How much harm has come from taking this statement from the Gospel of Matthew literally, and out of context! “You must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). This powerful sentence is part of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, where he has brought together all sorts of sayings of Jesus in an extended teaching on what it means to follow the Way of Jesus. It comes at the end of a very challenging section where Jesus lays out how extreme is the love and commitment he is calling for. We are to love our enemies. Pray for those who mistreat and oppose us. We are to be like Abba-God, who shares abundant goodness with all, good, bad, unjust, just – and with everyone of us who is a mix of all of this.
Good people strive mightily to be perfect. Many good people give up trying. What’s the use! It’s impossible! We torture ourselves with our efforts to achieve perfection (Jesus told us to!), yet we know, only too well, in our heart of hearts, how imperfect we are. People who misread this line live lives of misery. Is this what Jesus meant? Would God sadistically demand something that, in no way, we can do?
The answer lies in the parallel text from the Gospel of Luke’s Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:36). “You are to be merciful as your Heavenly Father is merciful. The perfection God invites, and challenges us to pursue, is one of mercy, of love. God does not require or expect that we embody divine perfection. God is happy with us, perfectly imperfect human beings. Jesus is just asking us to become all that we can, embodying Abba-God’s abundant compassion for everyone (including our selves) with the help of God’s abundant grace.
Jana Buckley says:
I am thrilled to see you address one of the many verses from the Bible that gets misunderstood. It is so very helpful to get a perspective that my human thinking can better grasp. This is like a mini Bible Study. Thank you