How to Be a Perfect Christian Without Mr. Libertine

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. {Matthew 5:48}


If our perfection in Christ is manifested by our abiding in Him through the obedience of faith we cannot say, as some might, “If we are already perfect, why should we not live as we please? If Christ has done it all and I cannot add a thing to what He has done, if I am perfect in Him, if God has already determined all that I shall be in Christ then why need I do anything at all?”

A similar question attributed to some people in Romans is not even dignified with an answer by Paul. Aside from being fatalistic and denying human responsibility, it blasphemes God by portraying Him as winking at sins subsequent to salvation.

This kind of thinking is a trap. It is the sort of thinking that only the unconverted enter into. It betrays a heart that has never truly agreed with God that in our flesh dwells no good thing, and that we must truly repent of all that we are and do in Adam. It misses the point that we died with Christ and were raised to newness of life in Him.

A heart that God has purchased with the precious blood of Jesus Christ and has sealed with the Holy Spirit is patently incapable of habitually thinking in terms of carnal licence, even though it may stumble in practice –sometimes grievously. Yet it is ultimately incapable of it because God Himself has put a new heart into all of His children – a heart which cries “Abba, Father!” where once there was only corruption, rebellion, hatred and fear.

From the moment of our entering into Christ and He into us, we are beyond the wrath of God and have entered into His rest. It is by faith, yes, that we came and by faith we abide in this rest – but we have peace with God forever. The mistake comes in thinking that our peace with God came by what we did, and is therefore maintained by our deeds. It is as if we try to separate faith from the life we now live in Christ, and He in us, when they are both of a piece. Our faith exercised is God’s righteousness metabolized. Our faith is given for the doing of His will. If we have faith we will do His will – but if we do not truly have saving faith then we will serve our own flesh.

Now, the process of living out our salvation is not referred to in God’s Word as living out our “potential” salvation – but our actual one. “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” {Ph 2:12-13} “(God) is now the source of our life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” {1Cor 1:30-31}

We must look at the means that God, in His wisdom, has ordained by which we are kept in the narrow way, and brought to the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ. And what are they? They are the preaching and study of the Word of God, the witness of the Holy Spirit guiding us into all truth, and the walk that results from our obedience to them. We might add prayer, fellowship, communion and corporate worship.

So, our perfection in Christ does not sit inaccessibly in a remote place towards which we are struggling in a daily grind of morbid introspection and self-denial. That is carnality speaking. That is carnal perfectionism. Our perfection lies in the Person of Christ, Whom we have now, through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Abiding in Him produces much fruit - His, not ours. When we obey, we are the proof of the glories of His righteousness.

Christians who do not yet grasp the completeness of Christ’s work, and our own completeness in Him, will inevitably fall prey to the fear that this doctrine will lead to lawlessness and a cheap view of grace. That is because they themselves have a legalistic rather than a spiritual understanding of the truth. The carnal mind is still stuck in the idea that we ourselves can do something to cause, or to add to, what God has already done in Christ. Worse still, some think that God demands that we perform or else we will be lost. It is subtle re-submission to legalism.

If we are in Christ we are free from law, free from its demands, free from condemnation, free from the obligation of guilt – and free to be slaves of righteousness. The proper understanding of freedom in Christ is not licence, but willing slavery. Just as the Hebrew slave of a Hebrew was utterly free after 7 years and could go out and do his own thing, yet the true child of God is that former indentured slave who so loves his master that he chooses to stay and serve him as a slave forever, having his ear pierced through upon the doorpost as a sign.

But the true lawless one, the one who loves himself and not his master, will take his freedom and go back to making his own way in the world. Some believe that Christians can choose either of these options and still be in Christ. They can take the freedom of Christ and live as they please, serving their own will and pleasure in the world, just as they did before they were “saved”. But these are the ones in peril of our Saviour saying to them in that Day, “I never ever (emphatic) knew you; depart from me, you workers of iniquity.”

You see, the one who despises his freedom to be a slave of Christ is not a Christian at all. He is not even a so-called “carnal Christian”. He is a person who has rejected the gospel altogether by treading the grace of God underfoot. God has held out true freedom, which is only in Christ, and that person has willingly chosen to be enslaved to the world. The blood of Christ is sufficient for all, but is efficient only for those that believe, trusting Christ for all things, as a slave trusts his loving master.

Surely he whose soul is truly converted, who has seen the exceeding sinfulness of his own sin, and who has freely received the grace which pardons that sin – surely that person is incapable of the attitude that seeks to go back and serve the very lusts that brought his original demise.