Have you ever considered “if” perfection of who you are, of your character, is something you want at all? Many of us have become quite contented with who we are today, reasoning that we are indeed “better” now than we used to be. While all of us might crave the perfection of our bodies, and a life eternal without ever facing sickness, disease, or death; how many crave a perfection of character for whatever time we have left in our mortal existence? Scripture promises us perfection of both body and character as we are resurrected, but can it be achieved before then, and does it matter? Assuming there is no “if” in our minds where it comes to craving perfection of character, have we then determined “when” we expect to see it? At the end of all things is an easy answer. But sooner than that perhaps; next year, next month, next week, tomorrow? Seems like today has already blown that chance, but perhaps “soon”. Seems like tomorrow, or next week is unlikely, but sometime. In the meantime, before we reach the state of perfection, we will indeed make mistakes. Our mistakes will encompass everything from what we eat, to what we say, to what we “think we know” about scripture. How can God use us in His plan of redemption, if our doctrine remains imperfect? This is a lesson Peter was keen to insure that readers of his gospel, transcribed through John Mark, would decisively answer.
Peter continued his recollection of events following the confrontation between Jesus and the religious leadership of His day, over Sabbath observance, as he transitions the venue and relays how the people responded to the newly revealed truth in the messages of Christ. John Mark transcribes in chapter 3 and verse 7 saying … “But Jesus withdrew himself with his disciples to the sea: and a great multitude from Galilee followed him, and from Judaea, [verse 8] And from Jerusalem, and from Idumaea, and from beyond Jordan; and they about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they had heard what great things he did, came unto him.” Jesus had been teaching in the temple in Jerusalem on Sabbath. His message of restoration of our spiritual condition, combined with the miracle of restoring the lame man’s hand exactly like his other one to full normality, spread like wildfire through the multitudes who had come to worship. It was not just His miraculous ability to heal that intrigued the crowds, it was His ability to reveal truth and love that put aside the traditional “wisdom” of the Pharisees, and left them unable to beat Christ with logic, the Law, or on any other grounds. Jesus’ words were so powerful, and His message so pure, there was no “alternative” line of thinking that could surpass it.
The message of Christ was and is perfect. The life of Christ was and is perfect. His love of others trumped every other concern. Christ lived His human existence fully dependent upon His Father for direction, for mission, for strength. The perfection of Christ living in a sin-stained world was upheld and maintained by His submission to the power of the Holy Spirit. In heaven, Jesus was an equal member of the Godhead. On earth, His humanity had to submit its own will to the will of the Father, and His power would be sustained by the work of the Holy Spirit. He did not live this way because He had to. He lived this way because He was here to show us, how we could do, what He was doing. Full willing submission of Christ to His Father, kept Christ upon the path of perfection. Our full willing submission to Christ, can put us on that same path. Jesus did not assert His dominance to achieve perfection in Himself, instead He surrendered in humility to the full will of His Father. And because He so perfectly reflected the love of His Father for us, what resulted was nothing short of phenomenal.
John Mark continues in verse 9 … “And he spake to his disciples, that a small ship should wait on him because of the multitude, lest they should throng him.” The crowds were so desperate to be close to the source of all love, that Jesus had to step into a ship and row a little offshore to remain in speaking distance to the multitude but lessen the temptation to “throng him”. The apostle John in his gospel recounts how often crowds like this one wanted to crown Jesus as King of Judea. Jesus did not want this, and many times in the gospel of John, Jesus had to miraculously escape from the crowd bent on this result. Here He moves away offshore to avoid being taken by the crowd and “made” to be their King. Instead He wants to continue to share with them, the truth of what it means to love others. But the love of His Father continued to flow through Him as He perfectly reflected it.
While arrangements for the boat are being made, the crowd continue to press close and Peter recalls to John Mark in verse 10 what transpired … “For he had healed many; insomuch that they pressed upon him for to touch him, as many as had plagues. [verse 11] And unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him, and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. [verse 12] And he straitly charged them that they should not make him known.” Those who sought restoration were finding it, just by touching Him. It did not matter what their ailments were. Cancer, AIDs, orphan-diseases, leprosy, there is not a single disease that cannot be cured by contact with Jesus Christ (then or now). The love of God the Father isrestorative, it does NOT leave us in the condition in which it finds us, it removes that which causes us pain – be it our sins, or our diseases. The motivation of God the Father is NOT to see us suffer from our choices, or our genetics, it is to see us restored to the perfection He intended for us. In the presence of the love of Jesus Christ, and His perfect reflection of the love of God the Father for you and me diseases (including the desire to sin) just melted away.
