The Bond of Perfectness

¹“And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.” (Colossians 3:14). In finance, a bond can be secured by lending money to some governmental agency or higher power with the expectation that the bond will be repaid with interest. In this verse, we are told that charity is the bond of perfectness. None of us is going to achieve perfection in this life. We will continue to have flaws and failures up until the moment we die and likely for a good deal of time afterwards. However, that does not mean that we can’t take steps now to get ready for perfection. Every time that we engage in selfless acts of charity, we are securing for ourselves a bond of perfectness. Every good deed we do out of the goodness of our hearts with no expectation for reward or recognition is a loan that we give to God for the furtherance of His work and His glory. And God remembers every act of charity that we loan to Him and He is more than prepared to pay us a high rate of interest when the time comes to redeem our bonds. It is the easiest and most natural thing in the world to look out for our own needs and focus on our own problems and to hold onto every scrap of our love and charity in case we need it. But there is no growth or progress towards perfection down that path. Any love that we horde to ourselves gets used up to no purpose. But if we instead loan our love to the Lord, then we can start hoarding bonds of perfectness that will only collect interest and appreciate in value as time goes on. Every time we give up what we want to do to help someone in need, we are getting closer and closer to perfection. I hope we will all embrace lives of charity and collect as many bonds of perfectness as we possibly can.