“To us, a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulder. . . .
Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end.”
Isaiah 9:6b, 7a
In this world, to attain to perfection in any endeavor, men must labor, and fine-tune, and experiment, and fail, and try again, and improve, and labor some more. Only then, and not very often, is perfection in any endeavor achieved. Perfection is always the goal, and the end result of a successful effort. And once attained to, there can be no improvement, for perfection is the supreme state of being for anything. Nothing in this world can be better than perfection. It cannot be improved upon; otherwise, it was not really perfect to start with.
Jesus showed this congregation some years ago that this world has everything backwards. In this world, perfection is the end of the process, but in the kingdom of God, perfection is merely the beginning of the process, for after that, life in Christ just gets perfecter and perfecter and perfecter.
This is what the Spirit meant when it said through Isaiah that of the increase of Jesus’ government, there would be no end. Jesus’ government is in righteousness, peace, and joy in the holy Ghost, and so, for those who love and follow Jesus, this means that throughout eternity, by the infinite power and wisdom and goodness of God, they will increase in righteousness, and in peace, and in joy. Jesus’ government in us begins the day we are born again, the day we are made perfect before God. From that point on, because we are in him and he in us, we go with him beyond our beginning perfection and are made perfecter and perfecter, growing in grace and the knowledge of God.
The best that a person can be in this world is perfect. But in our Father’s world, for those who love and obey Jesus, perfect is the worst we will ever be.