Perhaps there was no greater example of this spiritual healing than the words of Peter in verse 11 above recalling that even unclean spirits could not tolerate His presence falling down in submission before Jesus Christ, and crying out publicly that Jesus was the literal Son of God. How sad that many worshippers who were seeking Christ had so digressed from truth and love, that unclean spirits had taken up residence within them, and they likely did not even know it. Our contentment with who we are, and our rationalization about how “good” we see ourselves to be, allows for the devil and his minions to encroach upon us, until we permit entry through continued indulgence and do not even know what we have done. Our minds are warped by repeated indulgence of sin, until we come to believe sin is no longer sin. We see our choices to love self as natural, and we turn a blind eye to the pain our choice to love self causes others. We make self number one, and all others secondary to me. In so doing, we adopt the philosophy of Satan, and our distinction between us and him becomes difficult to determine. In this condition, we may talk of righteousness, but the evil within us is so deep it is nearly indistinguishable from the unclean spirits that fell with Lucifer in heaven so many ages ago. Whether they reside within us, or whether we choose to just behave like them, our character looks the same. But even in this depth of depravity, there is hope from the perfect love of the Father God, reflected through His son Jesus Christ.
When the perfect love of the Father God is reflected through humanity, great things can be accomplished. The redemption and restoration of mankind is ever the goal of the Father. God the Father is not sitting around, waiting for us to screw-up again, so He can inflict the severe and just punishment we have earned. That image is the one Satan paints of God, and it is yet another lie. Our God desperately loves us with His entire being, and yearns to set us free from the pain of our choices. He longs to instill in us perfection, not because He demands it, but because WE need it. God is not looking to just cure 90% of our Cancer, or 95% of our AIDS, He is looking to cure ALL of it. There is not just one “little” sin that does not result in enormous pain, they all result in that kind of pain. It does no good to cure only a part of disease and leave something behind that will eventually kill you anyway. You need to cure it all, in order to get rid of the pain reoccurrence causes. This is why God seeks to give us perfection. It is His greatest gift to us. He does not ask us to cure ourselves, only to let Him do it for us.
And the love of our Father God yearns to do this today. He is not looking to wait for some future far off date to see us rid of our pain, He wants to see us healed today. It is a process He can start today. It is a process that begins with proximity to Jesus Christ. Just like those crowds, the closer we wish to get to Jesus Christ, the more our disease just melt away. God does not demand perfection first, He gives us perfection as fast as we are willing to accept it AFTER we come to Him. It is His love and His Holy Spirit that transform us from the sin-sick, self-loving-addicts we are, into the perfect creations He intended us to be. And He understands that our disease will likely prevent us from embracing the whole of perfection instantly, but it does not diminish His goal of seeing us FULLY rid of our pain.
Peter remembers and recalls for our witness, that despite their human frailty, and full lack of perfection at that point in time, Jesus Christ STILL chose to embrace and use His disciples to further His mission for our restoration. John Mark transcribes in verse 13 … “And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him. [verse 14] And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, [verse 15] And to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils:” We are in chapter three of this gospel folks. This is nowhere near the end of the story, or the end of the transformation these disciples are going to experience. In short, they were nowhere near perfect yet. They were simple followers of Jesus Christ and did NOT have a wealth of experience reading the scriptures, or debating their meaning. They were NOT paid professional speakers, with college degrees, and formal instruction on how to address crowds of people. They were common men that shared an uncommon experience. They had been close to Jesus Christ, and were “personal” witnesses to how He restores broken men and women back to normal.
Your testimony is what matters. Your accounting of how Jesus Christ has made you free from some long embraced sin you were once enslaved to, is the testimony that matters. If you have not yet experienced this, then you do not yet have something to say. Your depth of scriptural understanding is meaningless, but your personal account of restoration Jesus has performed in you is priceless. Jesus did not appoint Pharisees and keepers of the Law to preach His gospel of love. They had rejected love in favor of their wisdom. They had rejected the Author of the Law, because He was too obsessed with loving others and did not conform to their ideas about “how” the Law must be kept. Religious leaders were unqualified to preach the Gospel of the Love of Christ. I will say it again, Religious leaders, were unqualified. They did not have a personal experience with being made free from sin, by the transforming power of the love of Jesus Christ. The disciples did not have good enough resumes to have gotten this job. They were the least qualified from a perspective of education, training, and preparation. But they knew Jesus. They saw Him love others. They saw Him restore others. And they could bear personal witness to what it means to come and surrender all to Christ. That testimony was ALL that mattered. Could you love others, and could you point them to Christ, then Jesus has a mission for you.
