The mature Christian - Chambers, Oswald
Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect. Matthew 5:48 (RV )
In Matthew 5, verses 2930 and verse 48 respectively our lord refers to two things which are full of vital instruction. In verses 2930 he is referring to the necessity of a maimed life: and if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee; in Matthew 5:48 he refers to the life which is not maimed, but perfect. These two statements embrace the whole of our spiritual life from beginning to end.
Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect (RV ). God is so almightily simple that it is impossible to complicate him, impossible to put evil into him or bring evil out of him; impossible to alter his light and his love, and the nature of the faith born in me by the holy ghost will take me back to the source and enable me to see what god is like, and until i am all light and all love in him, the things in me which are not of that character will have to pass. In the beginning of christian experience the life is maimed because we are learning. There is the right eye to be plucked out, the right hand to be cut off, and we are apt to think that is all god means; it is not. What god means is what Jesus said, ye shall be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect. When we discern that the sword that is brought across our natural life is not for destruction, but for discipline, we get his idea exactly. God never destroys the work of his own hands, he removes what would pervert it, that is all. Maturity is the stage where the whole life has been brought under the control of god.
1. The upward look
Psalm 121 portrays the upward look i will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains: from whence shall my help come? My help cometh from the lord, which made heaven and earth (RV). The upward look of a mature christian is not to the mountains, but to the god who made the mountains. It is the maintained set of the highest powers of a man not star-gazing till he stumbles, but the upward gaze deliberately set towards god. He has got through the choppy waters of his elementary spiritual experience and now he is set on god. I have set the lord always before mebut you have to fight for it.
2. The forward look
Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty: they shall behold a far stretching land [a land of far distances, mg] (Isaiah 33:17 RV). The forward look is the look that sees everything in gods perspective whereby his wonderful distance is put on the things that are Near. Caleb had the perspective of god; the men who went up with him saw only the inhabitants of the land as giants and themselves as grasshoppers. Learn to take the long view and you will breathe the benediction of god among the squalid things that surround you. Some people never get ordinary or commonplace, they transfigure everything they touch because they have got the forward look which brings their confidence in god out into the actual details of life. The faith that does not react in the flesh is very immature. Paul was so identified with Jesus Christ that he had the audacity to say that what men saw in his life in the flesh was the very faith of the son of god. Galatians 2:20 is the most audacious verse in the bible! Paul is not referring to his own elementary faith in Jesus Christ as his saviour, but to the faith of the son of god, and he says that that identical faith is now in him. Fortitude in trial comes from having the long view of god. No matter how closely i am imprisoned by poverty, or tribulation, i see the land that is very far off, and there is no drudgery on earth that is not turned divine by the very sight. Abraham did not always have the forward look, that is why he did a scurry down to Egypt when there was a famine in the land of promise. Why shouldnt i starve for the glory of god? Immediately i fix on gods goods, i lose the long view. If i give up to god because i want hundredfold more, i never see god.
3. The backward look
And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee saying, this is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. (Isaiah 30:21)
The surest test of maturity is the power to look back without blinking anything. When we look back we get either hopelessly despairing or hopelessly conceited. The difference between the natural backward look and the spiritual backward look is in what we forget. Forgetting in the natural domain is the out- come of vanity the only things i intend to remember are those in which i figure as being a very fine person! Forgetting in the spiritual domain is the gift of god. The spirit of god never allows us to forget what we have been, but he does make us forget what we have attained to, which is quite unnatural. The surest sign that you are growing in mature appreciation of your salvation is that as you look back you never think now of the things you used to bank on before. Think of the difference between your first realisation of gods forgiveness, and your realisation of what it cost god to forgive you; the hilarity in the one case has been merged into holiness, you have become intensely devoted to God who forgave you.