Perfect—As He Is, November 5

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. Matthew 5:48.

As becomes beings to whom the Lord God has given the faculties of reason and of action, we should use our powers in accordance with the divine purpose. God desires to be honored and glorified in the work of His hands. Every human being will have to give an account to God for the way in which he has used his entrusted talents. We are under obligation to use our powers aright that we may be qualified for eternal life in the kingdom of God. God demands perfection from every human being. We are to be perfect in this life of humanity, even as God is perfect in His divine character.

God made every provision in man’s behalf, creating him only a little lower than the angels. Adam disobeyed, and entailed sin upon his posterity. But God gave His only begotten Son for the redemption of the race. Christ took on Him the nature of man, and passed over the ground where Adam fell, to be tested and tried as all human beings are tested and tried. Satan came to Him as an angel of light to induce him, if possible, to commit sin, and thus place the human race entirely under the dominion of evil. But Christ was victorious. Satan was defeated, and the race was placed on vantage ground with God.

When the Father gave His Son to live and die for man, He placed all the treasures of heaven at our disposal. There is no excuse for sin. God has given us all the advantages He possibly could give, that we may have strength to withstand the temptations of the enemy. Had man, when tested and tried, followed the example of Christ, he would have given his children and his children’s children an example of steadfast purity and righteousness, and the race would not have deteriorated, but improved....

Many act in this our day as though this were a matter of small importance. But had the human family, even after the fall of Adam, worked according to the example of Christ, every father and every mother would leave their children an example of how to conduct themselves so as to fulfill their obligations to God, then the world would have been as Eden. The earth, now a desert of sin, would have rejoiced and blossomed as the rose.—Letter 143, November 5, 1900, to Elder McClure, a minister in California.