Lou: You mentioned baptism in the chapter. Would you comment on how baptism was changed from immersion to sprinkling, pouring, and a variety of other forms?

Graham: In response, let me cite a footnote in a Roman Catholic Bible translation. It says, “Admittedly, the early Christian method was immersion. However, on the authority of the Church and for convenience, it was changed.“ The sad thing is, though, that the change to sprinkling and to pouring has come with a change in the meaning. And that’s why churches can perform sprinkling and pouring on little infants who have no understanding that it represents the burial of the old nature and the rising to a newness of life. With the change of the method has come a change of the meaning, which is a loss to us. It ought to be a memorable occasion when I say, “I bury the old man, the man I used to be; I want to start all over again.“ The rich symbolism of baptism ties in with the subject of this chapter.

Lou: You’ve talked of Jesus as our example in this series of conversations about God. We’ve had several questions come in as to whether Jesus had an advantage over us. How could He be regarded as our example if He did have such an advantage? Let me refer to just one of these questions. “When Christ came to the world and took on human flesh, did He take on sinful flesh in essence or vicariously?” The kind of humanity Jesus had, I think, ties in here in an important way. Would you comment briefly on that question?

Graham: Well, I’ll cite Paul for that. He said, “Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh to deal with sin” (based on Rom 8:3). I think the question is, can we really look to Jesus as an example of the perfection that we should have?
Was He exactly like us? There are some interesting differences. For one, He was born of the Holy Spirit. Some of us might be sixty-five before we’re born of the Holy Spirit. In that case, when we’re reborn, we’ve got sixty-five years of bad habits to fight with for the rest of our lives. Jesus, on the other hand, never acquired a bad habit. The only way you can develop a bad habit is to do something bad, which He never did. And so you say, “Well, then, He’s not an example for me.“ How low do we want Him to go? Do we want Him to wallow in the gutter as a wino, so that He can be an example as to how you can get out of the gutter? I don’t want Jesus to be more and more like me. I want to be more and more like Him. He came in human form, in the likeness of sinful flesh, using no power that is not available to us. And he showed that even little boys can be good. And that you can grow up to be good like that.
“But,” you say, “I have bad habits.”
“Look,“ He says, “I’m your Physician; I understand. I’ll be very patient. And I guarantee I’ll help you get over all of those things. Just trust Me.”
So how much more would we want Him to do before we accept Him as an example? He’s certainly enough of an example to show how we could have lived. The problem is that we didn’t. So what will He do with us now? He’s the Physician, and He knows exactly what it’s like to go through what we are going through. So you can count on Him to be patient. Are you still worried that the Father won’t be as patient as Jesus? Remember that Jesus came to show just how patient the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are. I think sometimes we run into problems when we raise the wrong questions about what He came to tell us, and what He came to show us.

Lou: One final question: “Is the healing we are talking about dependent upon perfect obedience to Christ’s teaching? Or does God’s mercy at times supersede even the doubts of those who question His divine authority?”

Graham: Oh, that’s true. I suppose we could refer to times when Jesus went places and healed everybody (Matt 4:24; 8:16; Mark 6:55-56; Luke 4:40). He went through entire villages, and when He left, nobody was sick. On one occasion He healed ten lepers, and only one came back to thank Him (Luke 17:12-19). I think on that occasion Jesus was saying that the Father is a healer, not a destroyer. Jesus often healed people whether they trusted Him or not (John 5:1-15).

Lou: That’s very comforting. What is our topic for Chapter Fifteen? How will the healing we talked about here change the way we relate to God?

Graham: That’s a very good question, because the topic of the next chapter is “Talking to God as a Friend.” What does God really want from us? Will He be satisfied with rote obedience to rules? Or does He desire genuine relationship with the free and diverse creatures He has made? How do we talk to a God we cannot see, hear or touch, but who nevertheless much prefers friends to servants? In the next chapter we will explore how our picture of God impacts the way we relate to Him, especially in the matter of prayer.

Lou: You referred to Job. If I remember correctly, God called Job a perfect person. And yet when you come to the end of the book of Job, it says he repented in dust and ashes. What did he have to repent of? What does repentance mean when God has said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? A good and perfect man”? Job 1:8.

