p. 231 | Perfection

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 25, 1882

Perfection.

"I have seen an end of all perfection; but thy commandment is exceeding broad."—Ps. 119:96.

ON this passage the Rev. Albert Barnes remarks: "To all claims to perfection made by man, he had seen an end or limit. He had examined all which claimed to be perfect; he had found it defective. All claim to perfection on the part of man must be abandoned forever. . . . All claims to perfection had arisen from the fact that the law was not properly understood, that its true nature was not seen. . . . Men set up an imperfect standard; and when they became conformed to that standard, as they might do, they imagined themselves to be perfect; but when their conduct was compared with a higher and more just standard—the law of God—it could not but be seen that they were imperfect men. That law had claims which they had not met, and never would meet in this life. It is very easy to flatter ourselves that we are perfect, if we make our own standard of character; it is not possible for man to set up a claim to perfection, if he measures himself by the standard of God's word; and all the claims to perfection are made simply because they do not properly understand what the law of God requires."