THE EXELLENCIES AND PERFECTION  OF CHRIST

There is a continuum against which we can measure the willingness of a person to commit sins or violate their principles.

At one end of the spectrum is the occasion where a  person, out of sheer pleasure of doing what is wrong, does evil things and does so frequently.  An example of such a case is where a sociopathic killer, for no reason other than his own amusement, tortures and kills other human beings.  Such people do exist but mercifully, not is large numbers. 

Not far up the scale on our scale would be those who pillage and plunder the live of other people to enrich themselves. They are willing to gain material benefits at the expense of other people's lives and livelihoods. There are a considerable number of  people who would be willing to to operate at this level.

Further up the spectrum are those who do heinous things but less out of pleasure and more out of perceived necessity. An example of such a scenario would be one where a person commits vicious crimes such as armed robbery to gain the means of paying off a gambling debt. Further up the scale in the representing a lessor crime would be those who steal food because they are starving. These are the types of scenarios that are seen to be inner city crime and crimes that propagate in areas that are held in poverty.

As we move further up the scale, we run into people who commit small infractions to achieve minor gain. Those who are filling out an insurance claim and overstate the damage to gain some advantage are this category.  A fairly large number of people fit into this group who commit small crimes of opportunity that indirectly inflict mild injuries on others. In this large category are found the people who would do no crimes unless an opportunity availed itself and then only if the risk of suffering a consequence were small.

Further up are the people who would not commit a crime even if they were hungry and needed food.  These people are morally stable people in that they would not be compelled by their own impulses or by their own needs to commit crimes of any kind.

Moving along, we run into a rarer type of person. These are people who would not commit a crime even if they had an opportunity to become extremely rich by the commission of the crime. Close to this set are people who would not commit a crime even if there was no clear victim of the crime but the crime were committed, would gain the person a significant benefit. An example of such a scenario would be the case were  the person found an ancient gold coin in an ancient cave. Such a person would not claim the coin as their own but rather, would submit the ancient relic to antiquities officials for study and exhibition. The risk of consequence for claiming such an artifact for ones self is low but the guiding principles of the person causes them to surrender their find for the benefit of all other people. 

Into the very rare people types are those who would not commit a crime even if a gun were held to their head and their life were threated. They would rather die than commit a crime or violate their conscience. Imagine a person who was being blackmailed with the threat of death if they did not give the secret code to the bank vaults they were responsible for.

 A person below on the spectrum would reason that their lives were more valuable than the jewelry belonging  to privileged people in the vaults and would divulge the code however, the people in this category would see their duty to safeguard the vault as their sacred duty and would rather die that forfeit the role they are entrusted with.

Now we are into the category of people to which almost no human beings belong to. This group contains those people who would refuse to reveal the secret code to a bank vault to safeguard the jewels of the privileged owners even though the owners of those precious jewels has vociferously fought to get him fired and have his life ruined because they thought he was an inferior person. If we were to run into a trustee who was willing to uphold his sacred honor to protect the baubles of the very same people who are trying to destroy him, we would be in very rare company. 

Now  to the end of the scale to  which only one person has ever attained on this earth.  

A person, absolutely innocent of all wrong doing, willingly gave himself over to Roman authorities who sought to arrest Him. He surrendered himself fully understanding that he would be brutally tortured and killed in a slow agonizing horror. He was punched, spat on and flogged. He was then subjected to execution by crucifixion where His hand and feet were was nailed with spiked to an upright post. While there, He was naked and exposed to the elements for hours.  His vital functions started failing as he hung by the nails that pinned his hands and his feet to the wooden planks.

Bracingly,  this person, all the way to the point where He gave up His spirit and died, had the power to halt all the violence against Him. With a single word, He could have opted out of the unimaginable pain and horror. But the person, Jesus of Nazareth, was of a moral perfection to such a degree that He would not commit a violation of the command that God had given Him. He would not, even for a single moment of reprieve, contravene the word of God His Father. He would rather have undertaken to be tortured and murdered than commit a single small infraction against His God and Father.

The awe-inspiring thing about this sacrifice of His own life is that Jesus did it for the rest of us. He suffered torment and the horror of death on a cross so that the rest of us, who are way down the spectrum, could be saved from damnation that our moral failures incur. He himself had no such damnation accrued to Him because he was perfect. We, however, have earned damnation  from our youth to the present time and in fact would continue earning damnation as long as we had the strength to do so.

We are so morally deficient that we regularly contravene moral imperatives without a second thought. We commit sins of lust, greed, violence, theft, dishonor, deception,  envy and all the varied forms of perversion and evil. This is what we all do and we instinctively know that our conduct is demeaning and objectionable and that is why we often try to do these things in secret or anonymously.  We know we are in a dire state and so we often try to curb our impulses but we find we are powerless to change the pattern of our lives. We end up resigning ourselves to our natures and our fate and either justify our actions or give up looking for an exit strategy.

What we should know is that we do have an exit. 

The singular person of Jesus, the Son of God, exhibited a perfect life on earth and proved for once and for all that He is the perfect and excellent Son of God having lived his entire life at the far end of the spectrum where no other person has ever existed.

His absolutely perfect moral life demonstrated the absolute perfect nature of God and earned Him the right to be Lord and King over all the realms of heaven and earth. 

By His own authority, He provided for us an exit from our sinful lives by conferring salvation to us to save us from our moral deficit.

By believing in the fact that Jesus died for us and that he died to pay our ransom to free us from the kingdom of darkness, we are translated into His kingdom of light where moral perfection is given to us as a gift which gives us the off-ramp from our route to darkness and onto the path of righteousness. 

The Lord and King Jesus gives us his perfect righteousness in place of our fallen unrighteousness and from then on, an adventure into the astonishing life with God begins.

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.