[2]
1 Peter 1:3 Good News Translation
A Living Hope
3 Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Because of his great mercy he gave us new life by raising Jesus Christ from death. This fills us with a living hope,
This morning I read[3] “How beautiful you are, my love, how perfect you are!”
My mind roamed randomly through everyone I knew. I could think of no one that this compliment could be applied to. Firstly, my loving wife came to mind. She is precious in so many ways. She has faithfully looked after me as I lay at death’s door. In many ways she has been and still is the perfect love partner for me. Of course, when you get to know anyone, you begin to notice their foibles.
I thought of the people whom I have looked up to over the years: my colleagues and former associates. Then there were the teachers and pastors, some of whom spent considerable time and effort to meet my physical, financial, and spiritual needs. I admired many of them and am thankful for their care and interest in my well-being. But perfect? Not by a long shot.
One candidate might have been Pastor P. H. Coetzee. He preached the most powerful sermons I had ever heard as a young kid growing up. He ran a week of prayer at my primary school and held up the image of perfection in a beautiful way. When I was 8, I attended a junior camp at Hartenbos in South Africa, and he led out in a way that captured my admiration. Had you asked me about a perfect person when I was ten or twelve, I might have thought of him.
When I was studying at Sedaven High School, he was the chairman of the school’s board. At one point his son, Leon, was only peripherally involved in a gross breach of school principles that caused the faculty to expel about a dozen students. Many of those expelled were rebellious and evil in every sense imaginable. In many ways, Leon was an ideal student, so P. H. Coetzee called the school board together and reinstated his son. (Mark Twain[4] once quipped, “In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.”)
He couldn’t just reinstate his son, however, without being accused of nepotism. So, he had all of those students reinstated in school. This resulted in a total breakdown of discipline in the school. It almost caused the school to close. Suddenly those perfection images of Pastor Coetzee, were ripped from my eyes.
None of us are perfect[5]; “everyone has sinned and is far away from God's saving presence.” As Peter writes “Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Because of his great mercy He gave us new life by raising Jesus Christ from death. This fills us with a living hope.” This hope is that Christ has died for us so that we might live in His perfection. God’s plan is stated thus:[6] “As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our sins from us.” He then looks at us and says, “How beautiful you are, my love, how perfect you are!”
Lord, thank You that in Your eyes we appear with Christ’s perfection. Thank You for saving us completely!
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