Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die:
for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Revelation 3:2
I have not found thy works perfect before God
Whatever the works are,
those to whom Jesus is speaking have not lived up to His expectations.
Does God have expectations for us?
Without a doubt.
Our responsibility is to find out what Jesus is expecting of us.
One important instruction is that love covers a multitude of sins.
Cover the brethren with love.
And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father;
and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. Genesis 9:23
There are guidelines in His word.
Many of them.
Though we might feel we cannot live up to all of them.
That is the point.
We really cannot live up to any of them without Jesus’ help.
When we do things in our own strength, we end up naked:
Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth,
and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame. Revelation 16:15
Naked and not clothed in Jesus’ righteousness
is not how we want to appear when God looks upon us.
We cannot clothe ourselves with spiritual garments.
We don’t make them, we don’t know how to make them.
We cannot clothe ourselves spiritually.
Our righteousness is as filthy rags.
Though we try. That is pride.
When we fear God and walk in His righteousness, we are covered.
Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins,
and clothed them. Genesis 3:21
God Himself has to clothe us.
People who think they clothe themselves with heavenly, spiritual garments
are looking in the wrong direction, not to God, but to themselves.
They will be seen by God as naked and ashamed.
Scriptural References:
But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses
are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf;
and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
Isaiah 64:6
Now therefore arise, O Lord God, into Thy resting place,
Thou, and the ark of Thy strength: let Thy priests, O Lord God,
be clothed with salvation, and let Thy saints rejoice in goodness.
2 Chronicles 6:21
And He spake also a parable unto them;
No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old;
if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent,
and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old.
Luke 5:36