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I was doing a Biblical word study, because I wanted to understand the concept of perfection, often translated “maturity.” After all, with two children young adults, it seemed about time.

Mature, perfect, complete, sanctified, holy, whole-hearted. The study got bigger and bigger, but I kept doggedly moving through it. Learning a lot. Being deepened and blessed. Convicted again and again.

Then I came to I Thessalonians 3:9-10. How can we properly give thanks to God for all the joy that you give us in Him? Night and day we keep praying earnestly for you, longing to see your face and complete that which is lacking in your faith.

Maybe at first glance it doesn’t look like anything outstanding. But in reading the earlier part of the chapter I saw that Paul had been experiencing some discouragement in his persecution, and he had wanted to hear how the Thessalonians were doing in hope of being encouraged. Timothy had brought back such an outstanding report of how these believers were growing in faith and love that Paul was filled with joy and hope.

So then, he said that this joy motivated him to pray for them even more.

Paul didn’t say, “What a relief that they’re doing well. I can forget about them for a while. I’ll focus my prayer attention on those people over there who aren’t doing well.” No, actually it was just the opposite. In fact, his continued prayer for them was a way of showing his thankfulness to God for what He had already done in their lives.

“Augh!” I thought. “I don’t pray like that!” When I hear that people are doing well spiritually, I tend to think, “Oh, wonderful. Thank you, Lord. Now I’ll pray for these other people who aren’t doing so well.”

And I realized that sometimes my prayers are motivated more by fear than by faith. I grew up hearing and giving prayer requests for people in trouble. Health trouble, financial trouble, spiritual trouble. I don’t mean to say that these requests are wrong. But I don’t remember hearing or saying, “Pray for so and so, because he’s really growing strong in the Lord.”

The mindset Paul shows here, and as well in Colossians 1:3-4 (“We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you ever since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints”), is one of the confidence of victory, rather than the fear of defeat. It’s centered around the assurance that God is doing a great work. “You’ve made great progress! Praise God! Now I’m eagerly longing to personally see that you make even greater progress!”

One thing I’ve learned about maturity is that the maturity that can “complete” (perfect, bring to maturity) the faith of another is the same maturity that rejoices in, revels in, the beautiful growth that is already evident, the faith and love already blossoming. This kind of maturity will focus less on what I think God still needs to do and more on what God is already doing. In great joy I’ll be motivated by it to pray even more.

I didn’t really hear the rest, because I was thinking, “Yes, He does! Right there in plain English!” Or Greek or whatever.

King James, my favorite, in Matthew 5:48: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

It’s a huge sticking point for Christians. God calls us to do something that’s impossible, and He obviously doesn’t empower us to do it, the argument goes, because obviously nobody’s perfect. So why did He say it? Because if we shoot for the moon we might hit the lamppost?

This year I’m in Philippians. And Paul talks there about being perfect. Apparently, at first reading, he’s not perfect, but apparently somebody is.

This is what he said: in chapter 3 he was talking about wanting to know Christ, to know the power of His resurrection, that he wanted to attain the resurrection of the dead, and then he said, verse 12:  “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.”

And so—I’ve heard it more than once—people think, well, if Paul (heavenly music here) couldn’t be perfect, how could any of us ordinary mortal Christians expect to be able to? It’s one of those times when  we just scratch our heads and continue muddling through the Christian life.

The problem is that a few verses later (verse 15) he said, “Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded [having the thinking he had just described in verse 14]: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.”

Do you see the disconnect here? Now he seems to think that apparently somebody is perfect, and he might even be including himself. Even if you have a different Bible version that uses the word “mature” here, it doesn’t, from my experience, mitigate the confusion that has developed over the years—not to mention that this is the very same word used in Matthew 5:48.

Somehow the word perfect has become associated with “flawless” and even “sinless.” But on studying the Greek word, I was surprised to learn that the Bible never makes that connection. Never! There are a few different Greek words translated perfect, and none of them are meant to express those concepts.

The word that Paul used in verse 12 referred to finishing, or completing, his course. Do you remember in Hebrews (2:10) when it says that Jesus was made “perfect through suffering”? What a weird concept—if you don’t get what that Greek word means. But if you see that it means He had to finish His work on earth by suffering, then it makes perfect sense.

In verse 15 the word used is used other places in the New Testament to refer to being ready, prepared, like a good soldier ready to enter battle. Like a loaf of fresh bread ready to be eaten. Like a fruit on the tree that has reached the peak of maturity. Maybe there’s a little flaw in the fruit, maybe the soldier isn’t as polite as he needs to be, maybe the bread has a large air hole. But that doesn’t negate that each one is perfect in the way Paul is using the word.

