Chapter 9: Counting the Cost

I. “Be ye perfect”
    A. Not that being perfect is a prerequisite for Christ’s help, but that Christ’s help is solely towards being perfect.
    B. The analogy of the dentist.
    C. Jesus warned people to count the cost, because everything necessary will be sacrificed to making one perfect.
    D. God is pleased with our smallest efforts—easy to please, hard to satisfy.
II. God’s plan
    A. God will persist even when we fail or object.
    B. Not the perfection that we want or anticipate, but the perfection that God wants and intended.
    C. To be satisfied with less (e.g., decent people) is laziness; to submit to the full treatment is obedience.
    D. Unaided, we cannot accomplish perfection, but God aims to make us more perfect than the greatest saint.
    E. The process or transformation to perfection entails great difficulties.
    F. We cannot yet imagine His destiny for us.
III. The objective
    A. The analogy of rebuilding the house.
    B. We shall be made into something like ‘gods’.

Discussion Questions: (pp. 201-206)
    1. What does “Be ye perfect” mean? How perfect, and in what ways? (Matt. 5:48) (p. 203)
    2. How are we to become God’s habitation? Where does the Bible teach this? (p. 205)
    3. How are we “gods”? (Ps. 82:6, John 10:34) (p. 205)

Note: On page 202: “Give him an inch, and he will take an ell.” An ell is an archaic linear measure of six handbreadths, about 45 inches.