Matthew 5:48; “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”
Bettering yourself one day at a time is typically a good thing, right? After all, who doesn’t want to be a better person today than you were 10 or 15 years ago? This is all well and good, until.
The Church puts such a heavy load upon its members. Do this, do that, don’t go there, don’t read that. I remember those days and life was hard. The wrong information I had absorbed into my brain kept me from being truly ‘teleios’.
teleios’ is the Greek transliteration for perfect and it means complete. It doesn’t mean perfect in the way the Church has implied. Ironically, they readily admit no one can be perfect, yet from the other side of their mouths guilt trips are piled upon the heads of members.
The New Testament never expects a person to be perfect as it’s an impossible feat for humans. Even King Solomon said as much in Ecclesiastes 7:20; ‘For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not’.
Matthew 5:48 is the culmination of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. He had just given the five ‘you’ve heard it said’ action commands reminding Pharisees that by fulfilling the Law we must love one another so this should be taken into account when using this verse.
Being complete (perfect) means to humble yourself and love, not just your friends, but your enemies as well. It’s an attitude we should adopt and allow to become part of our fiber and being. We must always strive to see our ‘enemies’ as God sees them because they need God’s mercy and forgiveness, just as we do.
This type of teaching is especially dangerous when you’re projecting incorrect information to young people. As they absorb the info and continue to be fed a steady diet of lies, it changes the character of who that person was meant to be, drawing them away from God, not towards Him.