"Can we become as perfect as Jesus was?" asked a friend of mine. "Jesus was God's perfect Son. Then how can we become like Jesus? We are weak, and we succumb to temptation."

Very many people accept my friend's opinion. However, if Jesus alone could be perfect, why did he say, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect"? ^{Matt. 5:48;} Is the teaching of Jesus impractical?

Christian Science gives clear answers to these questions. It affirms that the real man is divine Mind's idea, a spiritual being formed in God's image and likeness (see Gen. 1:27). Therefore man actually is right now already perfect.

When he understands that he is as perfect as his Maker, God, any human being can progress toward the perfection of heaven, the harmony of spiritual reality. However, to gain this understanding, one's human consciousness must be evangelized.

We see, hear, and feel through our individual human consciousness. Closely considering matter, we recognize that it is material sense that sees, hears, and feels matter. Thinking carefully about those spiritual things unseen to material sense, such as love, integrity, justice, purity, and mercy, we realize that these faultless, God–bestowed qualities appear to us through spiritual sense.

To evangelize human consciousness is to let go the usual way of material thinking, which believes man to be both flesh and spirit, and to gain the spiritual sense that understands man as the perfect idea of God. This regeneration of consciousness necessarily brings forth a sometimes fierce war between Spirit and flesh. In this war Christ, or Truth, which Jesus represented, is always on our side. In the textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy says, "The world could not interpret aright the discomfort which Jesus inspired and the spiritual blessings which might flow from such discomfort."  ^{Science and Health, p. 53;}

During the time I first started to study Christian Science, I was often miserable because I felt I was weak and imperfect and easily yielded to temptation. But this miserable feeling, the discomfort that the spirituality of the Christ brought forth, was indeed a blessing. Whenever a particular temptation came, the memory of this discomfort was revived, and I was helped to overcome the evil.

After that temptation was overcome, a deep sense of satisfaction and happiness came over me. It was far above the so–called pleasures of the physical senses; it was a refreshing sense of joyous fulfillment. I felt strongly that I was at one with God. Transcending the limitation of the physical body, this sense gave me the freeing feeling of being lifted into the infinite, perfect universe. And my increased spiritual understanding manifested itself as bodily health.

I shared the feeling of the Psalmist's song, "The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup."  ^{Ps. 16:5.} The joy of oneness with God as His reflection is based on the revelation of Christian Science that God is divine Principle and man is His perfect idea. Just as the sun and its rays are one, so divine Principle and its spiritual ideas are one. God is also Love. Divine Love is as ever present as Principle, and therefore it is universal.

Whatever conforms to Principle is kept safe by Principle; whatever is disobedient to Principle—is unlike the only creator—has no real basis for existence. It is illusion, or sin. Sooner or later it must necessarily receive the punishment of sin—dissolution.

Because the real man is the flawless idea of divine Principle, he always expresses the harmony and security of Principle, Love. What is disobedient is never a person—it is sin, the false belief of life and pleasure in matter that claims to attach itself to us. Therefore what is destroyed is not us but sin.

As the teaching of Christ Jesus is spiritually understood, and as divine Principle is increasingly obeyed not in words only but in daily living, men progress in accomplishing the regeneration of individual consciousness. Thus they advance in gaining the sense of man's unity with God and present perfection, which can be experienced humanly in the form of health and prosperity, joy and peace.