Mercy Wins: The Hardest Teaching
“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
I don’t know about you, but those words strike fear into my heart every time I read them.
Be perfect? And not just perfect, but as perfect as God the Father? Has Jesus met us? How could he ask this of us?
It’s an incredibly high standard, at the end of a long list of standards, one more difficult to achieve than the next.
Do not resist an evildoer. Turn the other cheek. If someone sues you for your coat, give them your cloak as well. Go the extra mile. Give to everyone who begs or borrows. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
And last and seemingly least attainable, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Jesus always seems so loving and gentle, but here he seems to morph into the strictest taskmaster possible, demanding something of us we can never achieve.
It is very easy to go wrong with this passage and get ourselves tied up in knots. Continue reading