Hebrews 2:10
Why would it be fitting that God should make Jesus perfect through suffering? Is that an intuitive statement for you?
Peter likens testing to gold, which passes through fire and is purified. The writer of Hebrews, like the Psalmist of old, is saying that Jesus had to suffer to be made perfect.
Maybe you're asking why Jesus had to be made perfect? I mean, He was perfect, right? How much better could He get?
--and yet, think about it: what good is being perfect if you're untested? I can tell you that I play a perfect game of soliataire, and that may be true, (it isn't) but until you've seen my solitaire game it really doesn't matter whether it's perfect or not.
This is really important.
The being that became Jesus was perfect already. He didn't need to be any more perfect than He already was. He did not come to earth in order to become perfect.
However, what good was His perfection to us? Until we had seen what the perfect will of God was, what it meant in human form, what good did it do us that the will of God was perfect?
We're sensual creatures--we emulate the things we see and the things we perceive. We model behavior we see and conceptualize in our minds. We create things we image. We start from an idea, a concept, and we make that idea a reality.
Now what good does it do a man if I tell him that God is perfect love and don't show him? The man can appreciate the perfect love of God; he can believe in the perfect love of God; he can even tell others about the perfect love of God--but unless he knows what that love actually looks like, he's going to be preaching a fantasy.
Jesus came to earth so that He might be made perfect in our eyes, so that we would know what perfection looked like, so that we could know that salvation comes through the perfect Christ. Worth can only be proved in testing. Faithfulness can only be proved in suffering.
Jesus came, and suffered, and died. He lived faithful to God's will, and He died obediently because it was His Father's will. He proved Himself perfect so that we could know that He is worthy to be our Lord.
He did that. The question today is, what are we going to do about it?
Peter likens testing to gold, which passes through fire and is purified. The writer of Hebrews, like the Psalmist of old, is saying that Jesus had to suffer to be made perfect.
Maybe you're asking why Jesus had to be made perfect? I mean, He was perfect, right? How much better could He get?
--and yet, think about it: what good is being perfect if you're untested? I can tell you that I play a perfect game of soliataire, and that may be true, (it isn't) but until you've seen my solitaire game it really doesn't matter whether it's perfect or not.
This is really important.
The being that became Jesus was perfect already. He didn't need to be any more perfect than He already was. He did not come to earth in order to become perfect.
However, what good was His perfection to us? Until we had seen what the perfect will of God was, what it meant in human form, what good did it do us that the will of God was perfect?
We're sensual creatures--we emulate the things we see and the things we perceive. We model behavior we see and conceptualize in our minds. We create things we image. We start from an idea, a concept, and we make that idea a reality.
Now what good does it do a man if I tell him that God is perfect love and don't show him? The man can appreciate the perfect love of God; he can believe in the perfect love of God; he can even tell others about the perfect love of God--but unless he knows what that love actually looks like, he's going to be preaching a fantasy.
Jesus came to earth so that He might be made perfect in our eyes, so that we would know what perfection looked like, so that we could know that salvation comes through the perfect Christ. Worth can only be proved in testing. Faithfulness can only be proved in suffering.
Jesus came, and suffered, and died. He lived faithful to God's will, and He died obediently because it was His Father's will. He proved Himself perfect so that we could know that He is worthy to be our Lord.
He did that. The question today is, what are we going to do about it?
posted by ionathas78 at 6:07 AM
1 Comments:
This one is great Jonathan - I see an excellent adult Bible teacher in the wisdom and insight of this blog!
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