Perfect

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is 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. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43-48 ESV). Someone recently said, “The Christian must be perfect in every area of life.” I wanted to reply, but restrained myself and decided to use this forum instead. Our reading today does say, “You therefore must be perfect, as you heavenly Father is perfect.” But, what does that really mean? At best, we find ourselves in an endless cycle of success followed by failure, always seeking to do just a little better. That certainly is not perfection. Part of the difficulty lies in our use of the word perfect. To us, perfection means “freedom from all flaws and deficiencies.” It is a life where no thought, word, or work has ever been wrong or less than it should be. The Bible’s use of the word is different. It means to be “mature” or “wholehearted.” It doesn’t mean someone never sins or fails; it pictures rather the basic attitude of the heart in a person. When we today speak of people as godly, we don’t mean that they are absolutely like God, but that they live in fellowship with him and grow in his likeness. In ourselves, apart from God’s grace in Christ, we remain sinful, self-centered people. But because we are joined to Christ by faith, his perfect righteousness is laid to our account as a sheer gift. The Holy Spirit works in us throughout our lives, so that we continually die to sin and walk in newness of life. In the end of the way, as John puts it, “We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” All those in Christ, therefore, are on the road to fullness of life, but the more mature they become in their Christian lives, the more they realize that they haven’t yet arrived, that they still have a long way to go. I know in my own life, the closer I come to Christ, the more I recognize how much more I have to grow. That process is called sanctification. It is from start to finish a work of God through the Holy Spirit. Little by little we are being changed throughout this life so that in the next we find our lives glorified in His grace and work of redemption. Of course, that does not excuse our effort in following the direction of God more each day; however, it does help us to understand how even our failures are steps toward the perfection God is working out in our lives.