I was at this church in New York and the pastor was teaching a series on the beatitudes. Over a few weeks he covered the top of Matthew 5, sorta skimmed the middle and bottom, and then wanted to continue on to chapter 6 but paused for a moment on the last verse of chapter 5, verse 48: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The guy read it and then said sarcastically, “You know, after all this other stuff, all you have to do is be perfect, okay?” He snickered and the congregation giggled, and he bounced right into chapter 6.
And that bothered me.
Leaving that day, I’m thinking, “There’s no way Jesus would have said that if it were impossible to succeed.” The Holy Ghost made sure to put that part of Jesus’ teaching in front of us. Then I put it in my back pocket.
Couple weeks go by, and I’m reading 1 Corinthians 13; but not the front of it that people often quote. I was thinking about the differences between the parts of God that are in time and the ones that are outside of time. (more on that coming real soon) The end of chapter 13 says “what remains is faith, hope, and love,” and my question was, “They remain – after what happens? Something happens and everything else gets blown outta the water, and only three things remain. Two of them are characteristics outside of time and one is temporal.” (welcome to garrison brain, i have some lovely seats here in orchestra row E, or one of the boxes if you brought spectacles and don’t mind the odor of Statler & Waldorf)
The bones of that answer begins in 1 Corinthians 13:8, “As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.” There’s that word.
When we humans consider what “perfect” looks like, it’d be pretty typical to think of “doing all the steps of something exactly right, not missing any steps, not doing extra steps, not doing anything to screw it up.” It’s based on lists that measure some ideal that constitutes perfection. A perfect baguette has a particular crust texture and honeycomb interior and amount of butter in its flavor, and resistance when bitten into… A perfect high dive has posture and speed and rotations and a non-existent splash when the diver hits the water… And the congregation snickers at the idea of a perfect person next to the teaching in Matthew 5 because it’s this list of behaviors that seem impossible to be and do.
We know what else is a big fat measuring list, right? Yep: the law. The commandments of the LORD given to Moses.
If our definition of perfect relates to some list of characteristics or achievements, our thinking is of the flesh and under the law. And it is laugh-worthy to be asked to be perfect by that standard.
Heaven’s definition of perfect doesn’t match ours at all. We learn what heaven considers “perfect” to be in the two passages we’ve looked at so far.
In 1Cor 13:13: “So now faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” To run the whole thought in verses 8-13 together, “when someone becomes perfect, all that remains is faith, hope, and love – especially the love.”
Now back it up to those beatitudes. In Matthew 5:48 Jesus wasn’t “summarizing a chapter” like the book wants to give illusion to. Look at what he’s teaching just before he says that word:
Mat 5:43; “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
He’s talking about loving everybody equally, and our example is our Father. When the partial is gone and the perfect comes, love remains, right? And please take a moment to let this statement sink in:
“For he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”
Really - pause - visualize how you see “the unjust”, someone who got away with something and hurt you - - - - Really. Think of someone. Now imagine your Father sending his rain on them with love equal to what he has for you.
People and their unjust actions hurt their Father in heaven hourly, times billions. Look at his response. He doesn’t think like we do. His mind is nothing like our minds.
Sometimes when we run into people who are hurt like that, we can find them shouting, “Vengeance is miiiine, sayeth the LORD!!” as they froth and pace about, muttering about the whore of Babylon going up in smoke… OR we hear someone pretending to be calm and talk about sowing and reaping with unmasked condescension. Like, I have no judgment against that! We are so wired to think this way when our sense of justice has been breached. I understand where it’s coming from. Paul was literally out there murdering people he thought were not honoring the Lord; to uphold what he believed God’s justice to be. Instinctually, we simply don’t send rain on the just and the unjust, do we?
Paul’s also aware of it in his own life right there in 1Cor 13:11 where he’s describing the Before and After of perfection, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.” I feel you, Paul, I’ve been reasoning like a child a thousand-thousand times when someone has hurt me and gotten away with it; I’m no better than anyone.
When we’re lashing out against something we consider to be unjust, we’re experiencing a protection mechanism built into us to keep us safe – but its target is misguided. Like Paul says as he continues – on his way to perfection – “When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” When we grow up in the spirit, we learn to aim our attention at the spirit, rather than a person. Put that statement in your back pocket.
If we can get to a place where we love like our Father does – everyone across the board – the childish ways are given up, the partial is done away with, and we are perfect by heaven’s definition. Jesus said it: “If you are to become sons of your Father who is in heaven, you have to get to this place and love like he does, which my Father calls ‘perfect’.”
