Struggle & Triumph | Who God Says I AmSample

I Am Seen as Perfect

“For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” Hebrews 10:14

Derek Jeter, the Yankee baseball team shortstop from 1995 to 2014, said, “There may be people who have more talent than you, but there's no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do – and I believe that.”

In life and sports we have to work toward perfection, but we can never obtain it. Even those with great talent and great work ethic never reach perfection. They go far, but never reach it.

We may work hard at our sport, but will always fall short when we compare ourselves to others or even to the standard others set for us or we set for ourselves. Still, in sports we need to keep trying to reach perfection in order to excel as athletes.

But sometimes we transfer that thinking to another area of our lives and start believing that we have to work to get to heaven. The problem is that God says we have to be perfect to obtain heaven, so we can never get there on our own.

That is why God did it for us. He makes us perfect when we accept His sacrifice for us on the cross. Since He is the only perfect one, only He can make us perfect.

When we believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we become perfect in God’s eyes. We don’t have to work, we just trust Him. And amazingly, even our ability to trust Him – even our faith – comes from Him. He did it all.

As we grow in our faith, God makes us more like Jesus and moves us toward perfection. Even though we will never reach perfection here on earth, we will arrive in heaven perfected. When we stand before God, He will see us as perfect because we trusted in Jesus’ perfect sacrifice to take away our sins.

Titus 3:5 says, “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”

Application: Write down some of the ways that you see yourself or that the world sees you. Does this lineup with how God sees you? What can you do to remind yourself each day that God sees you as perfect?