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potential for becoming more perfectly what we were created to become,
human, by a willingness to conform our lives to the infinite perfection of the
Lord’s Divine Human as revealed in His Word. We have to choose and strive to
come into the true order of human life, which we could not do if we were born
into the order of our lives as the animals are.
This world is not perfect and never will be. But the very fact that we can
perceive its imperfection is an indication that there is a more perfect world,
that in the deeper levels of our being we are aware of it, and that it is where our
destiny lies. The fact that we can perceive the imperfection of our own human
nature, and that it can be improved through the process of regeneration, is
testimony both to the reality and influence of the Lord’s Divine Human and
to the potential we have for receiving the image of it more fully in ourselves.
We can prove this to ourselves by the only really convincing proof there is: our
own regeneration.
The imperfection and incompleteness of nature, and of our lives in it, and
of all our natural works, invites us to look beyond the natural to the spiritual.
The human mind, with its rational faculty partaking of both worlds, has this
capability; through its use the imperfection of nature becomes, in us, its
perfection.
The Humble Beauty of the Lord
The supreme example of the beauty of imperfection is the natural humanity
the Lord took upon Himself and glorified during His life on earth. It bore
the marks of the accumulated disorders into which we mortals had sunk our
human nature through the ages. Though destined to become the King of kings,
the Lord was “meek and lowly at heart.” He was born, not in a palace, but in a
stable, and laid in a rough feeding box for horses and cattle. He appeared to be
a man like others, having “no form nor comeliness; and when we see Him, no
beauty that we should desire Him.” (Isaiah 53:2)
And yet, in the Lord there was a “suggestion of something beyond.” “No
one comes to the Father except through Me. . . . He who has seen Me has seen
the Father.” (John 14:6, 9) The Divinity within Him occasionally shone through
the natural humanity with which He covered it in the world – most clearly
when three of His disciples saw Him transfigured on the mountain, and His
face shone as the sun. (Matthew 17:1-2)
In the Lord, the Word is “made flesh.” (John 1:14) Infinite Divine Goodness
and Truth are revealed in a form accommodated to human understanding that
we can relate to. “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who
is in the bosom of the Father, He has brought Him forth to view.” (John 1:18)
The “Father” is Divine Love, the “Son” is Divine Wisdom, that is, the spiritual
light by which the spiritual heat of Divine Love is revealed and communicated.
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