23 February 2013 - law of love

23 February 2013 - law of love

So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.

This is a daunting statement, but our perspective can make a huge difference in how we approach it.  It does not say to be perfect as a distant and unattainable idea is perfect.  It says to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.  Though he is glorious beyond all praise he is also our Father and so we will naturally desire to emulate him and to become as much like him as we can be.  And since he is our Father we will believe that in spite of where we are now spiritually the family likeness we share with him will allow us to transcend our current limitations.  Let us shed false images of God which come from the enemy and come to see him as the loving Father that he is.

he will then raise you high in praise and renown and glory
above all other nations he has made,and you will be a people sacred to the LORD, your God,as he promised.”


And he has been quite explicit about what it means to be like him.  

Blessed are they whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the LORD.
Blessed are they who observe his decrees,
who seek him with all their heart.

The law encapsulates how we are to be perfect as our Father is perfect.  It is fundamentally ordered toward love, though it itself is not the cause of love.  


But I say to you, love your enemies,
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.


The psalmist seems like he is having quite a difficult time when he asks the LORD, "do not utterly forsake me."  Yet we can see his confidence the the law of the LORD can bridge that gap of fear and dispair:

I will give you thanks with an upright heart,
when I have learned your just ordinances.

Let us come to know God as Father and so have this same confidence in his law.