perfect

Double Double

/ EllieJ

Here in Canada, a double double is how one orders a coffee—two creams, two sugars. For those with a love of literature, it hails to the witches in Macbeth. For fibre artists, it’s another ball of yarn entirely.

Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His outer garments and made four parts, a part to every soldier and also the tunic; now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece.

John 19:23 (NASB)

Most commentaries will make a point of talking about the seamless garment Jesus wore, but none that I’ve found so far have managed to explain exactly what it meant that Jesus had a tunic woven seamlessly in one piece from top to bottom. I admit that I probably spent more time than I needed to looking into this.

As a weaver myself, I understood immediately the implications of a seamless garment. It’s what’s referred to as a double-weave, or in some cases, pocket-weave. In regular weaving, a single piece of cloth is woven on a loom. In the case of a double-weave, two pieces of cloth are woven on one loom at the same time. These pieces can be woven as two separate items or a single item as a tube (as in the case of John 19:23), or even as double cloth in which case the final product is a reversible item with identical, but inverted, patterning on both sides.

Example of modern double weave.

One commentary erroneously stated that such a garment was not necessarily a luxury item for it could be woven by a craftsman who had no exceptional skill. I beg to differ. I’ve been weaving for about four years now and would consider myself to work at an intermediate level. I’m no expert, but I’m not a beginner either. Double-weave is daunting. I have the skills and equipment to to it, but I have yet to even make an attempt.

What does this mean in relation to a single verse most people skip over? Maybe nothing. Maybe a lot.

Weaving in ancient times was primitive. The looms I own would have been a dream for weavers in Jesus’ day. Don’t even get me started on spinning wheels… On a modern loom, four shafts or sheds are required for a double weave. Each shed lifts a specific grouping of threads (warp) through which another thread is woven (weft). According to my research, these simple mechanical wonders didn’t exist 2,000 years ago. What existed was a basic wood frame and stone or clay weights add tension to the warp (vertical threads as shown below).

  • Ancient loom. Photo courtesy David Padfield/FreeBibleimages.org
  • Clay warp weights. Photo courtesy of David Padfield/FreeBibleimages.org

The garment described in John 19:23 is a fine and complex piece of weaving. It was an article of clothing that someone took much time and care to make. Some scholars believe Jesus’ mother, Mary, made the tunic herself. No matter who made it, someone obviously cared greatly and it was unlikely that the item was purchased since a tunic like the one described was most often made for priests who served in the temple.

First of all, the tunic was probably linen, which would have been imported from Egypt either as unprocessed flax or processed thread. Either way, it didn’t come cheap and easy. If it started as flax, someone had to process and spin it (another long, arduous, and complicated process). If it was already thread, it still had to be woven.

My take it that whoever made this piece of clothing for Jesus was someone who obviously cared about Him greatly and also recognised His authority as our High Priest.

So what does all of this have to do with any of us and why should it matter?

Some scholars liken Jesus’ tunic to righteousness—unbroken, seamless, perfect, that which covers without blemish. Look at it this way, this particular article of clothing remained whole through Jesus’ entire ordeal. And who got it in the end? A Roman soldier. A Gentile. One the Jews reviled.

What had once clothed Jesus as the Son of God would clothe a man unworthy of the garment.

What Jesus shed at the cross was something He most assuredly deserved. He had every right to everything the Father has. We had no right to it at all. But Jesus gave up that which was most valuable to Him so that we could be clothed in it. He gave up His rights so that we could take them on. Because He shed it at the cross, we get to take up that perfect, seamless garment of righteousness and wear it as though it was made for us.

Distinguish

/ EllieJ

Read: Leviticus 10-12, Matthew 26:1-19

Let’s face it, once we’ve read through the incredible story of creation, the flood, Joseph and the exodus from Egypt, the Bible can get a little boring. It feels as though we’re in the doldrums and may never get out. But just because we don’t live under the old covenant doesn’t mean that the ideas and reasoning behind all those commands no longer apply to us.

But all of that was for the priests, wasn’t it? Yup, it sure was.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

1 Peter 2:9 (NIV)

Now that we’ve established that we are priests, we can look at some of this in a different light.

Leviticus 10:10

Before we start trying to make any distinctions, let’s find out what we’re trying to distinguish.*

HOLY: Properly, whole, entire or perfect, in a moral sense. Hence, pure in heart, temper or dispositions; free from sin and sinful affections.

COMMON: Usual; ordinary. Of no rank or superior excellence.

UNCLEAN: Not clean; foul; dirty; filthy. In the Jewish law, ceremonially impure, not cleansed by ritual practices.

CLEAN: Free from extraneous matter, or whatever is injurious or offensive. Free from dirt or other foul matter. Free from moral impurity; innocent.

