Thursday: Every Person’s Infinite, Essential Perfection
WEEK 28
THURSDAY
EVERY MAN’S INFINITE, ESSENTIAL PERFECTION
Hebrews 6:1-3
We have been studying the mastery of despair about life and the worldliness. That mastery came through the realization that Jesus is Lord.
It was based on the solid realization that the Incarnate was the Invincible. I say “solid realization,” for it was in deep contrast to modern movements that assert humanity’s perfection in itself, and all we have to do is realize it. One exponent of this says, “I sincerely believe that the single greatest equipment for foreign missionary work, as well as for all spiritual work, whether at home or abroad is a conception of every man’s infinite, essential, God-given perfection.”* How this could be equipment for mission work in India is hard to see. There is nothing new in that conception for the Hindu who believes he is already part of Brahma, therefore infinitely and essentially perfect—if he can only realize it! That’s the rub—if he can only realize it! I have never seen anybody in East or West who realized that he or she was God, or who was essentially and infinitely perfect. It is the philosophy of a few, the religion of none. For it is based on words, not on the Word made flesh—a fact. It is a philosophical fancy, not a solid fact. No one is God but God, and no one is perfect except God. To tell you that you are God or perfect in yourself gives a shot in the arm by an injection of fanciful wordiness, but it has a letdown, a deflation.
Moreover, it leaves you as the center: I am God; I am perfect. It has no place for self-surrender, only for self-realization. That leaves the self unsurrendered. Nowhere in the New Testament are you told to realize your perfection. Christian faith is too realistic for this romanticizing. You are told to be perfect, to go on to perfection; but nowhere are you told that everyone is perfect now, inherently and infinitely so. That is foreign to New Testament Christianity. It leaves no place for redemption; it has place only for realization. It gives you no Savior. It is salvation by enlightenment as to your essential perfection. That is Vedantic Hinduism, not New Testament Christianity.
O Divine Spirit, I thank you that you can put my feet on the road to perfection; you can mold me stage by stage into the image of Jesus. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am a Christian in the making. I am not perfect, but I belong to the Perfect One.
* No published source was found for this quotation.