Explain Like I'm 5: I'm Supposed To Be Perfect?
Matthew 5:48
“Therefore you shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48, NASB
Wait a minute; I’m supposed to be perfect? And not just bowling a 300-game perfect but be perfect like God?
I don’t know about you, but in my case, I think that Jesus has overestimated the talent that He is working with. I’m with Dostoyevsky who wrote in The Brothers Karamazov that Jesus “judged humanity too highly”. If that is the expectation, then I think I’d like to sit this one out.
Fortunately, as is the case with most things that throw me into a tizzy, there is more than meets the eye here. And based on my experiences with Jesus, I should know that isn’t what He is asking of me. My bad, Jesus, for jumping to conclusions.
So what is Jesus asking of us?
First, let’s start with finding the proper context for this verse. Matthew 5:48 is the final verse of Jesus’ section on the Torah (Mt 5:17-48) within the larger Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7). The Sermon on the Mount is way beyond the scope of this paper but suffice to say that at a minimum it can be considered Jesus’ tour de force; it’s quintessential Jesus.
But we can dive into the section on the Torah. (I’d recommend reading Matthew 5:17-48 along with this article. Trust me…things will make more sense.)
Here Jesus presents six “antitheses” about murder, adultery, divorce, oaths, retaliation, and love of neighbor. They are called antitheses because Jesus is presenting alternative oppositional statements to the Law of Torah. You may never have heard of the term “antitheses”, but you are probably very familiar with the form they take: “you have heard…but I say to you”.
Jesus makes clear the purpose of the antitheses in his introduction to the section, “Do not presume that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.” (Mt 5:17) As Grant Osborne writes in his commentary on Matthew, “It is clear that Jesus brings something entirely new to the table – a new righteousness; but that righteousness is not opposed to but is the true implication of it.”
Basically, Jesus is stating the tradition of how it was done and now mandating the new way to do it.
Now if you took my advice and read Matthew 5:17-48, you might be thinking to yourself “those preceding verses did nothing to lessen my anxiety about perfection; it only intensified them”. And you are right, for the time being.
Yes, Jesus is making more specific demands. He’s asking his audience to go deeper by tying attitude as well as action to the Law. As Osborne writes. “The key is that each shows the inner attitude behind the external action; thereby demonstrating the shallowness of pharisaic external requirements.”
So if you’re listening to Jesus, now you are going to be guilty not just for murder, but for the anger that leads to murder. Not just for adultery, but for the lust that leads to adultery. And so on for all the antitheses.
If this is the legal structure for our faith then a lot of us are screwed.
(Yes, yes, I know your anxiety is rising, but I promise to land this thing safely starting now.)
But guess what, and this is gonna surprise a lot of you, our faith isn’t a legal structure, it’s a loving relationship.
This legal worldview is championed by many religious conservatives and fundamentalists, but it’s also a worldview that I think most Christians feel they are stuck in.
And that makes perfect sense.
We read the Jews had the Law of Torah to keep which they weren’t perfect at and we know that we’re not so great at following God’s laws as well. And to top it off, we’re taught that we owed a debt so great to God that it could only be paid back thru the death of His Son.
It’s easy to see how we can think that our faith is a legal contract. One that we are in breach of quite a bit.
But let’s try a little experiment. I promise if it doesn’t work that you can go back to seeing God thru your legal lenses. But for the time being, take off those legal lenses and put on the lenses of love or what I like to call “Jesus’ Lenses”.
Now that you have them on, lets consider the most loving relationship that we can imagine as human beings. The parent/child relationship. I know some of you didn’t have that relationship, but I’m certain you can imagine what that ideal looks like.
So when the ideal parent scolds their child for running into the street, are they doing that because the child broke one of their rules or because the child put their own safety at risk?
When the ideal parent forces their child to sit down and do homework, are they doing that to meet some arbitrary guideline or because they want the child to do well in school and succeed?
Or finally when the ideal parent tells their child to apologize for rude behavior when playing games, are they doing that to enforce the rules of the game or because they want to the child to learn the value of being a good sport?
I think children would answer the former where parents are certain it’s the latter.
And I think that Jesus knew that keeping the Torah was often just one half of the equation; just as He sees us Christians doing the same. We are like children who can only see rules but not reasons. As Osborne noted, its fulfilling the external requirement, but not always the inner attitude.
Jesus is asking us to also fulfill the inner attitude as well. To not be just half fulfilled, but to be fully complete.
Fully complete.
Hmmm. Do you have any idea what Greek word is defined as fully complete?
What Strong’s Concordance defines as “having reached its end, complete” and has a usage of “(a) complete in all its parts, (b) full grown, of full age, (c) specially of the completeness of Christian character”.
What the HELPS Word-studies defines as “mature (consummated) from going through the necessary stages to reach the end-goal, i.e. developed into a consummating completion by fulfilling the necessary process (spiritual journey)”.
That Greek word would be “teleios”.
Which nearly every English translation of the Bible translates as…
Perfect.
I wonder how many lost souls have wandered away because of a misunderstood translation.
Because reading Matthew 5:48 as “you shall be fully complete as your heavenly Father is fully complete” is a game changer for me.
As W. D. Davies and Dale Allison note in their Shorter Commentary on Matthew, this concluding verse and section from Jesus is no longer “a grossly incomplete set of irrevocable statutes or bloodless abstractions but an unjaded impression of a challenging moral ideal. That ideal may ever be beyond grasp, but that is what enables it ever to beckon its adherents forward.”
And where Davies and Allison nail the reality, I think Donald Hagner in his commentary on Matthew perfectly, or should I say completely, captures the emotion and power in writing “this is an ethic that will startle those who experience it; it is an ethic that will inevitably shine like light in a dark place”.
No, I don’t think I’ll ever be fully complete in this life, but Jesus has startled me and shined the light on the path out of darkness to completion in Christ. He doesn’t want to bind me; He wants to set me free to fully be the man He intended me to be.
Amen.
References:
Allison, Dale C., & Davies, W. D. (2004). Matthew, a shorter commentary. T & T Clark
Hagner, Donald A. (1993). Matthew 1-13 (Word Biblical Commentary). Word Books
Osborne, Grant R. (2010). Matthew (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament). Zondervan