Perfect is a grammatical tense or verb form indicating that an action or circumstance occurred earlier than the time under consideration, often focusing attention on the resulting state rather than on the occurrence itself. Perfect is also an application server, web and server framework written in the programming language Swift. “Perfect” is also a song by Ed Sheeran. “When you said you looked a mess, I whispered underneath my breath. But you heard it, darling, you look perfect tonight.”

The dictionary says perfect means “conforming absolutely to the description or definition of an ideal type” or “excellent or complete beyond practical or theoretical improvement.” We are not talking about perfectionism which is the futile effort by some humans to live without making any errors or mistakes.

I’ll never forget the time I spent several hours after midnight on a Saturday night re-typing and re-running the bulletin because I’d found a misspelled word. And if you’re right now thinking I was a bit touched in the head, you’d be right.

I had a friend who found his Sunday bulletin on his desk one Monday morning with all the errors circled in red. The next Sunday, he told the congregation he’d put errors in the bulletin to see if people read it closely, and whoever found the most errors would win a book from his library.

This is the second of our “Absolute Basics of the Christian Faith” series by Phil Tallon asking, “What is God like?”

And the answer is, “God is perfect in power, knowledge, and in his holy love.” From Psalm 147, “Great and mighty is our Lord; his wisdom cannot be measured.”

After asking “Who is God?” now we’re ready to ask, “What is God like?” The one word answer is that God is perfect. His power is perfect (Luke 1:37), his knowledge is perfect (Matthew 6:8) and his love is perfect (Matthew 5:48). If his power was perfect but not his knowledge, he might be unpredictable. If his power were perfect but not his love, he might be cruel. If his love was perfect but not his power, he’d want to do something but couldn’t. If his love was perfect but not his knowledge, he wouldn’t know what to do. But one of the things we’ve come to believe about God is he is perfect. In every way possible, he is perfect.

Remember all the Roman gods and goddesses who were perfect in one area and rather helpless and human in others. They were capricious and unpredictable and not worthy of our worship. They were, at times, scary.

History and the world are filled with gods and goddesses, but any worship of any of them is called idolatry because they are not perfect, and therefore not God, and therefore not worthy of our worship.

Only a perfect God is worthy of our worship.