Perfection

www.bible.com/1713/mat.5.48.csb

Do you know what perfection is? Can you define it? Would you be able to recognize it? Could you achieve it? Ugh.

When Jesus makes this statement in the Sermon on the Mount, it would have shaken and challenged them as it still does today. However, as I’ve studied this passage, the word translated ”perfection” might be better translated as ”maturity” or ”complete.” It might be more achievable to be mature or complete as God is because it would be impossible for us to achieve the perfection of God.

But again, this returns me to the initial question. Could you recognize perfection? Do you know what perfection looks like?

When I think of perfection, it is, everything is where it’s supposed to be. There is an order and design. There is beauty and awe in perfection. It is often something we recognize intuitively. We don’t have to be taught what it is because even small children can be in awe of perfection, and only more so as they understand the effort required to achieve it.

In the same way, we notice imperfections, flaws and details that don’t look right. So where does this come from? I put to you that this is part of our design. We were built to recognize such thing s because our Father and Designer is divinely perfect. We are built with His sensibility for perfection. So when Jesus challenges us to be “perfect” as God is perfect we are understandably overwhelmed. It is too much. It is beyond us. We are automatically inclined to disagree with Jesus on this point, or out this off to the super-Christians or the Saints. We can’t be perfect.

But we can. If we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, been baptized into water for the cleansing our souls by His blood, we are justified before God in our faith and receive the grace and forgiveness for our sins. We are perfect before Him. We are perfectly sinless. We are perfectly loved. We are perfectly justified. It’s an awesome moment. I say moment because we are still human. We will not receive a permanent sinlessness until the moment we die and our struggle with sin is over.

We have this hope in us, that each day we strive to obey this command from our Lord, He too is working in us to help us achieve it. Praised be the Name of the Lord.