Can you
imagine not thinking in terms of time?
Well, God is timeless and so, it appears, is Hebrew. What you are about to read
will give you a whole new confidence in the Lord. This may challenge your brain
a little but it'll be worth it, I promise.
As Rabbi
Jonathan Cahn[1] explains
it, in English we have verbs, action words, that are time oriented in the past,
present or future: He was, he is, he will be.
She did, she does, she will do. They ate, they are eating, they will
eat. In Hebrew not so. It does not have these time tenses. There is actually no past, present or future in the verbs in Hebrew.
All actions are timeless, that is to say, not bound by time - like God. Sounds
like He may be behind the development of the language itself, doesn't it?
Hebrew is not concerned with whether
something happened and is finished. It could happen in the past and yet still not
be finished. All our actions as believers have effect
beyond life in this world. What you do actually counts in eternity. Yeshua said
that we will all be rewarded for our deeds. There are rewards in heaven for the
generous or helpful things you do for someone else, or choices you make to
honor Him. Didn't the Lord say we would be rewarded for even giving someone a
cold drink of water in His name. He means what He says. There are rewards to be received in heaven, so then we can say that our
actions have an eternal quality to
them. And what is eternal is timeless.
Hebrew does not see verbs, that is to say
actions, as being in time but rather actions are viewed as being in either of a perfect
or imperfect tense. Perfect means it's
complete. Imperfect means its unfinished, and therefore, goes on and on. Being
unfinished, it continues. An action is
either completed and therefore perfect and completed, or it's not yet finished
or resolved and so it is still imperfect.
In this earthly life we can only act in
the present. We live in the now. But in Hebrew whatever you're doing in the
present is always unfinished or you wouldn't still be doing it. But even so, it cannot be completely finished
because it's never perfect. There's always something left to do to make it perfect. Whatever we do is imperfect because we're imperfect. No matter how we try
to get to perfection in this life, it remains imperfect. Since only God is perfect,
anything we do apart from our dependence upon God is basically imperfect and, therefore, incomplete. Most
of us would agree that if we are acting out of our own efforts, it just never
gets to that place of true perfection or complete fulfillment, where it lasts
forever.
We pretty much live by the imperfect, what
is really never finished, and is based on being incomplete. Let's take our
highest goal: To become holy. The fact that I'm wanting or trying to be holy
means I'm not holy, and being unholy is certainly not living from perfection. If
I'm trying to get God to love me I'm doing it out of a sense of a lack of His love. It just
doesn't work. I can't get to perfection through my imperfect attempts, try as I
might.
If you're doing something to become perfect, say,
to get to heaven, you're doing it from a place of being unheavenly, which is a
state of imperfection. How could we possibly arrive at a place of perfection
when we try and use imperfect ways to get there? This is the ultimate "You
can't get there from here" dilemma. We can only get to a place of perfection if
we're operating out of a place of perfection. What about our efforts at re-dedication. How often have we gone to the
altar or told God we were rededicating or giving ourselves anew to Him? The trouble is we're
doing it out of self and self is always incomplete. We can't really rededicate ourselves because we
can't use what is imperfect to try and become perfect. How about our desire to serve God?
We really have nothing within our imperfect selves to do anything for Him except
what is imperfect. Being imperfect, even our motives aren't perfect. So we see that in our own imperfect selves,
we cannot arrive at the perfection which we desire. What to do?
I know i promised you that
this would give you new confidence with the Lord and I admit that so far it
doesn't sound like it, but we're getting there. I have good news for you. My good
news is The Good News. You can in fact truly dedicate yourself to God or serve
God or for that matter you can truly love God because
God has made you perfect in His sight. The miracle of miracles is that
through what Yeshua did by dying on the cross, He didn't just forgive your sins, no, your sin nature was entirely eradicated! No matter how high the mountain of your sins or transgressions, forgiveness is yours (hence the photo at the top). Not only your sin but your sin nature was completely taken away. Your old
imperfect life wasn't changed to now try and be more like Yeshua. When you were
born again, you were given an entirely new and perfect life. (See Gal 2:20.
Romans 6:6, 6;3. Cal. 3:3.)
Your old imperfect life
died at Calvary with Him when He "completed" the "perfect" work of
dying as a holy sacrifice for sin. And we've
been made complete in the completeness of His "It-is-finished" work! When
He said those words, they indicated a perfect and complete action, one that
only God could do, like when He created the world, because only God is perfect and complete within Himself.
The Old Covenant is based
on imperfect verbs. You should, you must, you have to, you can't. When you're under legalism, it's always
imperfect, and therefore you're always trying. It's always incomplete - you can
never do enough. But the New Covenant is
based on that most perfect statement, "It is finished." It's
perfectly perfect. The action is
complete and the tense is complete. Even the word itself says it's complete. So everything that comes out of our reliance
on His finished work is then complete because it comes from Him and He's
perfect. It's a matter of where our faith is - in Him in what He did and His
life within us, or from our own incomplete self efforts.
The first verb in Genesis.
is perfect - "God created" - it's a perfect verb: bara.
He created the world with perfection. Only He can do that. It's one of
the few perfect verbs in the Bible. Creation begins with God's perfect action.
Later, when we read, "God so loved the world..." we read it in the past
in English. In Hebrew it's in the perfect tense, not in the past tense. "He gave" is perfect and complete.
There was no unfinished quality to His action. So if we are to act in any way
that will be worthy of Him, it must be perfect. The way to perfection is to
find our perfection from God's doing, not our doing. We cannot start from our
doing. We do based on His doing. The
only way to find perfection is to do what we do based on what He has already
done and who we are in Him - having been made perfect and complete in God's
sight.
Now if we have been made
complete by His action, then He removed
from us every need to try and become perfect in His sight! That's why we were born again as a new
creation. The old one wasn't refurbished to be better. Better isn't prefect. He
has made us, by His actions, a "completely" new person - one that is
complete and perfected in Him. So that nothing in our relationship with God
need be about attempts to become perfect, but rather we live from a glorious
place of oneness with God, of total acceptance in the Beloved, and of security
in our eternal destiny because of Yeshua's perfect action on the cross. And we live "in Hin" because of the perfect action of the resurrection which God accomplished as complete and perfect. We never need to worry about being accepted by God, now
or eternally, because Yeshua has already qualified us by His doing. We can now
rest in Him knowing because we are in Him, whatever we do for
Him, we do with Him. That kind of life is reward-worthy. The Lord told Abraham, "I AM your...exceedingly great reward" (Genesis 15:1). The greatest reward is Yeshua Himself. How perfect is that?
[1] The information regarding perfect and
imperfect tenses in this article is largely taken from a teaching by Rabbi
Jonathan Cahn. For more of his teachings go to: HopeOfTheWorld..com.
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