“Therefore, you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48)
“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (Jas. 1: 2-4).
A growing movement of Christians now take Jesus’ command to “be perfect” to mean sinless perfection in the flesh, claiming it to be a level of faith that is there for us, but we just haven’t achieved it yet. I believe what He was saying referred to our journey in the spirit more than our destination in the flesh. In fact, the Gospels reveal Jesus was careful to infer that we are not to seek perfection in the flesh. Once again, as with all matters in this life, it comes down to which kingdom we believe in and embrace—the kingdom of man or the kingdom of heaven on earth—and what does perfection look like in each of those kingdoms?
Let’s begin by examining the very verse those who espouse the perfect flesh doctrine hold up as their primary reinforcement from Matthew 5 above. Notice Jesus didn’t say, “Be ye perfect as I am perfect?” Wasn’t He “the exact representation of the Father’s nature” (Heb. 1:3)? And didn’t He say, “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9)? Doesn’t our entire hope rest on the fact that Jesus was “the Spotless Lamb” who took our place? The just One for the unjust? Here was the One who claimed repeatedly the Father and He were one and the same and He was right there with those He was addressing. He was the very best representation of the Father available because He could be seen, touched, and heard audibly.
Jesus does the same thing when someone called Him “good teacher.” He responded, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10). Jesus knew He was indeed perfect, and He was indeed good, yet in both these instances He proclaimed, “Do not look at Me as your example, look at God!” Why the evasion? Why refuse to admit what was so clearly true and what would have been so much easier for those listening to understand?
Jesus said something about the Father that answers this question. He said, “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4). Deferring from the One who was in the flesh to the One who had never been in the flesh but always in the spirit, He didn’t want them to think they could be perfect in the flesh! He wanted to keep any discussion of perfection on a purely spiritual level. There is simply no other explanation as to why Jesus would refer to the Father any time goodness or perfection were mentioned than He didn’t want anyone thinking perfection was about the flesh while He was addressing them in the flesh!
Look at it this way: if you wanted someone to understand what a Ferrari was what would be the best way to do that? Would you open an owner’s manual and start reading it to them? Would you speak endlessly concerning the beautiful lines, the tone of the finely tuned, powerful engine and the supple leather interior? Would you go to internet sites and read Ferrari reviews from owners? Would you read magazine reviews written by automotive experts? Or would you put that person in a Ferrari and let them experience it for themselves? Well, Jesus was the Ferrari, and the Father was spirit that has never come in flesh and was a far harder concept to grasp. And yet, Jesus deferred to the spiritual that was harder to understand rather than the flesh that would have been so much easier. The hard and narrow gate v. the broad and easy one.
Looking at another aspect of proof the perfection Jesus called us to is a spiritual goal, let’s examine two very similar “summary” statements Jesus and Paul, the two most notable figures in the New Testament, proclaimed as their ministries on earth came to a close. When they stated these truths there was nothing left of their missions for them to complete, nothing left out of the messages they were to bring, and nothing left of faith to manifest in the way they lived. There would be no “PS” to either story.
John 19 records Jesus’ last words on the cross, “Therefore, when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished!’ And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.” The word in the Greek for “finished” is tetalestai, which means “complete, to conclude, accomplished, make an end of or finish.” Again, nothing left to say or do.
This is the very same word Paul uses in 2nd Timothy 4, where he begins, “The time of my departure has come.” It was time for him to go. The end. Done here. Just like Jesus on the cross, He knew his life on earth was nearing the end. He continues, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.” He fought the best of fights and had, as Jesus also said, accomplished everything God gave him to do. In his journey He had kept the faith, there was no lack of it he had preached, believed, or displayed. His words, “I have fought, finished, and kept all” indicate two things: his life was a process, and that process took endurance to accomplish. Finally, he says, “In the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.”What higher goal could any believer hope to summit than this?
As similar as their life-summaries were, there was one notable difference between Jesus and Paul, and between Jesus and every man and woman who have lived on this earth ever since. While Jesus was indeed “tempted in all things as are we, and yet without sin” (Heb. 4), Paul struggled with sin in his flesh, as his confession in 1 Timothy 1 [“It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all”] and Romans 7 point out.
If Paul, the one chosen by God to write more of the NT than any other individual, would have attained to perfection in the flesh, don’t you think he would have shouted it from the rooftops as the best news of all? Wouldn’t the pages of his letters to the churches be veritably laced with proclamations Paul made it to that “Heavenly Father perfection” in the flesh if that is what Jesus truly commanded? Had Paul attained such heights he would have clearly said so, for there could be no possible better news!
