Haha I've been reading this book recently, one chapter a day =).
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"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" - Matthew 5:48
Perhaps a verse that we never really think about, we dismiss it when we see it sometimes with whatever reason we might have. But this statement wasnt a joke. It was said with all seriousness. But its impossible to achieve, so why did Jesus say these words?
In the concluding words of the chapter on the Sermon on the Mount of the book, here is something to think about:
Jesus did not proclaim the Sermon on the Mount so that we would...despair over our failure to achieve perfection. He gave it to impart to us God's Ideal towards which we should never stop striving, but also show that none of us will ever reach that Ideal. The Sermon on the Mount forces us to recognize the great distance between God and us, and any attempt to reduce that distance by somehow moderating in demands misses the point altogether...Thunderously, inarguably, the Sermon on the Mount proves that before God we all stand on level ground; murderers and temper-throwers, adulterers and lusters, thieves and coverters. We are all desperate, and that is in fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God. Having fallen from the absolute Ideal, we have nowhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace.
Interesting isnt it? Not something new to me but reading this book gave me a new refreshing look at the balance between law and grace.
So yups.
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"The test of observance of Christ's teachings is our consciousness of our failure to attain an ideal perfection. The degree to which we draw near this perfection cannot be seen; all we see is the extent of our deviation" - Leo Tolstoy