“To the Divine Mind, time, space and sequence, cannot be realities; so God must view His work from the beginning as being complete and perfect.”

 – Ernest Holmes, The Hidden Power of the Bible
[The Bible in the Light of Religious Science], 1929; Jeremy P. Tarcher / Penguin edition, 2006

“As for God, His way is perfect!”
Psalm 18:30a

“The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the whole person.”
Psalm 19:7

“Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”
– Christ Jesus
Matthew 5:48

The passage from Psalms 18 caught my attention because the words “way” and “perfect” seem contradictory. We tend to think of “way” as oriented in linear time, but “perfect” as a point in time, the achievement of a goal, thus eventually free from the limitations of time. In thinking more deeply about the concept from Psalm 18, it became clear: In a believer’s life and experience “perfection” is the process, and the goal wholeness: at-onement with God and with ourselves as His child.  As each step along the way seems to have matured an aspect of wholeness, a new goal – indeed, many new vistas in spiritual life – present themselves – not because we have failed, but because we are continually learning, continually being led by the One Who Knows. Jesus’ statement is clear: He is declaring believers “perfect” in the same sense that God declared his creation “good” in Genesis. “Perfection” IS oriented in our human experience of “time.”

“Perfection” is in the “process.”

 – mjd