There are some that believe God pulled some of His instructions out of a hat simply to see if Israel would obey. But since God had purpose in everything else He’d accomplished up to that point, I find it difficult to believe He’d throw in a few random instructions just to watch His people squirm.

In some cases, the instructions were for health reasons and, in other cases, the instructions were for cultural reasons. In everything God required of His people, the end result was that they were set apart. They were not like the other nations in the way they lived or worshipped. All of the parameters set before them set them on a straight and clear path to God Himself.

If we look at these instructions in that light, they certainly do apply to us.

God wants us to be set apart. Pure in heart. Free from sin and sinful affections. Why would we even want to be ordinary? God wants us to be free from extraneous matter. Why would we even want to foul up our lives with dirt or anything that is injurious or offensive? Just as these things applied to the priests under the old covenant, they apply to us all today.

Being set apart doesn’t mean we’re a weird cult with special Kool Aid. It simply means that we’ve been called to live a different life, free from distractions that would separate us from God. Everything we choose to keep in our lives that doesn’t make us clean or holy is a roadblock or pothole in our path to God. It hinders our relationship with Him.

God is not a backyard bully trying to make us do tricks to be mean. All He wants is a clear path between He and us. Jesus’ blood left the door open, but it’s up to us to distinguish that which either clears or clutters our path.

*As usual, my definitions are coming from Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language.

Let the well alone

/ EllieJ / Leave a comment

Read: Genesis 25-26, Matthew 9:1-17

Every year on Christmas Eve, my mother and I watch White Christmas. We’ve seen it so many times that we can pretty much quote the entire movie and sing along to every musical number, which is why today’s reading reminded me of a song from this classic film.

I know of a doctor

Sad to say, one day he fell
Right into a great big well

He should have attended to the sick
And let the well alone

The Minstrel Show

Like the song, it’s sad to say, but many Christians have unknowingly found themselves at the bottom of a deep pit. Instead of attending to the sick, they stayed too close to the well.

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Matthew 9:12-13 (NIV)

In 2005, John Burke published a book called No Perfect People Allowed. Since then, many churches, including my own, have adopted and promoted this phrase. In no way are we discounting that, though Jesus’ sacrifice, we are being made perfect, but we are tending to the spiritually sick by letting them know that they are welcome as they are. For too long, the church in general has acted like a quarantine for the spiritually “healthy”. And, in doing so, we have become just like the Pharisees who scorned Jesus for breaking bread with the tax collectors and sinners.

C.T. Studd

If we want to avoid the bottom of the well, we need to stay away from it. Though we need the fellowship of other believers, we are not called to close our ranks, but rather to go out and find those who most need what we have. Like Jesus, we are the doctors and nurses who need to go out onto the battlefield and pull in those who are sick and dying. It’s time for us to attend to the sick and let the well alone to do the same.

Still advancing

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Read: Genesis 15-17, Matthew 5:27-48

Matthew 5:48

Jesus, more than anyone, knows that no one is perfect (except himself, of course), yet here he is, telling us to be perfect. It’s a bit of an impossible task, if you ask me. But perfection, as most of us would view it, is not what Jesus is calling us to.

Just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”

1 Peter 1:15-16 (NIV)

In the Hebrew and in Greek, “holy” implies connection with God or the divine. Thus, God is holy and people, things, and actions may be holy by association with God.

Harper’s Bible Dictionary

Jesus is not calling us to be something that we can never be, but rather, he is calling us to be close to that which he wants us to be. Perfection this side of Heaven is impossible. Our humanity makes it so. But, J. Newton Davies said that the perfect man was the man who had set his feet on the true path and was still advancing. 

In a very small nutshell, the sermon Jesus is preaching in Matthew 5 is all about how, if we are followers of God, we should act like it and the world should know it. Not committing adultery isn’t good enough, you shouldn’t even think about it. You shouldn’t have to swear an oath because your word should be good enough. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn and let him hit the other side. Love your neighbours and love your enemies, too. Being holy means being and acting different than those around us.

The perfection is not sinlessness, but a complete control by God’s Spirit.

The International Bible Commentary

The closer we walk with God, the more our actions will reflect it. If you want to be perfect, you have to hang around with someone who is perfect. If you want to be holy, you have to spend time someone who is holy. And the closer you get to that person, the more like them you will become.

The path to perfection is not a solo journey. There is only one path and it can only be travelled side-by-side with the One who is perfect. You may never achieve perfection in this life, but that doesn’t mean you can be still advancing toward it.

To boldly go

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We, as new covenant believers, don’t know how good we have it. For those who came before us, the old covenant pretty much had one purpose—to make God’s people painfully aware of their sin. Regular sacrifice had to be made to atone for a multitude of sin (both known and unknown). Only the high priest was able to approach God and then only after a long process of cleansing and sacrifice. After that, I imagine his approach would have still been somewhat reserved. We need have no such reservations.

