Tom Shepherd
Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:48.
How can human beings be as perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect? God is a sinless being; since the Fall, human beings are sinful creatures by nature (Eph 2:3). In what way can they ever be perfect as the Father is perfect? What does Jesus mean?
The Sermon on the Mount – The powerful words of Jesus in Matthew 5:48 form the conclusion of the second section of the Sermon on the Mount. The entire Sermon is Matthew 5-7, but this section extends from 5:17 through 5:48. The section divides into a preamble in which Jesus insists that He did not come to abolish the law and the Prophets; rather, He came to fulfill them. This preamble is followed by a series of six contrasting statements, or antitheses, in which Jesus quotes an Old Testament verse or a traditional saying, with the form, “You have heard that it was said …” followed by the contrast, “But I say to you …” (Matt 5:21, 22).
One might suppose that an antithesis would suggest a rejection of the Old Testament idea, replacing it with a new teaching from Jesus. On the contrary, Jesus in each case deepens the application of the teaching of Old Testament Scripture. He thereby illustrates His insistence that His purpose was not to do away with the Old Testament maxims, but rather to demonstrate the depth and far reaching application of God’s ancient commands.
“He tells us to be perfect as He is, in the same manner. We are to be centers of light and blessing to our little circle, even as He is to the universe. We have nothing of ourselves, but the light of His love shines upon us, and we are to reflect its brightness. ‘In His borrowed goodness good,’ we may be perfect in our sphere, even as God is perfect in His” (MB 77).
Loving one’s enemies – The last of the antitheses is in 5:43-48, dealing with the question of loving one’s enemies. Jesus quotes a portion of Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor,” but evidently appends to it a traditional statement, “and hate your enemy.” Jesus then counters this statement with His famous maxim that we are to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors. The Master goes on to state that carrying out these actions toward our enemies results in us being or becoming sons of our Father in heaven, “because He makes His sun shine on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” Loving enemies, then, is to emulate the action of God.
Jesus goes on to express a contrast to God’s magnanimous actions by referring to those who love only those who love them, or love only their brothers. This behavior, He says, is no better than what tax collectors and the Gentiles do, people generally thought to be outside the purview of biblical religion. We are thus given a contrast of behaviors and groups – God with love, care, and concern for both good and bad people, on the one hand, and tax collectors and Gentiles with concern and love only for themselves on the other. All this is followed by our verse above calling disciples to perfection, even as their Father in heaven is perfect.
Understanding the context of Matthew 5:48 is essential for comprehending the meaning of the text. Within the last of the antitheses, perfection is defined not as the absence of defects, not as the rooting out of all moral failure, but rather as the extension of love to the group farthest from us – our enemies. Again, within the entire group of antitheses, the call to perfection in 5:48 does contain a sense of the deepest moral purity – for instance redefining murder as hatred and adultery as the lustful look and negating the practice of both.
Faced with these superlatives, we might be tempted to simply give up on discipleship altogether or else to take the approach of the second century AD author of the Didache who alludes to this verse in chapter 6 verse 2 of his work, “For if you can bear the whole yoke of the Lord, you shall be perfect; but if you cannot, do what you can.” Or we may go even as far as some who insist that Jesus did not mean what He said, perfection is impossible and besides that unnecessary, since the Christian is saved by grace.
The meaning of “perfect” – But we lose something deeply important if we take any of these “less than” routes. The Greek term for perfection in Matthew 5:48 is teleios, which means “perfect, without defect, complete, fully developed, mature, having obtained the end or purpose.”1 When a thing is full grown and has reached its goal, it is called teleios, “perfect.” The Christian life has a goal. It is pointed toward heaven. The upward call of the gospel is distinct (Phil 3:12-14). God accepts us wherever He finds us, but He never leaves us there. He takes us on a journey to Christian maturity. The command of Jesus expresses the fruition of that journey. To accept the command is to accept the journey and to walk within His will. The goal of perfection – of Christian maturity, of being like our Father in heaven – is given to us not to discourage but to serve as our guiding star in a world of moral darkness.
1 See William Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Cambridge: University of Chicago Press, 1957), s.v. teleios.
Good habits are not made on birthdays,
nor Christian character at the new year.
The workshop of character is everyday life.
The uneventful and commonplace hour
is where the battle is lost or won.
Maltbie D. Babcock