This is not for “when I finally die and get to heaven and I’m not disgusted by all these sinful worldly people down here – cuz God is gonna change me there and wipe away every tear from my eye!” (Escape My Life) This is for now, or Jesus wouldn’t have instructed it.
It’s foreign to most of us, I think, to get to the perspective of a spiritual man (not child), where we can look at ourselves and say, “Alright, I’m a mess and I screw things up left ‘n right, and my emotions can get the best of me and I haven’t cast out any demons or raised any dead people lately (lol), but I truly love everyone I’ve ever come across without any conditions so my Father says, ‘Good job, you’re perfect. I call you my son.’” Garrison Factory Settings is definitely NOT that.
So how do we even begin to do it?
Well, we just saw Paul describing a path from partial to perfect in 1 Corinthians 13. And the description of “partial” is a list of gifts of the Spirit. He had just been teaching us in chapter 12, “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed.” Turns out, one of the spiritual gifts can give us a huge advantage when it comes to loving everyone unconditionally as the Father does. One of the gifts that many glance over cuz it doesn’t sound too glamorous.
I want us all to grow in wisdom so I’ll repeat what I said in Article 4: Everyone’s so hot for healing in the streets cuz we get more excited over natural change that we see with our natural eyes. No criticism of that, it’s a wonderful and necessary function of the church. However, secrets exist in the invisible realm where you have to see and trust in the heavens alone.
Let’s review the gifts of the Spirit for context. 1 Corinthians 12 describes the gifts given by the Spirit and the spiritual stations we are appointed to in the body of Christ (not Jesus). (yes, i’m gonna keep doing that to you for a while until it gets drilled into our heads)
And just before launching into a description of love – which we later learn is equivalent to perfection – chapter 12 closes with Paul teaching, “But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.” The “higher gifts” in this case are likely what he iterated in verses 8-10.
“For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.”
(if you don’t know what one of them looks like in real life, shoot a comment at the bottom of this article and we can answer you together as a community with explanation and examples)
At the bottom of the chapter he also lists the stations that we hold in the church. Please allow me a tangent for a moment, apart from the “how do we love unconditionally like the Father” thread.
1Cor 12:27 begins, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues.” Isn’t the fourth one interesting? “Miracles” is a station in the church?? The language kinda flips from titles (like Peter the apostle, Agabus the prophet, Nicodemus the teacher) into names of gifts – but “miracles” hangs out there before the clarification, “gifts of”.
Think about our congregations today, like when you head over to a church. You probably have teachers (your pastor, among others) and people functioning in helping and administration. Some congregations are fortunate enough to have one or more prophets. Some are fortunate to have healers of physical and spiritual conditions, and some who address the angels through speaking in tongues. A small fraction have an apostle over them.
But I bet you’d be hard pressed to think of the congregation who can bring you over to their Miracle Guy, huh? “Oh yeah, if you need the weather changed or some water turned into wine, go see Lou.”
That’s a Christ we would want to be, though, right? The Holy Spirit is telling us to earnestly desire that; once again I think, “There’s no way the Holy Spirit would have said that if there was no way to succeed at it.” (we just luvvvv the sub-themes over here, don’t we)
Maybe let’s ask the Lord to make us workers of miracles. He’s gonna honor that for some of us; we’re gonna need miracle guys or he wouldn’t even tell us about that station, much less to earnestly desire it.
Seriously. Take thirty seconds and ask your Father to let you become “miracles”. Whatever that means to him. Jeremiah 33:3.
Real quick, I wanna set something in order. There are a handful of people I’ve run into who call themselves apostles or think of themselves that way. There are real apostles out there… but some are imposters arrogantly self-proclaiming it; some are sneaky and feign humility, but manipulate others into saying it about them. Do you know how to tell the difference between the true and the false?
The answer is in 2Cor 12:12, “The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.”
If you have some guy or girl claiming apostleship, don’t you fall for it unless there are signs and wonders and mighty works testifying to it – and patience is apparently important to the Holy Spirit in this evaluation.
Okay now you can be safe from the narcissists who are false apostles, as 2Cor 11:13 warns about. Moving on!
Let’s get back to, “How do we learn to love everyone without conditions, the way our Father does, so we can be perfect as he is perfect, and be sons of our Father who is in heaven?”
In 1Cor 12:10 the list of gifts is ascending through miracles (station Four), prophecy (station Two), to “the ability to distinguish between spirits”. We sometimes call this “discernment of spirits.” This one is huge, because through it we correctly see and understand the spirits that drive the behaviors of men. The principalities, the powers, the demons.