Let us go right into the presence of God, with true hearts fully trusting him. For our evil consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.

Hebrews 10:22 (NLT)

We see in Hebrews 10:1 that the old system of the law of Moses was only a shadow of the things to come, not the reality of the good things Christ has done for us. The old covenant was merely preparation for the new. Where the old pointed out sin, the new obliterated it. Where the old stifled believers, the new frees us. The old made man feel dirty and sinful.

And what God wants is for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all time.

Hebrews 10:10 (NLT)

Unlike the priests of the old covenant, we don’t have to go through a long, drawn out process of cleansing each time we want to approach God. Instead, we can go right into the presence of God, with true hearts fully trusting him.

Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf made perfect and perpetual atonement for our sin. We are washed with pure water and covered by the blood. Knowing and trusting in this, we can boldly go to our heavenly Father.

Daily Bible reading: Ezekiel 4-6, Hebrews 10:1-23

Exactly

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In all of our attempts to personify Jesus, I think we all tend to make a vital mistake—we imagine him as human.

Sure, Jesus was born on earth as a human, but that doesn’t make him human. To endow Christ with humanity would also be to endow him with the flaws that come with our nature. While he was human in the very base sense of the word, he was not really one of us.

The Son reflects God’s own glory, and everything about him represents God exactly. He sustains the universe by the mighty power of his command. After he died to cleanse us from the stain of our sin, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven.

Hebrews 1:3 (NLT)

Jesus, in order to become a sacrifice for us, had to put on human flesh. But he did not put on human nature. He was and is the exact representation of God—because he is God.

When God sent Christ to earth for the purpose of becoming a sacrifice for all of humanity, He did not send just a portion of Himself or a feathered carbon copy. He sent all of Himself. The term glory in this passage refers to the perfection that is God—the perfection that Jesus reflected while he walked the earth.

There was nothing partial in who Jesus was and is and there is nothing partial about the salvation that he purchased. Jesus represents God exactly and that means that he was exactly what was required as a complete and final sacrifice for our sin. And, when he finished his work, he sat down. At the right hand of the Father. Exactly where he belongs.

Daily Bible reading: Jeremiah 38-39, Hebrews 1

No perfect people

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On the marquis on the front of my church, you’ll find the words No Perfect People. It is an open invitation to the lost and broken in our community that they can find a place in a church that will not judge them. Over and over again, we’ve heard of people coming in our doors because of those words. Then they came back because they held true. None of us are perfect, so how can we judge anyone else’s imperfections?

One Palm Sunday, I was invited with a group I sang with to sing the mass at the local Catholic church. I jumped at the opportunity. I enjoy learning about how other Christians express their faith. After the service, I made a comment to one of the parishioners about how our church services could be so different, yet we still worshipped the same God. The felt response I received was one of scorn; how dare I compare my contemporary church service to the sacred mass?

I think that, in our own church circles, denominations, traditions, we often forget that we are not the only Christians around. There are millions of Christians in churches all around the world who celebrate their salvation in different ways.

For there is only one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and people, He is the man Christ Jesus.

1 Timothy 2:5 (NLT)

I may not agree with everything the Catholic church does, but I can see merit in much of it. I have a great appreciation for the respect and honour given in the church. Personally, I like the open atmosphere in the church I attend, but that doesn’t make me right and them wrong. It simply makes us different.

So whether you prefer mass, a traditional hymn service, or a contemporary service with fog and a light show, remember that there are no perfect people. We all serve the same God in the way that suits us best. So long as we are obedient to the Word of God, no one is wrong and yet no one is perfect. And, in our imperfection, we have all at some point in our lives, approached the single, perfect throne of grace to be accepted by the one true God.

No matter what church tradition you find yourself a part of, we are all still a part of the same body. The Church. Where there are no perfect people, but there is perfect grace.

Daily Bible reading: Jeremiah 7-8, 1 Timothy 2

Apply Jesus

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Do you ever read through the Bible and skip over all the verses that refer to the law? We know that Jesus came as the one perfect sacrifice, the only person ever to follow the law in its entirety. He then fulfilled the law so that we would no longer have to strive for something we could never attain. So why should we bother reading verses about the law that no longer apply to us?

If Jesus came to replace the law, what if we replaced the law with Jesus? Literally. In Proverbs, for example, let’s look at a few verses. We’ll take out the law and replace it with Jesus.

To reject [Jesus] is to praise the wicked; to obey [Jesus] is to fight them.

Proverbs 28:4 (NLT)

Kind of crazy how it still makes sense, isn’t it?

Young people who obey [Jesus] are wise; those who seek out worthless companions bring shame to their parents.

Proverbs 28:7 (NLT)

The prayers of a person who ignore [Jesus] are despised.

