sees us as being perfect, we can enter His presence, approach His throne with confidence and boldness to appropriate grace to being perfected. We have both already arrived at our divine destiny as well as we are being groomed, prepared for our divinely ordained destiny as the bride of Christ. We are perfected work of Christ as well as a work-in-progress at one and the same time. This is the mystery and the secret revealed of our faith.