Now hop into your Father’s vision and look at all the souls in the world. He loves every little twinkling, sparkly pure white soul on the face of the earth – and the billions who came before us. He loves them equally, and rejoices over them, and weeps over them.
And many, many of those souls have made agreements with the powers that rule over the land they live on.
Picture it this way: We’ve discussed how the principalities divided up the earth before humans arrived. Imagine you’re in the International Space Station and look down at the globe in the spirit. See the three-dimensional atmospheres of demonic influence that sit like weather systems – bubbles or domes of dominion that rest on every region of the earth. Even the oceans. Weather systems are actually a great way to picture it. Those cold fronts and warm fronts and the way they collide mimic something that exists in the spirit, right? That’s why a deadly storm could suddenly sweep up to try to sink Jesus and the disciples, and Jesus could command it to cease. The spirit exists first and the creation is unwillingly subjected to it. So you’re looking down from the ISS at the bubbles of demonic spiritual governance covering the world, and those are the spiritual kingdoms of the earth that the natural kingdoms mirror.
If you have the Holy Spirit, you are marked and have the kingdom of heaven as the authority over you. You walk in your own bubble of sorts, surrounded by angels and a hedge of protection, as an ambassador where the laws of the principalities don’t apply to you. Imagine maybe something like a tube that shoots straight up, piercing through the domes of authority that the principalities have over the earth, and into heaven. You get to commune with your Father in heaven through the tube. None of that would exist without the resurrection of Jesus Christ that allowed us to be born again, into the kingdom of heaven, the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. Before Jesus did that, the only thing that pierced little holes in those domes were the sacrifices that the Lord taught men about, beginning with Cain & Abel and evolving with Moses. Little temporary holes – and the reason I said, “picture it something like a tube,” is because a pillar (or tube) of fire would come down from heaven to consume the sacrifices that the Lord accepted. Kind of paints a picture for us; he gave us a way to visualize what was happening in the invisible spirit. Fire came down, prayers went up…
But most people on earth don’t have the mark of the Holy Spirit and the corresponding bubble of protective atmosphere. They live on land owned by our enemies, under the bubbles of those authorities, and are at the whim of the agendas of our enemies like marionettes. Those powers literally control their minds – in the same way that the Christ influences ours. (“But we have the mind of Christ.” – 1Cor 2:16)
Example: There’s a guy out there driving tractor trailers full of stolen children for sex trafficking. Ask him if that’s the job he really wants. “Nah, man, I wanna be making sandwiches at a little cart on a beach somewhere.” But he takes the job because there’s an agenda; a principality that wants sex trafficking to destroy the trust of children and prevent them from ever understanding love. And to collect their blood through murder and suicide. A horrifying demonic agenda that needs men’s hands to carry it out. And because Satan and his angels have authority over all the kingdoms of the world – “For it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will.” – he does exactly that. (Luke 4:6)
Do we think that “Satan giving authority to whom he will” means he gives people the talent to write sick guitar solos and make lots of money in exchange for their soul when they die? Noooo, my brothers. When Satan “gives authority” to someone, he’s doing the counterfeit version of what the Lord does when he gives authority to us.
What’s that picture, then?
The Lord gives us authority to manifest his kingdom to the earth. “Your kingdom come… on earth as it is in heaven.” The earth and its people change as they’re brought into submission to the will of heaven. God doesn’t give us authority to build our own kingdoms – he’s invested in his own glory and no man’s glory.
So Satan gives men authority in order to manifest his kingdom on the earth. In our example, he wants sex trafficking and blood sacrifices (most of all!), and he gives men the opportunity and authority to implement it. He gives them the reasons to get into it and the grace to succeed at it (more authority). The earth and its people change as they’re brought into submission to his will. He’s interested in his own agenda and no man’s agenda.
Luke 23:34 teaches this principle clearly. Jesus, when beaten and scourged, nailed and raised on a cross, looked at the crowd mocking him and said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
But he could see the principalities gathered around in smug celebration. Collected over and behind the bodies of the men in the crowd – they were about to finally bring down the guy who had been demolishing their strongholds with a word.
Jesus had been saying it since way back in John 7 and 8, “Why do you seek to kill me?” and “That’s why you seek to kill me.” The crowd is confused and answers, "You have a demon! Who is seeking to kill you?” He wasn’t talking to people and their brains. He was talking to the principalities that were at work; their agenda that he knew well – these men were going to manifest the will of the principalities. At the cross he could honestly declare, “Father, forgive them.” Especially on the large arcs, men really don’t know what they’re doing. The unjust things they do from day to day are building a spiritual kingdom – and it hurts all people along the way including themselves.
