Matthew 5:48 — Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
This is another of those misunderstood and misinterpreted verses that lead to confusion.
The word for “perfect” is “Teleios” (transliterated of course! The instruction looks challenging –“Be perfect”! All those who have achieved it, please step forward …I looked the word up in a Greek dictionary. Here’s what I found. “Brought to its end, finished; wanting nothing necessary to completeness; of consummate human integrity and virtue; of men – full grown, adult, of full age, mature.”
Our Sunday School is spending time getting to know God better, guided by A.W.Tozer’s masterful two-volume study, “The Attributes of God”. (Side note — when I became a Christian, this book, along with C. S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity” was the greatest help in starting to understand what I believed.) One point that has come out more than once is the idea that God is, indeed, perfect. All of God’s attributes are always fully present, being fully exercised. I’ve been trying to understand that idea. One analogy that has come to mind is that it’s like having a diamond — you can’t separate the hardness of a diamond from its brightness. A diamond is always completely hard, and completely bright … just as God is completely good, completely just, completely merciful — all the time.
God meets the most stringent definitions of perfection. He “wants nothing necessary to completeness”. It is not so for us, of course. We are, perhaps “full grown, adult, of full age, mature”. Few of us are of “consummate human integrity” and I would suggest that none of us can claim to be “wanting nothing necessary to completeness”. We are sometimes good, sometimes humble, sometimes generous and sometimes merciful.But we are also sometimes bad, sometimes proud, sometimes heartless too.
So is Jesus demanding something that is impossible? Of course not.As is so often the case, the verse needs to be given in context. the full passage is Matthew 5:43-48:
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
It should be clear, reading the whole passage, that what is being required is perfection — “completeness” in love. Extending the command (for it is a command) to be universal is plainly unreasonable! Even so, is our love to be as complete as God’s love? Surely even that is impossible. Yes it is. And so it is not what is being commanded. The Greek word translated “as” is “Hos” (transliterated). Just like the English word it can mean “as much as”, but also “in the same way”. That is what is being asked here — not that our love should be that infinite undefinable love that God displays but as the old Puritan John Gill has it, “be ye sincere and upright in your love to all men, as your heavenly Father is hearty and sincere in his affections to them.”
We will never, in this life, reach to God in completeness, and integrity and virtue. Let us strive towards some flavor of His attributes in ourselves …