Can Christians ever achieve perfect obedience?

Last updated on: May 5, 2023 at 2:33 pm by Lynn Michael Martin

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Can Christians ever achieve perfect obedience? 2023-05-05T14:33:55-04:00 Lynn Michael Martin

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As Christians, we are called to live a life of faithfulness and obedience to God. However, does true faithfulness and obedience mean the same as perfect faithfulness and obedience?

I recently interacted with a Christian who was confused when he heard that even Christians who are living in obedience to Christ still make mistakes all the time. This seemed to be a contradiction. This Christian’s intention was to obey Jesus and completely overcome sin. If Christians could continue to make mistakes, did that mean that sin really didn’t matter? How can we say we obey Jesus when we’re not obeying him perfectly?

When we say that we won’t ever be perfect, we don’t mean that we cannot overcome sin. Our goal is still to obey Jesus, and we can achieve obedience. We can certainly be faithful, obedient, and righteous. It’s entirely possible for us to remove sins from our lives. Christians don’t need to continue to live in a state of constant failure to sins like lust or anger.

However, though we can overcome major sins, and though we can continually grow in our ability to obey Christ, no one is likely to reach perfection before our deaths. Even though we can keep from falling prey to lust and anger, the best of us still tend to get annoyed, selfish, or greedy throughout the small details of our lives. Sometimes these are just mistakes; sometimes they are actually sins. This shouldn’t get us down; in fact, I think as one progresses in overcoming sin, one finds more and more how many little areas like that need to be cleaned up.

Consider someone who plays a musical instrument. When the instrumentalist first takes up their instrument, they don’t know how to play a single note. When they first play through “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” they see that as an accomplishment, and it is one! They can now actually play their instrument.

But as the instrumentalist practices more and more, the goal starts to change. They work on things like tuning, articulation, phrasing, and dynamics. But those are incredibly hard skills to master. Now, they see it as an accomplishment when they can get most of these details right. Even the most seasoned instrumentalists will never reach perfection.

But that doesn’t mean that no instrumentalists ever play their instrument. Nor does it mean that no instrumentalists ever play well. Instead, we recognize that the beginner plays their instrument, though not exceptionally; and the expert plays their instrument, though not perfectly.

So we can truly obey Jesus, just we don’t do it perfectly. God, like a master musician, understands our weaknesses and our inability at reaching sheer perfection. We works with us to help us continue to overcome the wrong tendencies in our lives.

Some believe that it is possible to reach a state of sinless perfection through faith and obedience, while others argue that perfection is unattainable and that the goal of the Christian life is simply to strive towards righteousness. I personally believe that sinless perfection is possible, at least in theory. However, I doubt I myself will reach it, though I would like to. Until we reach perfection, though, we can still meaningfully obey Jesus and be faithful to him.

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