Isn’t it heartening to know that this is the word God is using in Matthew 5:48? The whole context of the “therefore” in that verse is the love of God flowing from Him through me to others. Am I prepared, through faith, to do that? Am I ready, with the fruit of the Spirit in my life? Am I full of the fresh Bread of the Living Word of Christ to give to others? Then I’m one of the perfect ones (not flawless! not sinless!) of Philippians 3:15.

How heartening it is, too, to look at the second half of verse 15 and see that even those who are perfect can still be subject to some wrong-headed thinking that the Lord needs to correct. I’m sure that several perfect people I know could attest to this truth.

John Wesley compared the two words to a marathon. The “perfect” of verse 15 refers to being ready to run the course. (Didn’t Hebrews 12 have something to say about that?) The “perfect” of verse 12 refers to finishing the course. Both are important. Both are distinct. Both can be accomplished by flawed human beings, because of the great Empowerer, Jesus Christ. Through the bursting power of His Holy Spirit, we can walk and run and even fly, looking, looking, all the while, to Jesus, the One whose sinless, flawless, completely finished perfection is never in doubt.

Few can draw a word picture like that master wordsmith, C.H. Spurgeon. This is only slightly adapted from a sermon of his, painting a word picture of what it means to desire to know Christ.

Imagine that you’re living in the age of the Roman emperors. You’ve been captured by Roman soldiers and dragged from your native country; you’ve been sold for a slave, stripped, whipped, branded, imprisoned, and treated with shameful cruelty. At last you are appointed to die in the amphitheater, to make sport for a tyrant. The populace assemble with delight. There they are, tens of thousands of them, gazing down from the living sides of the capacious Colosseum. You stand alone, armed only with a single dagger—a poor defense against gigantic beasts. A ponderous door rises, and out rushes a huge lion.

You must slay him or be torn to pieces. You are absolutely certain that the conflict is too great for you, and that the sure result must and will be that those terrible teeth will grind your bones and drip with your blood. You tremble; your joints are loosed; you are paralyzed with fear, like the timid deer when the lion has dashed it to the ground.

But what is this? Oh wonder of mercy ! A deliverer appears. A great unknown leaps from among the gawking multitude and confronts the savage monster. He quails not at the roaring of the devourer, but dashes upon him with terrible fury, till, like a whipped cur, the lion slinks towards his den, dragging himself along in pain and fear. The hero lifts you up, smiles into your bloodless face, whispers comfort in your ear, and bids you be of good courage, for you are free.

Do you not think that there would arise at once in your heart a desire to know your deliverer? As the guards conduct you into the open street, and you breathe the cool, fresh air, would not the first question be, “Who was my deliverer, that I may fall at his feet and bless him?” However, you are not informed, but instead you’re gently led away to a noble mansion, where your many wounds are washed and healed. You are clothed in sumptuous apparel; you’re made to sit down at a feast; you eat and are satisfied; you rest upon the softest down. The next morning you’re attended by servants who guard you from evil and minister to your good. Day after day, week after week, your wants are supplied. You live like royalty. Nothing that you can ask you do not receive.

I’m sure your curiosity would grow more and more intense till it would ripen into an insatiable craving. You would scarcely neglect an opportunity of asking the servants, “Tell me, who does all this, who is my noble benefactor, for I must know him?”

“Well, but,” they would say, “isn’t it enough for you that you’re delivered from the lion?”

“No!” you reply. “That is the very reason that I long to know him.”

“Your wants are richly supplied—why are you vexed by curiosity as to the hand that supplies you? If your garment is worn out, there is another. Long before hunger oppresses you, the table is well loaded. What more do you want?”

But your reply is, “It is because I have no wants, that, therefore, my soul longs and yearns even to hungering and to thirsting, that I may know my generous loving friend.”

Suppose that as you wake up one morning, you find lying up on your pillow a precious love-token from your unknown friend, a ring sparkling with jewels and engraved with a tender inscription, a bouquet of flowers bound about with a message of love. Your curiosity now knows no bounds. But you’re informed that this wondrous being has not only done for you what you have seen, but a thousand deeds of love which you did not see, which were higher and greater still as proofs of his affection. You’re told that he was wounded, and imprisoned, and scourged for your sake, for he had a love so great, that even death itself could not overcome it. He has sworn by himself that where he is there you shall be; his honors you shall share.

