ATTRIBUTES—-
PERFECT
WHO IS GOD? PERFECT
In Matthew 5, we listen to Jesus breaking down God’s way, God’s Kingdom, and God’s original desire for how life should work in our world and our lives. If you have read or listened to it, you may respond to many of His statements in two ways: (1) That sounds like a better world! or (2) Wow, that sounds perfect . . . but I have failed in all those areas.
Jesus ends the chapter with the words “But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven [God] is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). That seems like a tough standard to keep, or even think about keeping! Perfect? Like, love my enemies when they have hurt me? Don’t ever lust? Never lash out when I’m angry? But the emphasis here is not simply on us. Jesus is emphasizing that God is perfect. He establishes that as impossible as it seems for us—broken people—to be perfect, God remains perfect. And this is still His desire for us. One of God’s defining characteristics is that He is without flaw—perfect in every way.
WHO AM I? IMPERFECT, BUT HOPEFUL
If we kept a list of all that Jesus lays out in Matthew 5 about God’s perfect way, none of us could ever check off each element to perfection. Even if we wanted to, when we hear Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, we see our real condition: We are imperfect. In other words, we fail to fulfill the desires God has for us. When Jesus shows us His perfect law—what it looks like to live without sin, without doing anything bad—we see that we are all sinners.
The crowd Jesus was speaking to was made up of all different kinds of people; some thought they were pretty perfect in God’s eyes, others were ashamed and knew that they weren’t, and others may not have thought too much about how God saw them at all. Here Jesus lays out the purpose of the perfect law of the Old Testament (think of the Ten Commandments): to show us that God the Father is perfect, that we are not, and yet that we can have hope.
That seems funny . . . hope? Yes, hope. Jesus says, “Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish [destroy] the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets [the Old Testament]. No, I came to accomplish their purpose” (Matthew 5:17). Jesus was stating that He could keep the law, and through Him, imperfect people could be forgiven of their sin and seen as perfect again by their heavenly Father. We can have hope when we believe in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our faults! He came to save us from a checklist we couldn’t keep.
WHAT DO I DO? ADMIT & ACCEPT
Have you ever held up a mirror to yourself and felt like you don’t meet the standards of the way you want to look? Do you see flaws in yourself that you don’t like? We often feel this way because we have an idea of what “perfect” is—and it’s not us.
Now, that ideal is most likely flawed, but when God holds up His character in front of us like a mirror, it reveals that we actually do have a lot of glaring moral imperfections. For example, God is perfectly loving, while it can be very hard for us to love others above ourselves. God loves His enemies, but we tend to hate anyone who has done us wrong. God’s desires are never selfish or lustful, but we have to fight our selfish desires on a daily basis in many different areas—lust, greed, trying to get our way, fighting for control, wanting to take center stage.
When Jesus holds up the mirror of His character to us in Matthew 5, we find ourselves genuinely saying, Okay, Jesus, I get it. I cannot keep this perfect standard the heavenly Father has set for me. What do I do?
Jesus wants us to be honest and admit who we really are. If you are sick and deny it, how can you ever get better? But if you humbly admit your need for God and accept the offer of His perfect Son, Jesus, to forgive you of your sins, He will make you perfect. (Yes, perfect!) Admitting and accepting that God is right and we are not is the first step to being made right with Him and fulfilling His desires for us.