INTRODUCTION
We’re continuing in our series in the Sermon on the Mount. In our passage for today, Jesus starts by saying, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’ What do you think of that!?
Back in March I told you about an interview I heard on Radio 4. The reporter was interviewing a woman who had fled from Ukraine with her child – a six-year-old boy, I think. The interviewer asked if the boy understood what was happening. The woman said he had a pretty good idea. She then said that her son said they should pray for Vladimir Putin, that he would be a better man. That’s great, isn’t it? Exactly what Jesus asks us to do. But loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us isn’t easy.
But it’s a lot easier than what Jesus asks us of us a moment later...
Jesus concludes this section by saying, ‘You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ [Matthew 5:48].
Loving our enemies is difficult. But being as perfect as God the Father is surely impossible!
I’m going to focus today on this statement, ‘You therefore must be perfect!’ I will try to answer three questions:
* What kind of perfection is Jesus looking for?
* Is it reasonable for Jesus to demand that we are perfect?
* Should we make it our goal to be perfect?
WHAT KIND OF PERFECTION IS JESUS LOOKING FOR?
Well, Jesus said ‘you must be perfect, AS YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER IS PERFECT.’ So the kind of perfection Jesus is looking for is the perfection of God the Father.
But we can say more. Jesus is the Son of God. The Bible tells us that he is exactly like God the Father; he is ‘the exact imprint of his nature’ [Hebrews 1:3]. Jesus himself said, ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’ [John 14:9]. So, if we want to know what God the Father is like, we can look at Jesus. Jesus is a man and he walked among us. To know how to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, we can look at Jesus.
So, the perfection Jesus wants is the perfection of God the Father, which we see in Jesus.
But we can say still more about this perfection. I’m going to introduce this point with an illustration.
In 1976, at the summer Olympics in Montreal, Nadia Comaneci, aged 14, was awarded a perfect 10 for her routine in the uneven bars. She was the first person ever to be awarded a perfect score in gymnastics. For one brief moment, it seemed that perfection had been achieved. But had it? Comaneci’s own assessment was that her routine wasn’t perfect. In the following two Olympic games, 72 perfect tens were awarded in gymnastics! But the gymnastics community started to wonder if these perfect scores were really a good thing. A perfect score meant that a routine could not be better; it could not be improved on. But was that true? Surely a gymnast COULD do better. He or she could do a more challenging routine and execute it perfectly. So the International Gymnastics Federation changed the scoring system.
In the old scoring system, if there were no faults, the routine was considered perfect. But the new scoring system put more weight on achievement. The greater the achievement, the greater the score – provided, of course, that there were very few faults. Now there’s no upper limit to the score that’s possible in Olympic gymnastics.
We can compare this to Jesus. I’d like us to look at a very surprising verse. It’s Hebrews 2:10. It says this:
“For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.”
Let’s take a moment to digest what this verse is saying.
‘He for whom and by whom all things exist’ means God.
‘The founder of their salvation’ means Jesus.
We can leave ‘in bringing many sons to glory’ out for the moment as the sentence works without it.
Now, the verse reads as follows:
“For it was fitting that God, SHOULD MAKE JESUS PERFECT through suffering.”
If God had to make Jesus perfect, what does it mean? It means Jesus WASN’T perfect! Wow! There’s a surprise! All this time you thought Jesus is and always has been, perfect. Jesus certainly lived a sinless life. He made no mistakes, no faults. In the old gymnastics scoring system, he would have been considered perfect. He would have been awarded 10. In what sense was he not perfect?
Later on, Hebrews tells us this:
“Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And BEING MADE PERFECT, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him…” [Hebrews 5:8-9].
There’s the same idea! Jesus was MADE PERFECT. And once again, there’s the word ‘suffering’. Jesus’ perfection was tied to his suffering on the cross – the ultimate act of obedience to his Father.
How can we make sense of this? We get a clue when we delve into what the Greek word for perfect is. The word that’s translated ‘perfect’ is ‘telios’. It means ‘having reached its end, complete, perfect.’
We get the word ‘TELescope’ from the Greek word ‘telios’. You can imagine extending a telescope until it’s fully extended. It then has its full strength.
On the cross, Jesus completed the mission his Father had given him. It was going to the cross that made him perfect.
Someone called David Peterson wrote a doctoral thesis on the concept of perfection in the Letter to the Hebrews. He wrote: ‘The perfection envisioned here is not simply or primarily moral perfection; Jesus was without sin, but he still needed to be made perfect. Rather, the idea is completion – people becoming all that they are meant to be.’