Why, I think you would say, “Tell me, men and women, any of you who know him, tell me who he is and what he is,” and if they said, “But it is enough for you to know that he loves you, and to have daily proofs of his goodness,” you would say, “No, these love-tokens increase my thirst. If ye see him, tell him I am sick with love. The flagons which he provides for me, and the love-tokens which he gives me, they comfort me for a while with the assurance of his affection, but they only impel me onward with the more unconquerable desire that I may know him.

“I must know him; I cannot live without knowing him. His goodness makes me thirst, and pant, and faint, and even die, that I may know him.”

This sermon goes on to challenge us to pass through the outer court of intellectual knowledge of Christ to the inner court of experiential knowledge of Christ. And, as Tozer reminded us in The Pursuit of God, to keep on, all our lives, seeking to know Him more . . . and more . . . and more. This is the treasure of Philippians 3. This is the passion of Paul.

I had actually already read In His Steps several years before that phenom occurred, and wasn’t quite as taken with the book as some apparently were. Charles Sheldon, the author, seemed to embrace a kind of Good Old American Bootstrap Christianity, which generally speaking seemed to say, “Jesus put your boots on your feet for you, and now, by jiminy, it’s up to you to pull on those old straps and get tromping through the Christian life.” (Except I wasn’t absolutely sure if he really believed Jesus was the one who had put the boots on my feet, but that’s outside the scope of this text.) This question—WWJD—was going to be the solution to the problem of the opulent U.S. Christian lifestyle and the need to become living sacrifices.

Granted, the opulent, distracted lifestyle of U.S. Christianity is a problem. A huge problem. But I never found that “What Would Jesus Do” really helped me. For example, would Jesus pick up a cup of coffee at Liquid Highway? Hmmm. . . .

For one thing, Jesus was God. That shone such a different light on His decision-making process that I often found it difficult or impossible to put Him in the position of us sin-drawn creatures. Would Jesus walk the streets of Bangkok to take the gospel to sixteen-year-old prostitutes? Well, maybe He would. But I wouldn’t necessarily advise my husband and sons to do the same.

For another thing, Jesus lived a very brief life, with a laser-focused purpose. What would Jesus do with the pile of dishes after he and his twelve disciples were finished eating? Well, there’s a possibility He might go on His way to preach and teach and pray, leaving His disciple Martha to clean them up—very joyfully, I would imagine, rejoicing that her Savior is the Resurrection and the Life. And probably after Jesus was gone, Mary and Lazarus would even help.

The reason I’m thinking about WWJD yet again (having been only a quizzical observer during the mid-90s cultural obsession) is that I’m reading Philippians. Paul says that his burning desire is to know Christ and to make Him known. This thought has been rolling around in my heart for a couple of weeks. It has produced three questions by which I’m seeking to judge my possessions and my activities.

Will this help me to know Christ? I call this the Vertical Outpouring—from God to me. Would Jesus spend time reading the Word of God? Maybe, but since He was the Word of God, and the Word of God flowed out of Him, He sure didn’t need to read it the way I need to read it. My focus on Him is always in danger of being clouded by the multitude of distractions of my U.S. Christianity. I desperately need the washing of the water by the Word that He alone can give.

Will this help me to make Him known? I call this the Horizontal Outpouring—from God to others, through me. Would Jesus watch an essentially meaningless, harmlessly funny movie? I think I can be pretty sure He wouldn’t. His ministry time on this earth was very short, and He had a crucial work to accomplish. But I’m raising children, and sometimes a movie—I have to remind myself—is a way of tying cords of love so that they’ll want to listen to me when I speak to them about Christ. Would Jesus write missionary books for children or tell stories in schools? No, because that wasn’t what the Father had called Him to do. But this is the way that is my delight to make Christ known.

Will this turn my heart to prayer?  I call this the Vertical Outpouring—from me to God. Would Jesus spend time gathering information about the desperate needs of the unreached nations or the desperate wickedness of the U.S. government-corporation collusion?  Well, no, because He already knows these things. But for me, these things are important to understand and know the truth, and to fervently pray with my eyes open.

Would picking up a cup of coffee at Liquid Highway fulfull one of these goals? And suddenly the answer is clear. If I’m going because I’ve gotten addicted but it’s just coffee so it’s not that big a deal and besides it’s only $3.50 when Starbucks is $4.00 . . . then, well, maybe not. If I’m going there there to visit with a friend and talk with her about Jesus, then let’s do it.

I don’t remember to ask these questions about everything all the time. Even at my advanced age, there’s so much I’m still learning. But when the Lord turns my heart to these thoughts, as He turns my heart to Him, my heart grows stronger, and life becomes simpler.

To know Him . . .

