To join us in worship today: https://www.stmarkknox.org/sermons
Or join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stmarkknox/
48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. – Matthew 5:48
What does perfection look like? We honestly, could say that depends. It depends on what we are talking about. Perfection in school might be an “A+” or a 4.0 grade, however, with advanced courses offered now in many schools, the grading scale pushed beyond the 4.0. If we were talking about Olympic sports, we would consider “10” the perfect score. And there are many other rankings we might put on various things; the perfect cookie, the perfect meal, the perfect afternoon, etc.
Yet, as we come to the close of chapter 5, the opening chapter of the sermon on the mount, we hear Jesus use this word “perfect,” and says we must be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. We have to be perfectly like God. But how is that possible?
In the Jewish culture, and especially among the pharisees, they would have known exactly what Jesus was referring to. In the books of the Law, and especially in what we know as the book of Leviticus, we see something similar to the phrase used over and over again. Except, the translation we see says that we are to “be hoy, as God is holy.” In the context of what Jesus is teaching, perfection is all about holiness. The holiness that restores in us the image of our creator. As you will hear in the sermon, Jesus takes a bunch of laws that are part of the society in which the Jews are living, and takes them a little further, pushes them to realize that actions, and intent; faith and deed both matter in the way we interact with one another, and with God. The point ending with the above verse, reminding the people that God’s intent was that we would know and live the perfect love of God in the grace we have received, and the grace that we offer.
Our holiness, our perfection, is not perfect in the sense of getting everything right, or in any worldly idea of perfection. Our true perfection is in recognizing the face of God in one another, and drawing closer to God, close to our neighbor, and uniting in the love of Christ for all creation, in doing so, we begin to understand what it truly is to holy, and to see holiness in all that God has made.
May you have a wonderfully blessed Sunday!
Grace & Peace,
Sam