So, what kind of perfection is Jesus looking for? It's the perfection that characterizes God. It's the perfection that characterizes Jesus. It's a perfection that is closely related to completeness; being all that God intends us to be. And it’s a perfection which – as in the case of Jesus – we can only reach by fulfilling God’s purpose for us.
I think this is a very attractive concept of perfection. Of course, God doesn’t want us to commit sin. But he isn’t focused on our faults. He isn’t a nit-picky God. What he wants is for us to be complete, all that he made us to be.
Let’s move on to the second question…
IS IT REASONABLE FOR JESUS TO REQUIRE THAT WE ARE PERFECT?
It definitely is! Jesus wants us to be saved and live with him for ever. But God can’t abide sin. In Romans, Paul talks about how God dealt with our sin. At one point he says ‘for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ [Romans 3:23]. Sin isn’t simply breaking God’s commands. Sin is falling short of the glory of God. It’s almost impossible to imagine that we will ever reach that standard of perfection. But we will. At some point in the future, God’s people will stand before him and they will be perfect.
In Hebrews 12, the writer looks forward to the time when Christ will come again. He writes, ‘But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem … and to God, the judge of all, AND TO THE SPIRITS OF THE RIGHTEOUS MADE PERFECT’ [Hebrews 12:23].
Jesus told his disciples, ‘You therefore must be perfect’ – and we must be, in order to live in God’s presence. But that’s in the future, in the life to come. What about this life? We won’t achieve perfection in this life, so isn’t it unreasonable for Jesus to ask us for it?
There are at least three reasons why it’s perfectly reasonable for Jesus to tell us to make perfection our goal, in this life.
The first is that God wants us to be perfect. The second is that God has given so much for our perfection that he’s fully justified in asking us to do the same. The third is that when we strive for perfection, WE benefit enormously.
I’ll try to go through these quickly.
First, God wants us to be perfect. God made us in his image. Since God is perfect, it means that he intended us to be perfect. If God wants us to be perfect, that should be our aim too.
Second, God has given so much for our perfection that he is fully justified in asking us to do the same. I’d like to take us back to an incident in Jesus’ life.
One day, a man came up to Jesus and asked him about eternal life. Jesus asked him if he had kept various commandments. The man answered, ‘All these I have kept.’ The man had done really well! Then the man asked, ‘What do I still lack?’ Jesus answered, ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me’ [Matthew 19:16-22].
For this man, being perfect meant that he had to sell all his possessions and give to the poor. How could Jesus ask such a thing of him? One reason is that it was exactly what Jesus would do. Paul wrote: ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich’ [2 Corinthians 8:9]. Jesus suffered to bring us to glory. So he’s perfectly entitled to ask us to strive for perfection.
Third, when we strive for perfection, WE benefit enormously. There are so many benefits that I can’t possibly list them all.
* We become sons and daughters of God. Jesus said, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, SO THAT YOU MAY BE SONS OF YOUR FATHER WHO IS IN HEAVEN” [Matthew 5:43-45]. Displaying God’s love makes us sons (and daughters!) of our Father who is in heaven.
* We change. We become what God intends us to be. I said that the word for perfect is ‘telios’, which has a strong sense of being complete. God doesn’t wish us to be like telescopes that are half-extended. He wants us to be complete – and I think that’s what we all want! When we set our sights on a goal and we really want it, we work hard and the hard work changes us.
Nadia Comaneci was training as a gymnast at the age of six. When she turned 12, she went to live and train at a state-run training school. She trained eight hours a day, six days a week. It was hard work! But it changed her.
The principle applies to Christians too. Christians who go into training get stronger! ‘Train yourself for godliness’, Paul tells Timothy. ‘Godliness is of value in every way’ [1 Timothy 4:7-8].
* We see God more clearly. Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’ [Matthew 5:8].
There are many more benefits I could mention! But there just isn’t time.
So, in answer to the question, it’s perfectly reasonable for Jesus to ask us to make perfection our goal. It’s what God wants for us. Jesus paid a huge price for it. And it brings US enormous benefit.
I'm going to move on to my third question.
SHOULD WE MAKE IT OUR GOAL TO BE PERFECT?
We have to choose. Jesus didn’t COMMAND the man who asked him about eternal life to do something. He told him, ‘IF YOU WOULD BE PERFECT…’ The man had a choice. We have the same choice. We can choose to make perfection our goal or we can choose not to. For the man, saying yes would be very costly. We know what Jesus is asking of us. Let’s spend a moment in silence and consider how we will answer him.
Talk given at Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Bournemouth, UK, 10th July 2022.
