"Nobody's Perfect, Right?"

The Lord God has chosen the most imperfect people to serve His perfect purposes. I have stated in posts before how Christ's greatest disciples had struggles, that Peter denied Him and Paul was murderer of Christians before he converted on Road to Damascus. The weaknesses and failings of the Lord Jesus Christ's greatest followers helps remind us that we don't have to be perfect to serve the LORD. That being said, every single one of them did not stay imperfect. The Apostle Paul was murderer, but he stopped murdering and spent His life suffering for the Messiah, and helping His people (total change, total turn from his sin, which is what repentance in Greek means, to turn from it, not just say sorry). The Apostle Peter did deny Jesus three times, but He repented and ended up preaching sermon that saved 3,000 souls. Each and every servant of Lord God Trinity did have failings, and weren't perfect, but they strived to change, to be more like Christ.

Today, there are slogans, "Nobody's Perfect," "It is what it is," and "We accept you as you are," proliferating churches. The idea is unbridled acceptance of flawed people. Yes, we should love unbelievers and sinners, but not condone the sin, "And you must show mercy to those whose faith is wavering. Rescue others by snatching them from the flames of judgment. Show mercy to still others,but do so with great caution, hating the sins that contaminate their lives" (Jude 1:22-23). There should be transformation, they may not be perfect after becoming disciples of Christ, but there should be progress, a turn from sins that once destroyed them. This is why the apostle Paul said to stubborn Roman Church, "Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? ² Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? ³ Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? ⁴ For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. ⁵ Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was. ⁶ We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. ⁷ For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin. ⁸ And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. ⁹ We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead, and he will never die again. Death no longer has any power over him. ¹⁰ When he died, he died once to break the power of sin. But now that he lives, he lives for the glory of God. ¹¹ So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus. ¹² Do not let sin control the way you live;^[a] do not give in to sinful desires. ¹³ Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God. ¹⁴ Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God’s grace. ¹⁵ Well then, since God’s grace has set us free from the law, does that mean we can go on sinning? Of course not! ¹⁶ Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living. ¹⁷ Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you. ¹⁸ Now you are free from your slavery to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous living. Because of the weakness of your human nature, I am using the illustration of slavery to help you understand all this. Previously, you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led ever deeper into sin. Now you must give yourselves to be slaves to righteous living so that you will become holy. ²⁰ When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do right. ²¹ And what was the result? You are now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. ²² But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6, whole chapter). The Church of Rome thought they could believe in Jesus but have no true repentance, that they didn't have to turn or die to sins that had done prior to becoming Christians. The Apostle Paul confronted this, as did Jesus Christ who said to some religious leaders, "What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs--beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity.Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness." (Matthew 23:27-28). It's not about perfectionism, its about transformation. We should be following the Savior's steps, turning from behaviors, attitudes, actions, and sinful nature that seeks to keep us slaves. And yet the despotism of today give up mentality, "it is what it is," (unbelieving statement) is infiltrating and infecting the Church at large. When we should be shouting, "no, I am new creation, a child of God, I have been transferred from domain of darkness into God's glorious light, I am royal priesthood, holy nation, and worthy to enter holiest place," (2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 3:26, Romans 8:17, 1 Peter 2:9), instead excuses are espoused that say, "I just can't get over it," "I am weak," "everyone else has an escape," and "I need it to cope." The greatest servants of God did stumble, fail, and struggle with their sins, take Jacob, a liar and cheat, who was met full force with same behavior by his uncle, tricked into marrying Leia instead of Rachael, and yet at Beth-el he smuggled with Angel of Lord to get God's blessing and would become His new namesake Israel. To many in church are trying to justify and rejoice in Jacob, when they should be transforming into Israel. Its not perfectionism, we like Jacob wrestle with the failings inside us, but the point is that you wrestle, fight, and try to change into Christ, instead of practicing sin and condoning it which leads to losing the Kingdom (Galatians 5:19-21).

I am gravely concerned by the trend in churches today of compromising the Christian walk with condoning sin and letting people stay the way they are. The Apostle Paul didn't stay Saul, and persecute the Church, rather he became an apostle to churches and was persecuted for Christ and Church (2 Corinthians 11:24-26); see how 180 that is! Paul went from persecuting the church to being persecuted for the church! Peter went from denying Jesus publicly three times out of fear of being crucified to confessing Jesus before 3,000 (Acts 2:14-42) and more and being crucified for Christ. The Apostle John went from being proud and overzealous (Luke 9:54-55, Matthew 20:20-28), to being boiled alive on Patmos for Christ and becoming humble. Repentance is suppose to be a turning from, a 180 change in the other direction, and it is this understanding of repentance that is lost to this generation, they know how to confess and say they are sorry, but they don't bother to stop the behavior and go in opposite direction: example stealing to denoting money to orphans, drunkenness to soberness, and etc.

The point is yes Jesus works with us imperfect people, and He has made His sacrifice on cross and blood provision for our weakness and sin. However, we must not make God's Grace a tray to practice sin. We should be through Christ being transformed from our former state of slavery to sin to our new state of slavery to righteousness (Romans 6:18-23). We are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9) and salvation is through believing in and confess Jesus Christ as Lord (John 3:16, John 6:40, Romans 10:9-10), but after that we should be changing, transforming more and more into Christ-like ambassadors. We do this through Christ working through us (Colossians 1:27, 1 Corinthians 3:16, Romans 6). But do not make mistake of thinking you can be complacent, idle, and indolent! You must be an active partner in the transformative process in Christ. Paul didn't just sit around, He went back out on Road of Damascus aftering becoming a Christian and started preaching the Gospel, and allowing himself to be persecuted for the church's sake! So take the example of the Apostles and greats of the Holy Bible, who though frail and imperfect did strive to be transformed by the LORD God and turn from their wicked ways. Amen.