Yes. But not like you think I mean.
There are a number of passages in the New Testament which speak about perfection. Perhaps most famously, and challengingly, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount declares that we should
“be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”
Matthew 5.48
It is common to wave this away. No one says that’s what they’re doing, but practically that’s what we do. We all know we’re not perfect and we all know that we aren’t going to be. We’re all sinners right?
Much like when in Leviticus 19 (quoted in 1 Peter 1 as well) we’re admonished to be holy because Yahweh your God is holy. We shake our heads at the impossible standards and throw our hands in the air. We know we cannot obtain moral perfection.
But why is it that we think ‘perfect’ in the Bible means moral perfection? Why do we think holiness is moral perfection, either, for that matter—though that is probably a topic for another post—to be set apart is not the same as being morally perfect though the ideas are connected.
I was at another church recently and the preacher had James 3 as his text. James is speaking of taming the tongue and says that any who do not stumble in what they say is a perfect man able to control his whole body. The preacher moves on quickly highlighting that he isn’t perfect and neither are we.
Except, I think James thinks that we can learn to tame our tongues. I think he thinks we can become perfect. Jesus seems to think so as well. Without exploring all the various uses of the term in the New Testament, or the multiple words in Hebrew with the same translation, I don’t think we should be chalking it all up to hyperbole. The Hebrew concept of perfection is also completeness or maturity, seven is the number of completeness because it’s a full week not of ‘perfection’ in the sense we usually imagine.
Remembering that James is wisdom literature—I could argue that in a sense the whole Bible is but put that one aside for the moment—maturity is the key concept he’s exploring. We are supposed to grow up into wisdom, like trees in Psalm 1, we’re supposed to become mature.
The group of words translated perfect (teleios) mean perfect, complete, finished, or mature. Retranslating the word perfect as ‘mature’ could be helpful to us. It would remove some of the sting of the Bible’s words because we all think we’re already mature, but it might allow us to see that we are being called to something possible for us.
You can be perfect; in that you can grow up into Christ like a tree beside living water. You are not yet mature—and in one sense won’t be until the completion and consummation of all things, but in another can be now—and neither is the church, but we are maturing. And you can be mature. You can be a saint who bridles their tongue, to take just the one example, even if most saints will strive and not complete until the age to come.
Even that I want to slightly challenge. Our evidence that we cannot all grow into a fuller likeness of Christ in our lifetimes is not the Bible, it’s our experience of our own battles with sin and those around us. Maybe our sights are too low. Maybe the Lord wants to perfect us, and he will do so by breeding character through suffering (Romans 5) as well as by our meditating on the word day and night in order for our lives to conform to his pattern (Joshua 1). I don’t say this as someone who’s arrived—in fact I now join the preacher in scoffing at my own lack of perfection—but I desire to be.
Next time someone brushes away the Bible’s admonitions as though they were impossible, pause. Next time that you think that what the Bible is calling you to is impossible, pause, and ask yourself “is it just that I’m immature?” When you were a small child a host of adult tasks seemed impossible—you couldn’t reach the cupboards or lift the things from them. A host more adult tasks seemed incomprehensible. We’re told to make progress in godliness (1 Timothy 4), we’re told to grow up.
Of course, if you find someone who tells you they’ve arrived then they haven’t. That doesn’t mean that no one can be mature. There is a reason we call the leaders of churches ‘elders.’ They’re meant to be old. They’re meant to have matured. They’re meant to be—dare I suggest it—perfect.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
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