Graham: That’s right. In the hearing of the on-looking universe God said, “Here is a perfect man.” And then the perfect man says, “I repent.” I think we are more inclined to point out Job’s repentance than God’s word that he is perfect. Under the pressure of bad advice from his friends, Job finally said, “God, I’m sorry I have talked about things beyond my understanding” (Job 42:1-3). And God immediately intervened and said, “Don’t give up, Job. You have done splendidly! You have said of Me what is right. Don’t let these three theologians discourage you. In fact, pray for them. They need a lot of help to know Me the way you do“ (Job 42:7-8).
We really need to take the book of Job as a whole. God said Job was perfect.
Job in his humility said, “God, I have said a lot, and I’ve said it with a great deal of feeling. If I seem the least bit irreverent, I repent.”
Then God could have said, “A man who is covered with boils and has lost his whole family; I can understand why you cry the way you have. You did not insult Me by this. You honored Me with your confidence.”
We will explore this in more depth in the next chapter, “Talking To God As A Friend.“ Job is a marvelous example of how freely we can talk to God, and still be reverent.

Lou: Let’s come back to this matter of perfection as “healing the damage done.” Does that include restoration both physically and mentally? It reminds me of a question someone sent in: “Will you please tell me why the people of the Old Testament lived longer than the people of our day? What gave them a longer life span? Does food have anything to do with our life span today?” I think that ties in with the topic of healing all the damage that has been done by sin.

Graham: It does. I love to read about Methuselah and how long he and his fellow patriarchs lived. Up until the Flood, they all lived a long time unless they were murdered, or translated, as Enoch was (based on Genesis 4 and 5—see especially Gen 4:23 and 5:23-24). I remember the first time I went through the sixty-six. And I wrote in my margin the declining ages of the patriarchs after the flood. It’s precipitous! Their ages drop from almost a thousand down to a little over a hundred. We have lost a great deal physically. We’re pygmies compared with Adam and Eve. Fortunately, we’ve all sort of withered up together so we look relatively respectable to each other, but if Adam and Eve were to walk into the room, we’d be embarrassed, wouldn’t we?
We need both physical healing and mental healing. But in this life, although we should do the best we can with the little that we have, we’re all getting older. Not until the earth made new will all that be restored. So some people say, “Well, if I can’t be physically and mentally perfect in this life, I guess I can’t be perfect in any way.“ No, spiritual perfection, perfection of character, is held out to us. God could say of us, as He did of Job, “I could trust you even through the Time of Trouble. I know you wouldn’t let Me down.“ Perfection is not a brittle thing. It is about being mature. It actually means just plain growing up. It is unnatural not to grow up.

Lou: Does a person have to be perfect in any sense of the term in order to be saved?

Graham: One can certainly be perfect in one’s willingness to listen. That willingness begins when one is converted, and to be converted is simply to reverse one’s course. The unconverted person is stubbornly unwilling to listen. The converted person is reverently and humbly willing to listen. One couldn’t do that if one didn’t have a new heart and a right spirit (Ezek 36:26). It is the marvelous work of the Holy Spirit that brings us to the conviction of truth (John 16:8-11), that leads me to want to reverse my direction. And since it is the work of God, it is perfectly done; but I would only be a perfect baby at that stage. God doesn’t need us to focus on our performance, but if I’m cheating in my willingness to listen, there’s something seriously wrong.

Lou: As you were talking about perfection, I heard an emphasis on the generous gift of God, His eagerness to heal us and to make us well. It makes one wonder, who would want to be imperfect or continue to be ill when all this healing is available? Why do you think there has been so much debate on this subject?

Graham: Whole books have even been written about it. I suppose there are many reasons. One is that people who claim to be perfect can be quite insufferable. It has given perfection a bad name. Another reason people might avoid the subject is that perfection involves our behavior. And talking about behavior smacks of works, our having to do something. Many people are so concerned to make salvation by faith that they can’t fit this in.

Lou: How do you avoid the tendency to think in terms of your performance, to concentrate on how well or how poorly you’re doing?

