What Do You Mean “Be Perfect?!”
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Philippians 3:12-Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.
The sweet lady was a devoted wife and mother. We were studying the Bible together over a meal at a local restaurant. She had been raised in a very strict religious denomination, where it had been drilled into her head from the time that she was young that God expected her to be virtually flawless. There was to be no “worldly” music, no “worldly” television shows or movies, no “worldly” clothes (which in her case meant that she could only wear dresses at home and in public), and especially no “worldly” friends.
Now as an adult who was carefully studying the Bible, she had a lot of questions. One of them revolved around the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon On The Mount:
Matthew 5:48 (KJV)-Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
She looked at me and said, “What does He mean I have to be perfect?! I can’t be perfect, and I have spent my life trying!” She was nearly overcome with grief and despair as she asked how God could ever love her for times in her life that she had sinned and fallen short, when He had said that He commanded her to be perfect.
So, what about it?
Does God demand perfection from us?
Let’s study.
The first thing to notice in the passage before us is that this statement is actually not a command. In the Greek New Testament, commands are usually indicated in what is known as the imperative mood. This means that the ending of a verb actually indicates when that verb is a command to be obeyed. Usually, commands are in the imperative. But this statement to “be perfect” (KJV) is not in the imperative: it is what is known as the indicative mood. This is the mood of reality. It “indicates” (notice the similarity in the name of the mood and the word “indicates”) a “real” situation. What’s more, the Greek shows the time frame of statements, and this one is in the future tense.
In other words, Jesus is saying, “you will be (or become) perfect.”
Notice how the NKJV brings this out:
Matthew 5:48-Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.
We are commanded to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, do good to those who hate us, and pray for those who spitefully use us and persecute us. When we learn to do this, we “we will be perfect,” even as our Father in Heaven is perfect.
This verse is not so much a command to be perfect, as it is a promise that God’s people “will be (come)” perfect as we learn to have and show this love.
Second, I want you to think about the context of this statement. What is Jesus speaking about here? In context, the Lord is discussing the fact that God wants us to learn to show kindness and love, even to the most undeserving.
Matthew 5:43-47-You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so?
The Lord illustrate the way that the scribes and Pharisees were twisting the Scriptures in order to justify their wickedness. They were misquoting and misapplying the Old Testament in such a way that their reference to the Word of God actually had the opposite of what the Scriptures actually taught. As an example, the command, “you shall love your neighbor” actually means that you shall love everyone, including your enemy!
Leviticus 19:17-18-You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him. 18 You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
The Old Testament had taught the desire of God for His people to learn to love their enemies, but the Pharisees had twisted the Word of God to try and justify their tradition that it was alright to hate your enemies, and to treat them accordingly.
What a sad twisting of God’s Word!
So, when Jesus says that we will be “perfect,” He doesn’t mean that we are expected to be sinlessly flawless. Contextually, His statement is a reference to how we show God’s love towards our fellow man.
“To be perfect ( τέλειος , teleios ) in the immediate context is to be complete or mature in one’s approximation of God’s benevolence. In the narrative flow of Matt. 5, “perfection” is uprightness and blamelessness in consistently obeying God’s law as ultimately interpreted by Jesus. Relatively few Christians hold the idea of perfection as absolute sinlessness; such a view would evidently not be acceptable to the one who taught his disciples to pray for forgiveness (Matt. 6:12; cf. 1 John 1:8). The surpassing righteousness of which Jesus began to speak in 5:20 is summarized here not as sinlessness but as imaging the Father’s characteristic of universal benevolence (cf. Borchert 1992; E. Brown 1998; Hartin 1996).” (David L. Turner, Matthew (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament), 4552-4557 (Kindle Edition): Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic)
The parallel account of Jesus’ sermon as recorded by Luke makes it clear that love itself is what is being discussed here:
Luke 6:36-Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.
Notice that Luke’s account clarifies the “perfection” Jesus us calls us to: learning to be merciful and kind.
The Lord is not calling us here to sinless perfection. Instead, He is calling us to learn to love our fellow man as God does.
Why is this so important?
