The Truth Sets You Free

“You have been made perfect, and you are being made holy.”  I was attending an Ellel Ministries course at our Shere House centre (Pretoria, South Africa), and these words, shared by one of our teachers on the course, have been milling around in my thoughts since then.

By worldly standards this verse seems the wrong way round. To survive in this world, we need to work harder, constantly improve, study, pass exams, reach goals, get fitter and the list goes on and on. Our level of perfection can feel unattainable and often is! As soon as you reach one goal, the next one comes along. Our minds become consumed with thoughts about getting better at something, and we end up comparing ourselves to those around us who seem to ‘have it all together’.  It’s not necessarily a negative concept, though, because it helps us to develop our talents and giftings and become whom He made us to be. God doesn’t wish for us to stagnate or sit around doing nothing. There is much joy and satisfaction in hard work and growing towards reaching our goals.

The difference between this being a negative or a positive aspect of our lives is when we begin to measure our worth by our achievements, and what we can do, or can’t do. We look at ourselves and see how far we are from being ‘perfect’. We constantly remind ourselves that we aren’t good enough, that we aren’t ‘there’ yet.  For some people this serves as further motivation, but for others it may be the reason they just stop trying.

What then is God’s truth, as seen in our scripture for today? God sees us as perfect because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. He looks at us and sees perfection through Jesus. What is this perfection? The previous verses from this chapter in Hebrews remind us of the old system where the priests had to offer sacrifices year after year, ‘but they were never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship’ (Hebrews 10:1b). In verse 3, we read: ‘But instead, those sacrifices actually reminded them of their sins year after year’, a goal they could never reach. But then Jesus came for all of humanity and saved us from this vicious cycle of condemnation. ‘For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all the time’ (Hebrews 10:10). How amazing is this! God sees us as righteous and completely acceptable in Jesus. When we understand this godly truth, a huge burden lifts from our shoulders, and a sense of belonging settles in our hearts. It’s a different starting point compared to the worldly voices that accuse us of not being enough.

You are enough in Jesus, just as you are. Nothing you do or don’t do, can make you less, or more, loved by God. And because of His great love for you, He is completely invested in your journey towards being made holy. You are free to grow in Him and become more like Jesus, without the burden of feeling unworthy. “You have been made perfect, and you are being made holy.”