Proverbs 28:9 (NLT)

We see entirely  new meaning in scriptures we may have previously passed over believing they have nothing to do with us today. They have everything to do with us today if we look at them in the light of the new covenant we have with God through Jesus.

So the next time you’re about to skip over the law, apply Jesus instead.

Daily Bible reading: Proverbs 28-29, 2 Corinthians 7

Proclaim

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I have a difficult time watching or reading the news these days. Gone are the days of unbiased news reports and, just as George Orwell predicted when he wrote his book 1984 (in 1949), everything we do and say is under scrutiny. Social justice warriors demand that everyone fall into line with their opinions and the Church has become one of their largest targets. Much to the dismay of Christians around the globe, there are many churches that have given in to these ludicrous demands. They are allowing the world to change their way of thinking in hopes that they can change the world’s way of thinking. That’s now how this works.

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.

Romans 12:2 (NLT)

If the Church keeps watering down its message, soon there won’t even be a message worth sharing. Our message is not one of tolerance nor is it a message of condemnation. But it is is one of joy, peace, and love everlasting. Our message should be as the psalmist wrote thousands of years ago. I leave you to meditate on these words.

Sing a new song to the Lord!
Let the whole earth sing to the Lord!
Sing to the Lord; bless his name.
Each day proclaim the good news that he saves.
Publish his glorious deeds among the nations.
Tell everyone about the amazing things he does.
Great is the Lord! He is most worthy of praise
He is to be revered above all the gods.
The gods of other nations are merely idols,
but the Lord made the heavens!
Honor and majesty surround him;
Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

O nations of the world, recognize the Lord;
recognize that the Lord is glorious and strong.
Give to the Lord the glory he deserves!
Bring your offering and come to worship him.
Worship the Lord in all his holy splendor.
Let all the earth tremble before him.
Tell all the nations that the Lord is king.
The world is firmly established and cannot be shaken.
He will judge all peoples fairly.

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice!
Let the sea and everything in it shout his praise!
Let the fields and their crops burst forth with joy!
Let the trees of the forest rustle with praise before the Lord!
For the Lord is coming!
He is coming to judge the earth.
He will just the world with righteousness
and all the nations with his truth.

Psalm 96 (NLT)

Daily Bible reading: Psalm 96-98, Romans 12

12 Years

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12 years, if you’re 12, is just a short while. Life is just beginning. You’re just starting to experience real life. But 12 years, if you’re sick, can be an eternity. Every day stretches on and on without relief and, though you’re alive, you never really live at all.

In Mark 5 beginning in verse 21, we are first made aware of a little girl. She’s 12. She’s dying. Before she’s ever had a chance to really live, she’s on death’s door. Her father, Jairus, is convinced that Jesus can solve this problem.

While Jesus and his followers are on their way to see to the little girl, we meet another girl. A woman. She’s been sick for 12 years. Since the time the little girl’s life began, this woman’s has been miserable. She’s suffered at the hands of doctors to no avail. While the little girl’s life was beginning, the woman’s life was literally draining out of her.

But, like Jairus, this woman knew that Jesus was the answer. If only she could get close enough to touch him, her days of suffering would be over.

I believe that, in the moment the woman touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, the little girl died. One life was restored while the other was destroyed.

When Jesus felt the healing power leave him, he didn’t have to stop. The woman already knew that she’d been healed. I like to think that this was Jesus showing off a little. He made a point, while being crushed by a crowd, to single out the one person who’d touched him with enough faith to draw the power from him.

Side note: When you approach Jesus, do you just bump up against him like the rest of the crowd or do you go after him, like the woman, intent on pursuing him until you get what you need?

The woman presented herself to Jesus and he announces to the crowd—remember, she already knew she was healed—that this woman’s faith has made her well. Jesus made sure that everyone had stopped and was listening. They all heard his announcement that the woman’s faith had made her well.

When Jesus got to the house, he booted out everyone who had no faith. This left himself, the girl’s parents, and three disciples—considering this man went around healing people all the time, the faith of the crowd was weak.

At Jesus’ word, what had died the moment the woman with the issue of blood was healed, was revived. The little girl got up and walked around.

We would understand the gravity of what Jesus accomplished if we didn’t know how long the woman suffered from her illness or how old the little girl was at the time of her first death. So why is 12 so important?

Jesus’ first recorded words were taken when he was 12 years old. There were 12 tribes in Israel, 12 disciples chosen by Jesus. The number is referred to 187 times in the Bible. So what does it mean?

12 is considered a perfect number symbolising God’s authority. It’s a picture of completeness or perfection as well as the authority given to man by God.

Jesus showed the fullness of his authority by healing a woman who’d been living with illness for 12 years and by raising to life a girl who died after only 12 years. He proved to be the God of the living as well as the God of the dead. It was a display of perfect, complete authority. The same authority he gave to us.

Daily Bible reading: Numbers 11-13, Mark 5:21-43