"Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Matthew 5:48, "Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

This scripture is written in the context of loving one's enemy. Jesus challenges that if we love only those that love us and are good to us, how are we different from unbelievers? Living the gospel, our lives should look significantly different from the world.

I recently saw a quote, “love is unconditional, acceptance is not.” I think sometimes we turn words to say how we feel and want to act rather than let the Word of God have it's work within us. Let's face it, loving our neighbor is challenging.

Sometimes we get caught up in religion and do not see that it lacks genuine love. Too often, people have been judged and deeply hurt by Christian's who take the moral high ground and will not associate or demonstrate love to those they feel violate their biblical beliefs.

Other times, we can be embracing of beliefs that are outside the gospel in the name of love. We basically convert to someone else's religion in the name of love. We need God's help to love and accept people while still holding onto beliefs that are rooted in Christ.

Either approach is striving. It is trying to live the gospel out in our own strength. An underlying area that we can struggle is with striving for perfection. We want to get it all right.

There is something in many of us that desires perfection. It is always out of our reach and we have to work hard and reach to obtain it. And when we taste it, it is never enough and leaves us unsatisfied.

One could use the words in Matthew 5:48 to strive towards more perfectionism, “Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.” Perfect is the Greek word teleioi, Strongs #5046. It actually means to be mature and made whole rather than the perfect person that is to be admired.

To be mature and made whole, we need to lean into Jesus who is the author and perfecter of our faith. He is the one who does the work and we look to Him. In Psalm 119:32, he proclaims, “I shall run the way of Your commandments, For You will enlarge my heart.”

Perhaps rather than striving to get it all right so we can be “like God” in a perfection of self we seek after, we need to lean into God and allow Him to enlarge our heart for others so we can be genuinely more like God.

Jean Vanier writes, “We need to touch the truth of who we are. It is then, as we grow gradually into the acceptance of our wounds and fragility, that we grow into wholeness, and from that wholeness, life begins to flow forth to others around us.”[1]

Allowing God to bring us into circumstances that will enlarge our hearts takes courage and trust. It is a process of being stretched and pressed. And in this process, we may hit our limits at times and see things about ourselves that we would rather pretend do not exist.

Jean Vanier, in his book, “Befriending the Stranger”, speaks of a severely mentally and physically disabled man named Lucien. Lucien was in anguish and had a continual ear piercing scream. What it rose in Jean Vanier, was not love in the moment but his own inner anguish of pain and anger. [2]

He goes on to write, “The mystery of the weak and the broken is that they call forth not only the deep well of love and tenderness in us but also the hardness and darkness.” [3]

He notes that we cannot hide from and avoid our own fragility. Rather, we need to face the “wolf” within us, our places of greatest darkness and seek help. When Christians look to see Jesus in the poor around them, he asks, “Why can't you see Jesus in your own poverty, in your own hunger and thirst?” [4]

We need to have mercy not only for others, but for ourselves in our greatest places of weakness. Just as the blind beggar and the tax collector, invited Jesus in and welcomed Him in all their poverty, we need to invite and meet Jesus in our places of deep lack.

Not just to fix us so we can be “perfect.” But to accept and live in the truth of who we are, not denying our own places of weakness, but welcoming them and allowing Jesus to meet us in them with what we truly need. Do we face our own limitations with mercy and grace?

Lord, enlarge our hearts. Oh God, at the same time give us courage to face our inner woundedness and weaknesses without running from them. Give us the strength to stand in the places of truth about ourselves at our weakest points. Let us not be there alone, but with you so that we can be given your strength and genuinely be made whole.

Vanier, Jean. Befriending the Stranger. Paulist Press. New York, NJ. 2005.
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