Constantly aiming for perfection

By Caz Jackson    23rd March 2001    0 responses

Psalm 139   Expand passage

1 You have searched me, LORD, and you know me. 2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. 4 Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely. 5 You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. 7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. 13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. 17 How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— when I awake, I am still with you. 19 If only you, God, would slay the wicked! Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty! 20 They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. 21 Do I not hate those who hate you, LORD, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? 22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies. 23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

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Firstly, my disclaimer. I’m very aware that what God has put on my heart is of quite a serious nature and perhaps a little offensive, (he shocked me, let me tell you!) but no-one reading this is to think that I am “preaching” as one who has this particular subject sorted and dealt with. Very far from it. It’s simply something I think God is trying to teach me at the moment, and I am nowhere near finished being taught! Writing this is part of the process of trying to sort it out in my own head and work out how to respond. I originally voiced my ideas as a talk/discussion with a group of Christians at Essex University, and some of this is, in fact, their input. So, thanks guys!

Ok, well, I’ve never written an article before, so I’m going to write as if I’m talking and explaining it to you face-to-face. All this started in the summer of 2000 when I read Psalm 139 as part of my quiet time. I’d read it lots of times before, as I’m sure you all have. It’s the one that talks about God knowing us inside out, because He created us, and the fact that there is nowhere we can go where He is not. Quite a nice Psalm, really. But these sentiments were not what struck me this time. I found myself focusing on the last section of the Psalm instead:

“If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!
They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name.
Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD, and abhor those who rise up against you?
I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. “

At first I couldn’t see how it all fitted in with the nice, comforting words I had read just seconds previously. But I’ll come back to that later.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been studying the characteristics of God in my Christian Union Bible study group. We’ve been considering the holiness of God, and his position as judge of the world. One of the verses we read was 1 Corinthians 4:4, which says:

“My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent.”

This verse really started me thinking. Even when I do search my conscience, I find a number of things that aren’t right, but to think that I could search myself, not find anything wrong, and still not be right by God’s perfect standards, shook me a little, to say the least. It revealed to me a little more about just how fantastic salvation is. Looking at the above verse, there is no chance of us finding out for ourselves the true extent of our sin, and therefore no way that we could even begin to put it all right in our own strength.

It also made me think about my state as a human being. Usually I go around with the attitude “Yay! I’m a Christian! I’m forgiven, saved and going to Heaven. Full stop. Nothing can separate me from the love of God, right? So it doesn’t really matter if I do stuff wrong because it’s all ‘under the blood’. Hallelujah!” I’m sure you, like me, can see huge flaws in this way of thinking.

Recently, I read Proverbs 1. Verse 32 says:

“For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of the fools will destroy them.”

I think this “complacency” is the root of my problem. The first part of my “attitude” is right. I am a Christian, I am forgiven and, no matter what, I am going to Heaven. However, this does not mean that I do not have to be constantly aiming to attain that standard of perfection that God desires. In Philippians 3:12-15, Paul says:

“Not that I have already… been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me…Forgetting what is behind, and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize…”

The prize of Heaven is already guaranteed to those who believe in Christ Jesus and accept the sacrifice he made for us on the cross. But perfection is still something we should be working towards, and, although it cannot be attained until the day we reach Heaven we are to ‘strain’ for it all the same. We are called to be set apart from the world, for God (Colossians 3:1-16). This is what the word ‘holy’ means. The fact that we are saved people should make a difference to our earthly life, and not just our eternal one.

So what should our response be to this call? This is where we need to go back to the final section of Psalm 139. David is having a “the wicked people shouldn’t be able to live” moment, but he realises that actually, he is a sinner just like them. To God, sin is sin, is sin. There’s no difference in the severity of different sins. Stealing and murder both have the common consequence of cutting off the perpetrator from God. Any sin hinders our relationship with God and bars us from Heaven. And we saw earlier that we can never fully understand the extent of our sinful nature. So David cries out to God and asks Him to search his sinful heart and highlight whatever needs to be forgiven. This should be our response, too.

As I said before, I am not forgetting the guarantee of an eternal heavenly home that salvation brings, but the fact that we belong to God should not just be something that we know for ourselves, but something that the world can see by what we say and do. We are to be as salt and light in the world. And to do that, we need God’s help, His conviction and His forgiveness.

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By Caz Jackson

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