所以你们要完全,像你们的天父完全一样。(太五48)
在这经文中,主劝勉我们在行动上对所有人都要宽大慷慨。在属灵的生活中,当心依从人性的喜好行事。人人都有天然的喜好,我们喜欢某些人,不喜欢某些人。我们永远不要让这些喜好掌管我们基督徒的生命。“我们若在光明中行,如同神在光中”,神可以使我们与天性不喜欢的人相交。
主给我们的榜样不是一个好人,也不是一个好的基督徒,乃是神自己。“所以你们要完全,像你们的天父完全一样。”--给他人看神向你看见的;神在实际生活上会给我们足够的机会,去证明我们是否像他一样完全。成为门徒,意味着我们要刻意地认同神对其他人的兴趣。“叫你们彼此相爱,我怎样爱你们,你们也要怎样相爱。”
信徒品德的表达不在于善行,乃在于像神一样。若神的灵已在里面转化了你的心,你会在生命里展现出神圣的特性,而不是好人的特性。神的生命在我们里面,表达的就是神的生命,不是人的生命力求成为敬虔。信徒的秘诀,就是藉神的恩典,使超然的在他里面成为自然,这种经历并非在与神相交的时刻中展现出来,而是在日常生活的细节中行出来。当我们碰到叫人头昏脑胀的事,便会稀奇自己竟有能力保持平静安稳。
祈祷◆噢,主啊,当今天这个属你的日子正要展开,愿你在一切事情上成为我们独特的珍宝。愿你的灵充满我们,以致我们各人都被那甜蜜、惬意的属灵能力所改变。
September 20: The Divine Rule Of Life
“Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Matthew 5:48
Our Lord’s exhortation in these verses is to be generous in our behaviour to all men. In the spiritual life beware of walking according to natural affinities. Everyone has natural affinities; some people we like and others we do not like. We must never let those likes and dislikes rule in our Christian life. “If we walk in the light as God is in the light,” God will give us communion with people for whom we have no natural affinity.
The Example Our Lord gives us is not that of a good man, or even of a good Christian, but of God Himself. “Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect,” show to the other man what God has shown to you; and God will give us ample opportunities in actual life to prove whether we are perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. To be a disciple means that we deliberately identify ourselves with God’s interests in other people. “That ye love one another; as I have loved you . . .”
The expression of Christian character is not good doing, but God-likeness. If the Spirit of God has transformed you within, you will exhibit Divine characteristics in your life, not good human characteristics. God’s life in us expresses itself as God’s life, not as human life trying to be godly. The secret of a Christian is that the supernatural is made natural in him by the grace of God, and the experience of this works out in the practical details of life, not in times of communion with God. When we come in contact with things that create a buzz, we find to our amazement that we have power to keep wonderfully poised in the centre of it all.