Graham: I think your question goes back to things we’ve discussed before. What is it that went wrong in the universe, and what would it mean for God to set things right? If our problem is a legal one, our primary concern is to somehow set things right legally. In that case we might be trying to please the Father and persuade Him not to punish or destroy us. If my efforts toward perfection are in order to turn away His wrath and improve my legal standing, then that’s salvation by works.
In the case of the healing model, most of us have had a moment when we’ve not been well and have had to go to the physician. And we’ve heard the physician say, “Will you do the following?“ And the most logical thing in the world is to go home and do it. I don’t feel I’m being a legalist to do that. It seems to me that if I really trust my doctor, I will be willing to do what the doctor says. The only difference is my work is in harmony with the Divine Physician. I’m not trying to please the doctor, nor am I trying to improve my legal standing with the doctor. I’m trying to do what is for my own best good. The gracious Physician is saying, “Do the following. It will produce good results.” And I go home and work hard to follow the regimen that He recommends.

Lou: So it really is a question of motivation that makes all the difference.

Graham: Very much, your motivation and the model of salvation you are working with. The legal model has obscured the model of salvation as healing, and perfection as complete healing.

Lou: The concern with perfection sometimes leads people to evaluate one another on how well they are doing.

Graham: That’s another thing that has given perfection a bad name. It is the idea that “I have my own blueprint for perfection, and I’m getting closer and closer to it. But I can tell you’re pretty far behind in comparison!” Facing such an attitude can be quite discouraging. But who is it that does not want us to understand the good news that God would like to completely heal the damage done? The devil has many versions of perfection that are a corruption of the truth and are not good news. He uses one thing to confuse one person, and another thing to confuse another.

Lou: A lot of sincere discussion has centered around the question: Does perfection mean that one never makes a mistake? We might think, “If I could just be perfect, I wouldn’t make a mistake.“

Graham: This question recalls the time we discussed the meaning of sin. Sin is not just making a mistake. Sin is rebelliousness. Sin is a stubborn unwillingness to listen. Sin is a breach of trust. Imagine in the hereafter I plant a pomegranate tree a little too close to the house, and it gets bigger and bigger in the fertile soil there.
And the Lord comes by and says, “Say, you planted it too close to the house, didn’t you?”
And I’d say, “Yes, I did. Why didn’t You stop me?”
“It’s not a problem,” He’d say, “that’s how you learn. Pomegranate trees grow rather large up here. Plant it a little farther away.”
So I would proceed to move it.

Lou: You are making a distinction between a sin and a mistake.

Graham: Yes. There’s no sin in making a mistake like that. Not unless there is a spirit of rebelliousness within you, a stubborn unwillingness to accept advice, which would mean I’m not safe to have around in eternity.

Lou: But can a perfect person sin? Not just make mistakes, but actually sin?

Graham: What you are really asking is, can a perfect person ever rebel? Look at Lucifer, the most perfect of all God’s creation. He was still free and he exercised his freedom in rebellion. Think also of Adam and Eve. They were perfect, and they rebelled. So though God heals all the damage done by sin, He does not take away our freedom. We will still be free in the hereafter.

What does it mean to be perfect? How perfect must one be in this life? Suppose you saw someone who never swore, never gambled, never smoked, never drank, never stole anything, never lost his temper, never broke the Sabbath. Would you be looking at a perfect person? I hope not, because you could be in an anatomy building, looking at a well-preserved corpse. Corpses never do anything bad, but they never do anything good either. They just never do anything, which is a rather popular view of perfection.

In the early days of the church, the number one exponent of that view was a man by the name of Simeon, a member of the church in Antioch. He so much wanted to overcome sin, that as soon as he could afford it, he got material and built himself a small pillar. He climbed up on top, but found it was not tall enough. So he got more material and built on it until it was sixty feet high. He perched on top of that pillar for 30 years until he died. Think of all the bad things you cannot do on top of a sixty-foot pillar. So they called him Saint Simeon Stylites.

Other members of the church envied his perfect life, and as soon as they could afford it, they built pillars all around the area. Pretty soon most of the members were perched on pillars. So Simeon founded a whole order in the church, known as the Order of the Stylites; the order of the pole-sitters. Is that how the saints are going to be found when the Lord comes, all perched on pillars? They are of no use to anybody, but they never do anything wrong either.
Is that the best definition of perfection? The absence of doing wrong?