But then comes another revelation of love that astounds the mind. Not only did Jesus empower His disciples to preach the gospel of love, He intentionally passed on His power through them to do it. He “gave” them power to heal disease, and to cast out devils. To reflect the love of the Father God, we must be able to share in the mission and goal of the restoration of those in need. You will note, these are not tools of condemnation that were offered, they were tools of restoration. The goal was not meet a sinner in need, and explain to them how bad off they were, it was to point them to Christ to find healing from the pain and disease of sin. It was to restore their physical needs as they had them, and cast out devils that would prevent them from finding spiritual restoration in Christ. None of the disciples given these gifts of love had perfect doctrine. None of them knew scripture well enough to debate it. All of them were still imperfect but the gifts were given by God anyway.
Then Jesus took another step. In addition to commissioning them to join Him in His mission of restoration by preaching, and healing, He sought to instill in each of them a new identity in association with Himself. John Mark continues in verse 16 saying … “And Simon he surnamed Peter; [verse 17] And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder: [verse 18] And Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Canaanite, [verse 19] And Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him: and they went into an house.” For those keeping score, Peter is listed first in this list, and the house they went into was again likely Peter’s home in Capernaum (more items relevant to Peter being the source of this gospel). Simon is now to be called Peter. A new identity. James and John are surnamed or now also known as … the sons of thunder. What may have in times past referred to the boisterous nature of their father, or a propensity to use the language of a “sailor”, is now transformed into another meaning. The preaching of the word will come like thunder for all to hear. James and John will carry the word like thunder to those in need, such that they cannot avoid hearing it. It will resonate from one end of the world to the other. The other nine disciples are identified here as well without fear, or hesitation.
You will note, Jesus commissioned them ALL to preach in His name. He gave them ALL power to heal and cast out demons that might obstruct those in need from finding Christ for spiritual restoration. This included Judas Iscariot. The man who would later choose to betray Christ, was not held in disregard by Jesus. Christ did not withhold from Judas any gift He gave to Peter. Judas was equally loved, needed, and employed in the work. None of them were perfect, and Christ had the foreknowledge of who would betray Him, yet He held nothing back from Judas. The goal of Christ was to save every man, woman, and child. Judas was no different in the eyes of Christ than was Matthew, or James, or John, or Peter. ALL were disciples, ALL were called, ALL were given gifts to restore and point men in need to Jesus Christ to be saved. So why was Judas different?
The story of Judas and Peter is not so different. BOTH betrayed their Lord in His hour of greatest need. Judas turned Him over to the religious leaders who sought His life. Peter denied three times even knowing Him. So why did it end differently? It is not our mistakes that define us, it is what we do afterwards that does. We can like Judas turn only to the mirror, and rightly point out how evil we are, and how bad what we have done is. Or we can like Peter, despite knowing our guilt, STILL turn back to Christ and look for forgiveness we know we do not deserve, but He offers anyway. Judas chose to end His life, not because He was ever treated differently. He chose to end it, because He would not humble himself and seek forgiveness for the great evil he had done. Peter too could have ended his life because of the shame of his faithlessness in the face of danger. But instead he bore the humility of seeking forgiveness he did not deserve, and accepted that forgiveness in spite of this knowledge. If we can surrender, we can find both forgiveness and perfection. If we cannot surrender, it does NOT matter how much power we have been given.
Judas was a preacher, he was a disciple of Christ, he spent time one on one with Jesus. But in the end, he could not surrender to the love and mercy of God, and chose to die instead. Judas could heal diseases, and Judas could cast out devils. But Satan entered Judas because he chose to allow it for greed and the hope of forcing Jesus to do what He wanted Him to do, become King. It was not the betrayal that marks the sad story of Judas, for if it were, Peter would be equally disdained. It was the response of Judas to his mistakes. He would not submit, and instead chose death. Peter did submit, and went on to greatly aid the cause of Christ. Yet both men were given tremendous gifts when neither of them were “ready” from a traditional point of view, or deserving, or perfect. The gifts of transformation put us on the path to perfection. Perfection is not a pre-requisite, it is a result. Constant surrender leads to perfection, we do not start out perfect, we end up that way. And no matter where we are in the journey, Christ can use us still. These were lessons Peter deeply needed to share with us, and the lessons were far from over …
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