Therefore you shall be perfect, just as
your Father in heaven is perfect.
God expects His people to be like Himself, living a life according to an alien standard and demonstrated right here, right now on terra firma. Jesus commanded believers to be perfect as the Father is perfect. Perfect suggests completeness or maturity. Since God is infinitely holy, perfect cannot mean in this context sinless or flawless in the absolute sense of the word but rather a relative or practical perfection. God is absolute perfection, and there is no growing, learning, maturing, or evolving with Him for God is immutable which speaks of His eternally unchangeable nature.
All who enter God’s kingdom by faith are
spiritually like a child needing to grow and mature in Him, to be like Him, a
never-arriving process. In spite of our sin nature, God did not lower His
standard to accommodate humans! We are expected to be a holy people living for
God not based on the world’s standard of righteousness “you have heard” or “it
was said,” but by a different kind of standard of living founded upon the “but
I say,” the Words of Christ (cf. Mt 5:21-22, 27-28, 31-32, 33-34, 38-39,
43-44). This explains the “therefore.” Our goal is to be perfect as our heavenly
Father is perfect, perfecting holiness in the sight of God, not man. We express
it another way by being Christlike, a contrary standard to the world, like
loving our enemies, for instance!
The be perfect has a twin, be holy.
Peter quoted Leviticus 11:44 as a proof text, “Be holy for I am holy” (1 Pet
1:15-16). We are expected to separate ourselves to a higher standard of living
and demonstrate it in the daily routines of life, making the ordinary look
extraordinary. It’s a call for faith to put boots on the ground for the cause
of Christ. What makes our lives different than those who don’t know Christ? Are
we walking in the Spirit or by a worldly standard? The footprints of faith lead
to Christlikeness, doing things and going places that we never thought possible! <><
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