This is how we learn to love the attackers, the unjust, the ones who hurt us and break our hearts and steal our inheritance and steal our lives. If we can discern the spirits that are at work, over which these poor and beautiful people have no chance of resisting, we have a chance at loving the souls underneath the influence. Like, the Borg are a prophetic concept shown to us in film. “Resistance is futile,” right? (not laughing, the concept of films, songs, and art being born of prophecy is also real – we’ll get into it sometime)
I’m not saying this is easy by any means. But it is possible. And it proves Jesus’ words true in Matthew 5. Discern the spirits.
I can testify that this idea works and changes things – with a small imperfect example.
The day that I put these puzzle pieces together, I had been through 16 months of a 19-month divorce that was so nasty the five lawyers working at my lawyer’s firm said they’d never seen anything like it in their collective careers. I had heard my friends say, “Yeah man we’re praying for her, that her heart will soften and these attacks will finally stop,” but I had no capacity to pray like that. Like, zero.
But that day, this picture filled my mind; that every soul is a beautiful twinkling white star in the Father’s eyes, and is covered with tormenting spirits, and the people lash out in agony. I could see the ex’s soul like that, and see the spirits that I knew were tormenting her and also wanted to cripple my life. For the first time I thought, “It’s really not her doing this. I feel sad for her.” Not love, but a little glimpse of forgiveness. I remember saying something out loud to that effect but I don’t remember what.
The next day I got a call from my lawyer, saying she had dropped off some personal items to their office and I should come pick them up. Lemme tell you: this was extremely rare and significant, without dragging you into the details of why. It was the only sign of compassion that was ever shown to me during that experience.
I didn’t even do a good job at what I’m trying to teach us, and it was enough to crack a spiritual atmosphere for a moment.
Everyone around us is a beautiful tiny delicate and glowing white star. But they are covered with layers of darkness. Through the agreements they have made with spirits; through the agreements their parents have sometimes made with spirits; through no action of their own but by the property they choose to sleep on; they are subject to demons, principalities and powers. We all have marks on us according to the things we’ve done, but they don’t have the trump card mark that we do: the Holy Spirit’s seal to overrule demonic claims on their lives. The little stars are tormented, without peace, without an ability to breathe in the spirit; anxious and unconsoled, and doing whatever they can to gasp for a breath and a moment of relief. We’re looking at a purely self-centered and constant effort of spiritual people to escape pain.
This is why Discernment of Spirits is the tank-buster of spiritual gifts. If you can identify which powers are responsible for the way a person is behaving, you know what to speak to.
Has insecurity got this guy stepping on you at work so you won’t be a threat to take his position? Your dialogue cannot be, “He’s insecure.” The accurate dialogue is, “A spirit is making him feel insecure.” Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal which kind of demon is responsible – press in for a moment until it becomes clear – and then tell that spirit by name that it can no longer live there in the name of Jesus. Watch the person’s mind and behavior start to change.
Our Lord Jesus set a standard, “you therefore must be perfect”, and taught us and demonstrated to us many examples that prove we are not dealing with a natural battle. Most of us believe this to a degree, and I think that many of us do understand which spirits are behind some behaviors – and even global societal trends and governmental actions. I’m not sure how many of us really believe in our core set of expectations that we are supposed to use our tongues to curse the demonic agendas and watch the behavior – the stuff we can see, the people – change as a result.
If you’ve been reading with me since the first article, are you starting to see how all this stuff seamlessly fits together?
On this matter, my prayer for us is to grow from spiritual newborn to child to man, discerning the spirits driving the men, so we can liberate ourselves from attributing injustice to the people who abuse us. Our end is the heavenly perfection of truly forgiving and loving them. No matter where you are in your progress toward perfection please join me in that prayer for the sake of the church and the Kingdom of Heaven. I don’t think any of us would say, “Yeah, no, I’m good.” He loves that we want to become more like him, and he’ll honor that prayer.
As usual, the Scriptures say in a few sentences what takes me pages and pages to say, and I’ll leave you with that so you can again trust that I’m not leading us astray.
1 Corinthians 2 and 3 teaches, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. ‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ. But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.”
Make no mistake: there are people in our church who are natural people and do not accept the things of the Spirit because they are spiritually discerned. Simplified, the passage explains, “The thoughts of the Lord are not our thoughts, but we have access to the mind that can start to bring our thoughts out of the natural and accept the spiritual. Then we can discern and judge spirits, not the people ruled by them.”
Thank you, as always, for investing your time with me.
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