| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 6 |
Page 4 |
When we have learned to pray really in this way – for those who wrong us, treat us injuriously, hate us – we are Christians. That is the way God loves us. If we love as he loves we shall be perfect. “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” “God is love,” and to be like God is to love. Wesley said, “Pure love alone, reigning in the heart and life – this is the whole of Christian perfection.”
The word perfection frightens some people. They say they never can reach it. It seems an inaccessible mountain summit. But Christ never commands an impossibility. When he says, “Be ye perfect,” he means to give grace and ability to reach the high attainment. He means here especially perfection in loving, as defined in his own words. No other perfection is attainable. A writer tells of the finding of a human skeleton in the Alps. It proved to be that of a tourist who had been trying to secure an Alpine flower, the edelweiss, but had slipped and lost his life. Many men, in striving to reach some high honour, some great joy, some rich possession, have failed and fallen. Only a few of earth’s climber ever reach their goal. But here is a white flower which all who aspire to reach shall find. “Ye shall be perfect in love as your Father is perfect.”
Perfection ever is a lesson which has to be learned. It is not an attainment which God will put into our hearts, as you might hand up a picture in your parlour. Rather, it is something which we have to strive after, which we have to achieve and attain, in experience. If we learn one by one the lessons which our Master teaches us, we shall at length become perfect. It may seem now only a far away vision, but if we continue patiently learning we shall realize it by and by. We cannot attain it in a day, but every day we may take one little step toward it.
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