Perfection Minus One
18 Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666.
— Revelation 13:18
One short of perfection. Another achievement is all we need to reach fulfillment. This is the ideology of the world in which we live. Modern culture knows that mankind is flawed. Even the most optimistic person is forced to admit that humanity is born to trouble as sparks fly upward. Our nature and environment shape us, but it is our choice to pursue our lusts. Like moths, we fly toward the fire that will end our lives.
The Devil does not waste his time trying to convince people that they are perfect. The testimony of our consciences and the daily news would quickly expose such thoughts as sophistries. Rather, the Devil labors to convince us that our righteousness is greater than our neighbors’ (like the Pharisees), or he tries to make us think that our fallen nature needs only a slight adjustment for redemption. By decreasing the distance between men’s righteousness and the holiness of God, he subtly conditions men to cheapen the price of Jesus’ atonement.
Throughout the Bible, we often see perfection represented by the number seven. God created the world in seven days, and that set in motion a timetable to which all creation is subjected. Have you ever considered the uniqueness of our week? Scholars fixed the year according to the earth’s rotation around the sun, and the month was tied to the waxing and waning of the moon. Both of these were implicit creation standards. The week, however, is explicitly ordained by God.
God created man to rule the natural world and set the week as the silent watchman of our performance. Every seven days that pass serve as a constant reminder of our dependence upon and obligation to our God. We must work while it is daytime and redeem the time because the days are evil. The seventh day is reserved for the worship of God, but the Devil tempts people to see it as just another free day among the other six.
God reveals Himself to us through ordinary worship more often than through extraordinary events. Imagine if the Israelites had stopped after their sixth march around Jericho’s walls. That ordinary lap unlocked an extraordinary blessing. Mismatched spiritual priorities lead people to search for the extraordinary in sanctification or to believe that ordinary deeds can earn salvation. Perfection comes only through Jesus Christ, but our growth in grace is measured one step at a time.
It is not surprising that Revelation 13:18 records the Devil’s number as 666. Try as he might, Satan cannot raise himself to God’s level. Some commentators link this triplicate to the Devil’s counterfeit trinity in Revelation—the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet. Perhaps this number illustrates Satan’s ceaseless attempts to usurp the place of God.
Satan takes no rest on earth, and his offspring have none in hell. Like a gambler who repeatedly pulls the arm of a slot machine and keeps getting three sixes, Satan is so self-deluded that he imagines he will achieve success one day. The less flashy but more tangible trinity of the world, the flesh, and the Devil labors tirelessly to convince us that perfection is attainable without Christ.
These mortal enemies use fallen men as a yardstick and then tempt us to measure our achievements by that standard. Have you ever noticed how you cannot spot your own spelling errors, but the spelling errors of others stand out like words on a billboard? Sin follows the same pattern, but it is even more subtle. Man naturally minimizes his own sin and magnifies sins committed against him.
If we could truly behold God’s perfections, we would fall down on our faces and cry out with Isaiah:
“Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”
— Isaiah 6:5
Consider the case of Uzzah in the Old Testament. He thought God’s glory would be harmed if the Ark of the Covenant struck the ground. How wrong he was. The dirt does not rebel against God, but we do every day. You can wash soil away with stain remover, but the stain upon our souls is indelible against everything except the blood of Christ.
This sin affects rulers as well as commoners. Since Saul was already a king, he figured it was only a small step from there to becoming a priest. Rather than waiting for Samuel, he went ahead and offered the sacrifices himself. When Samuel pronounced judgment, Saul refused to let go of Samuel’s robe and tore a piece from it. As Saul tore away at God’s right to appoint His mediators, God tore away the kingdom from his grasp. Saul’s soul was like that torn piece of fabric in God’s eyes, but Saul believed his soul was as majestic as his kingly garments.
Finally, was anyone closer to salvation and yet further away than the rich young ruler? How does one meet the incarnate God and still believe that he has kept all the commandments? Jesus came because we cannot keep even one commandment for a few hours. This man believed he had kept all of them his entire life. He wanted a good teacher to advise him, not a Savior to die for him.
Rather than correcting him on all the commandments he had supposedly kept, Jesus pointed out the one commandment he had clearly broken. Hypothetically, if you kept all the commandments except one, you would still be guilty of cosmic treason against God’s infinite perfections.
Stephen Charnock remarks:
“A willing breaking in one part of the law, though there be a willing observance of all other points of it, is a breach of the whole, because the authority of God is slighted.”
The gap between one sin against God and many sins against God is only great in human eyes. One short of perfection demands an eternal hell. Our Lord’s brother James understood this. He wrote:
“For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.”
— James 2:10
God demands seven days of perfection, and we are perpetually rolling sixes. Good enough is not good enough for God. God is perfectly satisfied in His Son, and when we rest in Christ, we are guaranteed that our souls are acceptable in God’s eyes.
Soli Deo Gloria
