One verse that I frequently am asked about by my LDS friend is Matthew 5:48 and Jesus’s admonition to “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” The argument goes, if Jesus commands us to achieve sinless perfection, then surely he expects us to keep that commandment — at least eventually (ala Elder Holland).
But is this really what this verse is talking about?
In context this verse is focused on a different message. Christ calls us to love even our enemies and those who despise with the kind of perfect and impartial love and our Father in Heaven shows us.
This verse arises in the context of the section of the sermon that discusses loving our enemies. Christ draws draw a powerful contrast between the way of the world which is to love only “those who love you” and the way of our father in heaven which is to “send rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike.” This kind of unmerited gracious love is the hallmark of our Father in Heaven. He loves us when we were not following him. Indeed, he loved us when we were yet sinners and enemies and sent his Son into the world to die for us.
The way of the world is to love in a quid quo pro fashion. God’s way is to love even those who despise us and ungratefully use us. We are called to display this kind of generous and sacrificial love that God shows towards us.
This verse is therefore not about perfect commandment keeping. It is about living a life exemplified by the Love that God shows us in Christ.
I love what Pastor John Stott wrote on this :
Some holiness teachers have built upon this verse great dreams of the possibility of reaching in this life a state of sinless perfection. But the words of Jesus cannot be pressed into meaning this without causing discord in the Sermon. For he has already indicated in the beatitudes that a hunger and thirst after righteousness is a perpetual characteristic of his disciples, and in the next chapter he will teach us to pray constantly, ‘Forgive us our debts.’ Both the hunger for righteousness and the prayer for forgiveness, being continuous, are clear indications that Jesus did not expect his followers to become morally perfect in this life. The context shows that the ‘perfection’ he means relates to love, that perfect love of God which is shown even to those who do not return it. Indeed, scholars tell us that the Aramaic word which Jesus may well have used meant ‘all-embracing’. The parallel verse in Luke’s account of the Sermon confirms this: ‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.’ We are called to be perfect in love, that is, to love even our enemies with the merciful, the inclusive love of God. John R. W. Stott and John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 121–122.
How is such a love possible? It certainly isn’t something that we are capable of achieving perfectly so long as we are living in a fallen world. Our flesh selfishly presses on us to consider our comfort, our ego, and our pride rather than the needs of others.
But the Christian is nevertheless able to show a Christlike love precisely because God has showed us such incredibly and bountiful love in Christ.
As John put it in 1 John 4:
9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
When we understand the love and the grace of God for us, we are going to be transformed. We are going to be filled with a desire to share God’s goodness and grace with others. But we are going to do so without getting puffed up or prideful. We are going to be able to do so without seeking our own.
So Christ is calling us to more fully lean into his grace and mercy and to be transformed by it so that we can love in the way that God loves us.