Rather, he revealed the shortcomings of even the most faithful men ever to live when he said, “For now we see in a mirror dimly…Now I know in part… (1 Cor. 13).” In fact, Paul said, “Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me” (2 Cor. 12). Doesn’t sound like Paul thought he was God-like or a sinless man like Jesus, does it? He wasn’t God, wasn’t born of immaculate, sinless conception, was not sinless in the flesh, and never claimed to be. Nor was he silent on the issue due to any shame. No, Paul was very open about his struggles and shortcomings in the flesh because they were all part of the process that perfected him in the spirit!
Two of the chapters those who promote the sinless man doctrine love to quote are Romans 6 and 8, where Paul asks how we who are dead to sin can go on living with it and how we have been freed from sin. They also quote 1 John 3, “No one who abides in Him sins. No one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.” Ah, but there, right in the middle of Romans 6 and 8 is Paul’s confession in Romans 7, and in 1 John we read, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Here are the same authors writing in the same books. It therefore cannot be argued these conflicting verses were somehow written to different audiences. So, what gives?
To confuse the issue further Paul, the one so open about his struggles in the flesh, did claim perfection! In Philippians 3 he says, “I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude…” What gives? What gives is what kingdom perspective you take on it. Paul was saying while he had not arrived yet, he would forever press on towards God’s perfection in the kingdom—the spirit. Again, a process persisting from one level of faith and understanding to another, yet never arriving because there is ever, and always, a higher calling in Christ. And how did Paul say this perfection was found, stated just before the claimed perfection? “I press on toward the goal!”
All these verses that mention “perfect, accomplished, and finished” we have looked at come from the root “telos.” While it includes an element of perfection, it doesn’t mean becoming like God, or sinless perfection in the flesh, but rather “of full age, completeness of character, full growth, accomplished, finished, end, fulfillment.” Paul would ask of those who believe we must become perfect like God in the flesh, or we failed to somehow understand or believe fully in Him, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh” (Gal. 3)?
James tells us specifically what the path to this perfection is using the same word in the Greek Jesus used when He commanded us to be perfect, and it’s precisely the way Paul did it and thus proclaimed himself and others “perfect.” James scribes the most complete and highest promise in all Scripture in James 1 above, and it is wrapped up in simply enduring the journey. The two times James uses the word “perfect,” it is the same word in the Greek Jesus used when telling us to be perfect. This was the same thing Paul was saying in Philippians 3 and 2nd Timothy 4: “Pressing on…fighting the fight…running the race…keeping the faith.” “I am enduring!”
When speaking of the righteous judgment of God, Paul said, “He will render to each person according to his deeds: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life…” (Rom. 2). In Matthew and Mark, Jesus says twice while prophesying of end times, “He who endures to the end shall be saved.” To the churches of Revelation, He speaks no less than eight times of those who overcome [endure] receiving the crown, just as Paul said his crown of righteousness would be awaiting him after he ran well the journey in this life.
The book of Hebrews tells us Jesus was doing two things on the cross before He said it was finished and surrendered His Spirit: First, He was learning obedience, for “Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation” (Heb. 5). And second, Jesus was enduring His own journey, “For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame” (Heb. 12). Even Jesus was enduring and learning through the many trials that call for faith in this life and was perfected through them.
What Jesus was commanding in Matthew 5 is the same thing Paul said he was about in life and what he had accomplished: full growth! What was the method? To keep on pressing on, seeking the ever-higher calling of God and constantly believing there was a higher call no matter what level he eclipsed. Jesus was saying, “I know it will be impossible for you to be as perfect as My Father is, but I am commanding you to keep on pursuing that very goal anyway! He was saying, “I want you to realize full spiritual maturity here in this life, to be complete, and never stop pressing on. I want you to finish well, knowing you have accomplished the work I gave you to do!” And isn’t this the Great Commission? to make those disciples who observe all [finish, accomplish, complete] Jesus commanded?
Perhaps one of the best passages to bring the whole thing into perspective is in 1st Corinthians 10, where Paul says, “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man. And God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.” Breaking it down:
- Sometimes a temptation will overtake us and that “is common to man.”
- Nonetheless, God is faithful and will not allow us to slide too far.
- For with the temptations we are all subject to in the flesh, He will provide the way out in the spirit.
- Moreover, He will allow all this to happen so the real perfection He seeks will be accomplished, and that is us learning endurance!
The message here is it’s about the journey and not the arrival. And it’s about the book that’s written on us largely after the journey is coming to an end. It’s then we have endured and it’s then we, like Jesus and Paul, can say, “It is accomplished.” Perfection is about the kingdoms and which one we run in. Those who truly follow Jesus never arrive at perfection in the kingdom of man, for that is not what Jesus called us to. The Pharisees pursued that goal and missed Jesus altogether. I can sum it up no better than Paul when, again, he said it is foolishness to try to perfect in the flesh what God began, and is perfecting, in the Spirit. Until kingdom saints leave this earth, they will be on a never-ending journey of seeking the perfection Jesus commanded through enduring in faith, not perfecting flesh, and that’s all He could ever command or ask of us.
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