There is a much more positive approach to perfection. That is to understand that the very word in the Bible (Greek: teleiotês) means “completed” or full-grown. When referring to animals or human beings, it means mature, or grown up physically. It is generally used in the New Testament for spiritual maturity (1 Cor 2:6; 14:20; Eph 4:13; Heb 5:14). So to be perfect means to be mature. And one version, at least, has it that way in Matthew 5:48: “You must become spiritually mature, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Norlie). You see, when someone is converted, when they are won back to trust, and the procedure of healing begins, the change is so great that it is like being born all over again. Jesus said this to Nicodemus: “I am telling you the truth: no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again.” John 3:3, GNB. Do you remember Nicodemus’ response? He thought that was a little too much to believe (John 3:4). That is how great the change is.

That’s why Paul interpreted baptism the way he did. Baptism by immersion symbolizes the great change in a person’s life. “By our baptism we were buried with Him in death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glorious power, we also should live an entirely new life.” Rom 6:4, Weymouth. Baptism by immersion represents this new life best. It is like washing the dishes. It doesn’t do much good just to sprinkle them a little—though our children might try that short cut sometimes. The word “baptize” means to dip, to immerse.

This is recognized by many scholars, including Roman Catholic scholars. In a footnote to Romans 6:3-4 in the Roman Catholic New Testament by Kleist and Lilly, you can read the following: “St. Paul alludes to the manner in which baptism was ordinarily conferred in the primitive Church, by immersion. The descent into the water is suggestive of the descent of the body into the grave, and the ascent is suggestive of the resurrection to a new life.” Could it be said much better than that? That is why many Christians still symbolize the beginning of healing through baptism by immersion. At the time of baptism, of course, Christians are just beginners. Paul and Peter call them babes in the truth (Rom 2:20; 1 Cor 3:1; 1 Pet 2:2; Heb 5:13), and babies need a great deal of protection. Yet even at that beginning stage, God treats them as if they had never sinned, as if they had always been His loyal children.

Does that mean that since He is so generous, it is all right to remain “babes in the truth?” Or does God want us to grow up into perfection and maturity? We know from the Biblical record that it disturbed Paul a great deal when, even after a few months, he found that the Christian converts were still babes in the truth (1 Cor 3:1-3). When a child’s physical development is delayed, we become very worried, don’t we? When a child’s mental development is delayed, we are even more concerned. But when a Christian adult is spiritually immature, we say, “Isn’t that precious? Isn’t that sweet? He still has the faith of a little child.” But the most serious of all conditions is to be spiritually immaturity. Notice what the Bible says about this:

. . . though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truth of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature [Greek: teleiôs], who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity. . . . Heb 5:12 – 6:1, NIV.

The author of Hebrews essentially urges new believers to “grow up.” Compare that passage with Paul’s advice to the believers in Ephesus:

His gifts were made that Christians might . . . arrive at real maturity [Greek: teleion]. . . . We are not meant to remain as children, at the mercy of every chance wind of teaching, and of the jockeying of men who are expert in the crafty presentation of lies. But we are meant to speak the truth in love, and to grow up in every way into Christ. . . . Eph 4:12, 14-15, Phillips.

Paul says in Ephesians that the whole purpose of the church is to help people grow up to perfection and maturity. The Bible explains why. Daniel 12 (verse 10), the Book of Revelation (chapters 13 and 16), and the warnings of Christ (Matt 24:24-27) and of Paul (2 Thess 2:8-12), tell us that we face a time of confusion and deception such as the world has never seen. If we are still babes in the truth then, we will never survive. And so God in mercy waits for us to grow up, and to be as settled into the truth as Job was. This topic is so important for the church that we will invest a whole chapter (Eighteen) on it, under the title “God Waits For His Children To Grow Up.“ This is even the reason for His merciful delay of the Second Coming. You see, it is not an arbitrary requirement that we grow up. It is absolutely necessary if we’re going to survive in the end times. We must not be satisfied to be babes in the truth; but we must grow up and be able to distinguish between right and wrong.

There is another way of looking at perfection: we can look at it as perfect obedience to God’s law. The perfect person is the one who is perfectly obedient. That might sound arbitrary until one takes another look at God’s law. You see, God’s law is no threat to our freedom. All God asks of us is love. But what does it mean to love? “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful” (1 Cor 13:4-5, RSV). Isn’t that the description of a grown-up person? To really obey God’s commandments is to simply grow up; to be a safe and pleasant person to live next door to.