Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. (Matthew 5:48)
Before I transition into the study of Teleios I will make some observations of what I have observed lately without mentioning names to try not to get into trouble. First, I was looking forward to an expositional teaching through the Sermon on the Mount and the pastor/teacher skipped over Matthew 5:48. What? Are you kidding me? I could not believe it. This is not a scary verse to handle. Secondly, I have heard a few songs on Christian radio that tell me that I don’t need to be perfect, or Jesus does not expect us to be perfect. Really? The passages I am dealing in this particular blog tell me otherwise. We cannot pick and choose which passages of the bible we like and which ones to throw away. Remember we are not discussing Christian perfectionism, the belief that believers can be sinless, but the process of sanctification that causes us to sin less. And thirdly, this week in our small groups a statement was made before a discussion question that included, “Communion is also a time to examine yourself, not because you must be perfect.” Really? Why are we even having this lesson on Teleios? Because it is in the Bible and it should not be ignored. The end to my rant.
The People’s New Testament comments as follows,
Be ye therefore perfect. To carry out fully this great law of love would lift man to the Divine standard of perfection. This must be the aim of life. We have before us as a pattern for the perfect God; we have the Divine perfection embodied in Christ. It will require a constant struggle while in the flesh to come near so high an ideal, but it must be our continual aim. This does not teach such sanctification that we cannot sin, nor that we, here on earth, attain absolute perfection, but we have placed before us, as a model, the perfect ideal, and we will constantly ascend higher by striving to attain it.