Focusing on the meaning of the word translated here as “perfect,” Barclay explains:
“The reason why we must have this unconquerable benevolence and goodwill is that God has it; and, if we have it, we become nothing less than children of God, Godlike men and women. Here we have the key to one of the most difficult sentences in the New Testament, the sentence with which this passage finishes. Jesus said: ‘You, therefore, must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ On the face of it, that sounds like a commandment which cannot possibly have anything to do with us. There is not one of us who would even faintly connect ourselves with perfection. The Greek word for perfect is teleios. This word is often used in Greek in a very special way. It has nothing to do with what we might call abstract, philosophical, metaphysical perfection. A victim which is fit for a sacrifice to God, that is a victim which is without blemish, is teleios. A man who has reached his full-grown stature is teleios as distinct from a half-grown youth. A student who has reached a mature knowledge of a subject is teleios as opposed to a learner who is just beginning, and who as yet has no grasp of things. To put it in another way, the Greek idea of perfection is functional. A thing is perfect if it fully realizes the purpose for which it was planned, designed and made. In point of fact, that meaning is involved in the derivation of the word. Teleios is the adjective formed from the noun telos. Telos means an end, a purpose, an aim, a goal. A thing is teleios if it achieves the purpose for which it is planned; human beings are perfect if they achieve the purpose for which they were created and sent into the world. Let us take a very simple analogy. Suppose in my house there is a loose screw, and I want to tighten and adjust this screw. I go out and I buy a screwdriver. I find that the screwdriver exactly fits the grip of my hand; it is neither too large nor too small, too rough nor too smooth. I lay the screwdriver on the slot of the screw, and I find that it exactly fits. I then turn the screw and the screw is fixed. In the Greek sense, and especially in the New Testament sense, that screwdriver is teleios, because it exactly fulfilled the purpose for which I desired and bought it. So, people will be teleios if they fulfil the purpose for which they were created. For what purpose were human beings created? The Bible leaves us in no doubt as to that. In the old creation story in the Revised Standard Version translation, we find God saying: ‘Let us make man in our image after our likeness’ (Genesis 1: 26). Human beings were created to be like God. The characteristic of God is this universal benevolence, this unconquerable goodwill, this constant seeking of the highest good of every individual. The great characteristic of God is love to saint and to sinner alike. No matter what we do to him, God seeks nothing but our highest good….It is when we reproduce in our lives the unwearied, forgiving, sacrificial benevolence of God that we become like God, and are therefore perfect in the New Testament sense of the word. To put it at its simplest, those men and women who care most for others are the most perfect. It is the whole teaching of the Bible that we attain our humanity only by becoming Godlike. The one thing which makes us like God is the love which never ceases to care for others, no matter what they do to it. We fulfil our humanity, we enter upon Christian perfection, when we learn to forgive as God forgives, and to love as God loves.” (William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume One (The New Daily Study Bible), 255-257 (Kindle Edition): Saint Andrew Press)
God wants us to learn to become “perfect” in regard to showing love for others-even the most undeserving. That is perhaps one of the greatest-and most challenging-goals of the Christian life. When you feel anxious that God is calling you to sinless perfection, remind yourself that only Jesus was able to perfectly fulfill that requirement (Romans 8:1-3). In Jesus, we are forgiven, redeemed, holy, and sanctified (Colossians 1:23).
Philippians 3:12-16 (ERV)-don’t mean that I am exactly what God wants me to be. I have not yet reached that goal. But I continue trying to reach it and make it mine. That’s what Christ Jesus wants me to do. It is the reason he made me his. 13 Brothers and sisters, I know that I still have a long way to go. But there is one thing I do: I forget what is in the past and try as hard as I can to reach the goal before me. 14 I keep running hard toward the finish line to get the prize that is mine because God has called me through Christ Jesus to life up there in heaven. 15 All of us who have grown to be spiritually mature should think this way too. And if there is any of this that you don’t agree with, God will make it clear to you. 16 But we should continue following the truth we already have.
Father, thank You for Your grace in spite of our sins and flaws. Thank You for loving us, even when we fall short. Help us to learn to have that same love for others. Amen.