                . . . to make Him known . . .

                                . . . to turn my heart to prayer . . .

 I want to be laser focused like Jesus. Laser focused on Him.

“Break through, oh Lord!” I cried. Through the cloudy mist, through the cacophony, the mass of cobwebs, the constant pull of sins and distractions. “I want to know You in the full glory of Your Resurrection. Break through!”

Would He break through?

Jesus Christ rose for the dead, living for me.

A fact I’d known since childhood, since birth, it seemed. A fact trumpeted throughout the New Testament, again and again. Definitely a fact. Of course.

It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again,
who is at the right hand of God, who also constantly intercedes for us.

Grateful? Yes, of course, grateful. My sins were forgiven. Every time I failed, I knew I was forgiven again. You’d better believe I had many opportunities to be grateful.

But would He break through?

Jesus Christ rose from the dead, living in me.

So where was He? In a little compartment inside my heart? In my bodily “house,” occupying some “rooms” but not others?

Or was He, through the Spirit, permeating every fiber of my being?

Break through . . .
Break through my dim understanding . . .

Jesus Christ died for me . . .
. . . and I died with Him.

Jesus Christ rose from the dead . . .
. . . and I rose in Him.

So what’s THAT supposed to mean?

I am crucified with Christ. But I live. But not really I, really Christ in me.
And I live this life in this body by the faithfulness of the Son of God.

Break through . . .
. . . Break through my unbelief . . .

You are risen with Him, through the mighty power of God,
who raised Him from the dead.
You were dead in your sins, but He made you alive together with Him.

I was dead. But in His glorious Resurrection, I was raised. Resurrected. Not just out of the grave, but into the heavenlies.

And now you are risen with Christ.

New life, new life in you.

Have you heard it before? Only ten thousand times?

So keep your eyes fastened on those things which are above, in the heavenly places

where Christ is seated

. . . where you are seated . . .

. . . where God the Father is . . .

. . . the heavenly Jerusalem . . .

. . . divine wisdom . . .

 . . . the Father’s good and perfect gifts . . .

I strain my eyes to see, I strain my ears to hear.

I have longed for one thing, and that I will pursue. I want to dwell in the presence of the Lord all my life, to behold His beauty, and to ponder Him.

But look! I’m lifted up!

He will lift me up high on a rock.
And now shall my head be lifted up above my enemies round about me.

Above the clouds and cobwebs. Above the cacophony.

To fasten my eyes on things above. . . .

I can see past the clouds and cobwebs. Instead of breaking through, He lifted me up . . . above. In Christ.

And there He is, the Victorious One, seated in the heavenlies! And I am in Him. In Christ, the Risen One, I am risen to New Life. Risen indeed.

I will fasten my eyes on Him, believing. I will continue to trust, even with dim understanding.

I will sing. I will sing praises to the Lord!

So the other day I had a little while to spend with the Word of God.

I don’t know if you have this problem, but for me it can actually be a little while before my mind and heart even settle down enough to be able to focus and enjoy and receive the nourishment that my soul needs. This time I kept being distracted. I kept thinking of things I needed to write down, things I needed to check on. I was thinking, “Augh! I don’t have very long! I need to focus! Lord help me!”

My short time (it might have been twenty minutes or more) passed without much fruit. Or maybe not any. So I knew this was war.

If I say I’m not feeling well, my wonderful husband always wants me to go to bed early. So I wasn’t feeling well, I was tired and drained and feeling fragile, so as I have done in the past, I went to bed with my Bible, no computer, and a flashlight.  My plan? To read and sleep and read and sleep.

Under  the covers with a flashlight, I meditated on a paragraph in Philippians 3. “I count everything, all those amazing boasts from my past, to be detriment, impediments, junk that’s just in my way toward the real prize. I want the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.” Sleep, sleep. Lord teach me what this familiar Scripture means. Lord show me.

Wake up. Excellency of the knowledge of Christ. Excellency. Surpassing worthiness. Highest blessedness. All the things I thought were gain are simply an impediment.

Sleep.

Why don’t I do this more often? When I sleep the Word of God, it permeates my dreams.

So then Sunday we watched an amazing video, from Frontline Missions, about the church in Ethiopia. People with nothing (by American standards) were leaping in praise because of the matchless worthiness of the glorious Savior. His Excellency.

This is it. I saw it in action. It’s what Paul was doing in prison when he wrote the letter to the Philippians. It’s what these people were proclaiming. Nothing is greater, dearer, sweeter, higher, better than the love of Jesus Christ. Nothing.

Lord, continue to burn this into my heart.