You Must Be Perfect
You Must Be Perfect
`You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect' (Matt. 5:48)
Some students of Christian ethics make a distinction between the general standards of Christian conduct and what are called `counsels of perfection', as though the former were prescribed for the rank and file of Christians while the latter could be attained by real saints (see p. 174).
Such a distinction was not made by Jesus himself. He did make a distinction between the ordinary standards of morality observed in the world and the standard at which his disciples should aim; but the latter was something which should characterise all his disciples and not just a select few. For example, the principle that one good turn deserves another was observed by quite irreligious people and even by pagans. For anyone to repay a good turn with a bad one would be regarded as outrageous. But Jesus's followers were not to remain content with conventional standards of decent behaviour. According to conventional standards one good turn might deserve another, but according to the standards which he laid down for his disciples one bad turn deserves a good one - except that `deserves' is not the right word. One bad turn may deserve a bad one in revenge, but one bad turn done to his disciples should be repaid by them with a good one. They must `go the second mile'; they must do more than others do if they are to be known as followers of Jesus. If you confine your good deeds to your own kith and kin, he said to them, `what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?' (Matt. 5:47). It is immediately after that that the words come: `You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.'
This indeed sounds like a'counsel of perfection' in the most literal sense. `Be perfect like God.' Who can attain perfection like his? Is it worthwhile even to begin to try? But the context helps us to understand the force of these words. Why should the disciples of Jesus, the heirs of the kingdom of God, repay evil with good? The ancient law might say, `You shall love your neighbour as yourself (Lev. 19:18), but the fulfilment of that commandment depends on the answer given to the question, `Who is my neighbour?' (Luke 10:29). When Jesus was asked that question, he told the story of the good Samaritan to show that my `neighbour' in the sense intended by the commandment is anyone who needs my help, anyone to whom I can render a `neighbourly' service. But those Israelites to whom the commandment was first given might not have thought of a Canaanite as being a 'neighbour' within the meaning of the act, and their descendants in New Testament times might not have thought of a Roman in this way.
Most systems of ethics emphasise one's duty to one's neighbour, but progress in ethics is marked by the broadening scope indicated in the answer to the question `Who is my neighbour?' Why should I be neighbourly to someone who is unneighbourly to me? If someone does me a bad turn, why should I not pay him back in his own coin? Because, said Jesus, God himself sets us an example in this regard. `Your Father who is in heaven ... makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust' (Matt. 5:45). He bestows his blessings without discrimination. The followers of Jesus are children of God, and they should manifest the family likeness by doing good to all, even to those who deserve the opposite. So, said Jesus, go the whole way in doing good, just as God does.
The same injunction appears in a similar context, but in slightly different words, in Luke 6:36, `Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.' When we find one and the same saying preserved in different forms by two evangelists, as we do here, the reason often is that Jesus's Aramaic words have been translated into Greek in two different ways. We do not know the precise Aramaic words that Jesus used on this occasion, but they probably meant, `You must be perfect (that is, allembracing, without any restriction) in your acts of mercy or kindness, for that is what God is like.'
When the books of the law were read in synagogue from the original Hebrew, the reading was accompanied by an oral paraphrase (called a targum) in Aramaic, the popular vernacular. There is a passage in the law (Lev. 22:26-28) which prescribes kindness to animals. In one of the Aramaic paraphrases, this passage ended with the words: `As our Father is merciful in heaven, so you must be merciful on earth.' Perhaps, then, some of Jesus's hearers recognised a familiar turn of phrase when this `hard saying' fell from his lips. It is not, after all, hard to understand; it is sometimes hard to practise it.