Let us return for a while to Heb. 5:9: “…and being made PERFECT, He became the Author of eternal Salvation unto all them that…” …believe in the Lord? That read about Him? That hear about Him but otherwise do not obey Him? What words are used there? “…that OBEY Him”.Even our first repentance at our redemption was the deed of our obedience towards Christ and towards His Word. No wonder that after we were redeemed, Paul continues in Heb. 6:1 saying: “Let us continue unto perfection”. This is another Com­mand­ment of the Holy Spirit for all those believers, which were already redeemed by obey­ing the appeal of the Word for repentance. The same Spirit is now commanding them: “Continue unto per­fection”. Because SOME KIND OF PERFECTION IS DEMAND­ED FROM EVERY BELIEVER!… and this perfection, or the degree of the demanded per­fect­ion, depends on our heart. Every believer stops somewhere and where he stops is not determined by the Lord, it is determined by the heart of that believer.

We cannot make ourselves perfect as we are not capable of doing it. We must cooperate with God, Who makes us perfect, and we should not be surprised by it. Heb. 13:20-21 says: “Now the God of peace… (we continue in verse 21)… make you perfect in every good work to do His Will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ; to Whom be Glory for ever and ever. Amen.” Paul prays to the God of peace to make Jews perfect in every good work. Hence, we speak here about the perfection related to the “work” for the Lord; we do not speak here about any higher perfection.

The next revelation, which the Lord is granting to us, is the following. When we talk about the perfecting of the saints, what are we, in fact, talking about? The Lord says: “The per­fecting of a saint means the perfecting of his fruit.” The fruit of the Spirit is: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance (Gal. 5:22, 23). The greatest of these is love and, naturally, who else should speak about love than John the Beloved? It is written in 1Jn. 4:6: “We are of God; he that knoweth God hear­eth us; he that is not of God heareth us not. Hereby we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”

1Jn. 4:12,13: “No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us. Hereby we know that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit.”

1Jn. 4:16,17a: “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect…”

We begin with love that may be clean and acceptable for the Lord just as the love of our children is acceptable for us. But there exist various kinds of love and also various depths or levels of love. Even the love with which we start to love the Lord must be perfected since every first fruit of every tree, when it began to form, is not very acceptable. The fruit must first ripen, must be perfected so we would be fully satisfied with it, so it would be sweet, tasty, juicy, delicious. Our love must be similarly perfected. And when our love is perfected, then we are like unto David, who wrote the Book of Psalms and who, in the Old Testament, was Beloved with God and thus a kind of reflection of John the Beloved in the New Testament. And when we love God, we are where He is, we dwell in Him.

John 12:26a: “If any man serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall also My servant be;” John 19:25,26a: “Now there stood by the Cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Mag­da­le­ne. When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple standing by, whom He loved…” Disciple whom He loved, John the Beloved stood by the Cross of Jesus. Where the Lord was, there was John! And where were the others? They disappeared and were nowhere. Do you see why is John Beloved? Where is the Lord, there is John. We also know well that during the Last Supper when the Lord said: “… one of you shall betray Me”, everyone around was astounded and everyone turned to John because he was lean­ing against Jesus’ bosom (Jn. 13:21,23). Well, there is John, leaning against Jesus’ bosom.

The love of the Lord to John cannot be compared to His love to anyone else, because this love was deep as also John’s love to the Lord was deep, and that was shown in his life and deeds. John was devoted to the Lord in every respect. No wonder that the Lord showed Himself to him again at the end of history of writing the Bible and gave him the privilege to write the Book of Revelation! In fact, the Lord showed John Himself, the Father and the things in Heaven. And John was the only one from among the apostles, who was not mur­der­ed but died with a natural death. Deep love calls for a deep love! Psalm 42:7 says: “Deep calleth unto deep…” Shallow love does not need deep love, shallow patience does not need deep patience, shallow joy does not need deep joy and shallow faith never calls after deep faith. These are also the Mysteries of Reality.

1Ki. 11:4: “For it came to pass when Solomon was old that his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God as was the heart of David his father.” Verse 6: “And Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord, and went not fully after the Lord, as did David his father.” This evidently tells us that not only was David perfect towards the Lord in his heart and fully de­vot­ed to Him, but it also tells us that the love and obedience towards the Lord is not INHERITED!

Jam. 2:22: “Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?” Faith which is not perfected through deeds or works can never bring de­light to the Lord since it can never bring forth fruit because deeds are the fruit of faith. Our faith, especially from the beginning, may be a very small, bitter and unsavory fruit be­fore it is perfected. It was assuredly the fruit of faith which was perfected in Abraham, who was called a “man of faith”.

Patience also has to be perfected. Jam. 1:4: “But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” And patience is being develop­ed through the testing of our faith. It is also one of the ways in which the Lord is perfect­ing the saints. Verse 2: “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temp­tations.” (ha,ha,ha) We NEVER count it for joy, rather, we count it for a disaster, misery, horrible thing. We should take it for joy knowing that the testing of our faith works out our patience! Temptation is not sin! Even the Lord was tempted in all things as we are, yet He was without sin (Heb. 4:15). Sin begins in our yielding to the temptation. But resisting the temptation is the test of our faith and works out patience – and it can then manifest itself by its perfect fruit. Hence, temptation is also the manner by which we are perfected.

Holiness must also be perfected. 2Cor. 7:1: “Dearly beloved, let us cleanse our­sel­v­es from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”

Meekness, gentleness and goodness must also be perfected. James 3:2: “For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man…” For me it means meekness, gentleness and goodness, and if these be in us and are being perfected, they make us unable to be arrogant and thus offend anyone – except the “old man”. According to James, these fruits are making us perfect. Perfecting of fruits is also noted in Luke 8:14 where the Lord says: “And that (seed) which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard (the word) go forth and are chocked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life and bring no fruit to perfection. But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.” In other words, they bring their fruit into perfection.

Let us now read some verses regarding a perfect man. In Luke 6:40 the Lord says: “The disciple is not above his master (this means above Christ Himself), but every one that is perfect shall be as his master.” Here the Lord does not speak about multitudes at all, He starts with disciples because only those that continue in His Word have a chance to end in the perfection similar to His Own Perfection.

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To be continued next week

brother Hanola

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