The Maturity of the Father
Matthew 5:48 –“Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.”
There is no doubt Christ calls his followers to abandon sin and to pursue moral and ethical excellence within their lives but how we achieve this is crucial. Preaching against sin all the time doesn’t set people free from sin it actually helps produce more. The message we now carry is one of forgiveness and a right standing before God, a consciousness of righteousness not one of sin.
You become what you behold so therefore if all preachers paint before the faces of the people is sin then you will have people who desire to be free yet continually go through cycles because they can only become what they behold. In this brief study I want to explore what this text truly means and the freedom that it brings. We can grow to a place of maturity, completeness in Him.
Be Mature:
This word “mature” is the Greek word “teleios” which means, “complete, of full age or mature.” This word doesn’t mean without defect or problems at least in relation to man. God is truly perfect but again that is not the meaning or call coming from this text. There is no such thing as a perfect person but there can be mature or complete ones.
When you were born again your entire nature changed. The old adamic nature has been removed (sin as a noun) and you were born again of the spirit of God, the nature of God. Because you have a free will you posses the ability to sin (as a verb, action) but the nature has changed. Even as a apple seed has everything within itself to become a fruit producing tree, when you are born again you know have everything in you that you need to be everything God created you to be. But like in the natural sometimes it takes awhile to go from seed to fruit yielding or mature tree.
The Father is calling to us His sons and daughters to “grow in grace” and come to a place a maturity in Him. But what does that really mean? What does that look like? How do we bear the fruit of the Father?
To understand the call to be perfect (mature) as He is we must go back a couple of verses to see what exactly He is talking about.
Matthew 5:43-48 – “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”
This maturity is seen in how and who we love. The Father loves all his children even the ones whom reject his love. To many of us believe God wants to punish the sinner and send judgment upon their actions, thank God He didn’t do that to you. Jesus took what we deserved so we get what he deserves. The Father loves his enemies, which last time I checked 1Corintyhians 13, judgment and punishment were not in there. The Father blesses those that curse him, he sends rain upon just and unjust because it is “the goodness of God that leadeth to repentance.” He doesn’t just love those who agree with or love him, anyone can do that, he loves the unlovable (you and me) so that we can learn and give love.
The parallel to this passage is found in the gospel of Luke 6:36 where the scripture says, “Be ye therefore merciful as your Father also is merciful.” Here we find the same words of Jesus with just a small difference. The reason behind this could be as simple as Jesus spoke Aramaic and you have two different authors writing this and translating from Aramaic into Greek. The difference is not that major but the point is, “you must be mature, merciful (embracing without any restriction) in your acts of love for that is what your Father is like.”
Jesus brought the bottom line when He said, Love God and Love people." We can see how much we're maturing by how much we're loving God and others.
