[To follow The Ewellogy, please click on Leave a Comment above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.]

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5.48, ESV)

I wrote yesterday about expecting spiritual training to be effective. Not settling for mediocrity. But ironically Matthew 5.48 is often taken as an excuse to do exactly that–settle for mediocrity because, after all, “We’ll never be perfect.” My friend and mentor G. Loran Lewis, now with the Lord, helped me with that concept a number of years ago.

Loran, pastor and professor of New Testament Greek, led a full-day workshop in which he explained that “perfect” in this context simply means mature. To act appropriately. We use the term the same way when we say that a golfer who shoots at the pin from 100 yards out and leaves the ball two feet away from the hole has executed “a perfect shot.”

Loran took a lot of push-back at that workshop from people who didn’t want to do the work of growing to maturity. Who didn’t want to “train for godliness” (1 Timothy 4.7).

As I wrote recently, let’s not settle for mediocrity either in ourselves or those we lead when we can train for maturity.

I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back. So let’s keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything God has for us. If any of you have something else in mind, something less than total commitment, God will clear your blurred vision—you’ll see it yet! Now that we’re on the right track, let’s stay on it. Stick with me, friends. Keep track of those you see running this same course, headed for this same goal. (Philippians 3.14 – 17, MSG)