Maximum excellence

"What a nice way to think of age."

By Robert A. Johnson

My WIFE MAKES a great potato salad. Our nephews like it so much that they've dubbed it "Aunt Betty's special potato salad." But we often have to wait for a while before we can enjoy it. She says it has to age a bit—ideally overnight—to reach its best flavor. Cheesemakers and others also age their products to improve them. So aging doesn't need to mean growing old and useless. My computer dictionary classifies the verbs age, mature, develop, and ripen as synonyms. It says, "The central meaning shared by these verbs is to 'bring or come to full development or maximum excellence.' "

Maximum excellence! What a nice way to think of age. This perspective on progress is in full harmony with Christ Jesus' promise "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). Jesus understood that each individual is actually already the child of God, pure and perfect, just as God is pure and perfect. That's why he could heal. To him, sickness, decline, and debility were no part of anyone's true identity. The child of God cannot have infirmities, because God does not have them, and His creation is like Him. As Jesus said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:48).

Can we have the physical and spiritual excellence Jesus expected of us here and now? Yes, but this demands a clear understanding of our spiritual identity. We need to put off the belief that matter has anything at all to do with life or healing. Jesus refuted material laws by walking on the water, feeding thousands with no obvious supply of food available in sufficient quantity, raising Lazarus after Lazarus had spent four days in the tomb, and healing countless people who were sick or sinners. He clearly understood God to be our Life—and our standard of excellence.